Overcoming Sin

We must know the truth of what God's Word says about our position in Christ so that we can have victory over issues in our life where the devil tries to trick us into believing lies, which result in sin.

Romans 5:20-21 …where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. God's whole purpose in the plan of salvation was to save us from sin.

Romans 6:1-11 1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means!

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? God means for us to have salvation from the practice and even eventually from the very presence of sin. The tense of the Greek verb "died" refers to a single action that has been completed in the past. It is important to remember that "we died to sin" refers to a finished past action. Paul is not saying we ought to die, but rather that we have died. He is speaking of something that is already true for us as Christians. The starting point is not man, it's God. Dying to sin is not something we do or have done, but rather something that has been done to us.

3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Baptism is an outward ceremony that points to an inner spiritual reality, namely our having been joined to, or identified with Jesus Christ. The meaning of baptism is that we have been taken out of one state and put into another. We died to sin because Jesus died to sin by suffering its penalty. He was punished for our sin in our place. Because He died to sin - the exact thing is said of us.

4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Burial puts the deceased person out of this world permanently. That is why Paul who wants to emphasize the finality of our death to sin, stresses burial. He is repeating but also intensifying what he has said: "You have not only died to it, you have been buried to it." To go back to sin once you have been joined to Christ is like digging up a dead body.

5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. As a result of our union with Christ in His death and resurrection our old life of sin in Adam is past for us. We can never go back to it. We have been brought from that old life, the end of which was death, into a new life, the end of which is righteousness. We must embrace that fact and live for righteousness. It is sin that is negative, so to be freed from sin is to be freed to a brand new life, which is positive. The Christian way of speaking about this is to say that for Christians death is followed by resurrection.

6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--

7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Paul begins to talk about the Christian life here, particularly the Christian's sure victory over sin. The body of sin is a phrase refers to the Christian's continuing inclination to sin, which must be dealt with. God has taken us out of Adam and placed us in Christ in order that our present inclination to sin might be robbed of its power and that we should be delivered from sin's slavery.

8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.

10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. If we died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him. Christ was raised from the dead and cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. The words "we will also live with him" refer to an experience of resurrection life here and now. There is a future resurrection and the same union of the believer with Christ that we have been talking about is a guarantee of it. But that is not what these verses are about. They refer to Jesus' passage from a world where death reigned to the sphere of resurrection life. They refer to our passage from the reign of death to the reign of grace, to a present resurrection. This is what Paul said of himself in Philippians, where he wrote, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3:10). He meant that he wanted to be victorious over sin.

11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. This is the first time Paul urges his readers to do anything in the book of Romans. The Greek word for "count" in this verse is "logizomai" which is important because it means something that is reality, that is, with things as they truly are. It has nothing to do with wishful thinking. Paul's starting point for exhorting us is counting as true what God has Himself already done for us. Sanctification begins with knowledge. The first step in growing in holiness is counting as true what is in fact true. Sanctification is knowing that God has taken us out of Adam and has joined us to Jesus Christ and then beginning to live that way. The secret to a holy life is believing God.

Colossians 2:9-15

9For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,

10and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.

11In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ,

12having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,

14having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

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"Triumphing"

When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, He won the victory over the devil once and for all. The completeness of what Jesus accomplished for us is not clearly understood by many Christians today and as a result they spend an excessive amount of their life fighting a war that has already been won for them. God isn't asking us to win the war again over the devil - that's ancient history. He wants us to believe what truly happened 2000 years ago and use that victory in our daily lives to keep the devil in a bound condition. That is what triumphing is all about. By disarming the powers God took the devil's guns away from him and stripped him of his ability to do what he had formerly done to the human race. Then God boldly and publicly showed that satan is no longer allowed to ravage mankind, provided we will accept Christ and His finished Work in our lives and live on God's terms.

Paul takes his language here from the Roman customs of that time. When a Roman general defeated his opponent in war, the Roman Senate arranged a triumph for him upon his victorious return to Rome. A giant procession was organized, led by the conquering general. He was dressed in all his finery and placed in a magnificent chariot pulled by 2 beautiful white horses. The defeated general and all his underlings who had survived the war were stripped naked, bound and chained to the back of the conquering general's chariot. This was purposely done to show the people they had nothing to fear from this defeated enemy from that time on. The procession then advanced through the streets of Rome as the citizens cheered the winning general. After his chariot passed by, cheers turned to shouts of derision for the conquered for who followed. People insulted them, spit upon them and hit them with rocks; absolutely humiliating this enemy who had had the gall to believe he could defeat the might Roman empire.

Applying this scenario to Christ's victory over the devil, symbolically speaking, God put Jesus in the chariot and chained the devil and his demon hordes to the back of the chariot. And they are still there if we understand what God's Word says.

Because we are "in" Christ, according to Romans 8:1, we are in the chariot with Christ Jesus, enjoying the spoils of winning the war! That is the reason we don't have to beg God for what has already been accomplished. We aren't' standing on the sidelines, hoping a small part of the victory will rub off on us by chance. We are always triumphant in Christ! The reason some Christians have so much trouble with the devil and suffer assaults through fear, sickness, depression, sin and want is that they are believing the devil's version of what their position is in Christ more than what God tells them about it in His Word.

We are expressly commanded to "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." The wrestling match or battle or spiritual warfare that we are engaged in today revolves around this area of deception or illusions which the devil uses to trick us into believing his lies about the situation instead of God's Truth. When the devil tries to put his symptoms of fear and sickness on us, we need to battle them with the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. When the devil says he's going to kill us or our children, we say "No, you're not because God's Word says this and this. Now get out of here in the Name of Jesus!" Keep the devil behind the chariot where he belongs! He will try to pull us out of the chariot with his tricks. In fact some Christians are bound behind the chariot and the devil is running loose in their lives, stealing, killing and destroying, because they don't understand it is their right, as a child of God, to keep the devil in a constant state of bondage! The fact is that the devil is terrified of Christians who stay in the chariot, believing God more than anything else.