WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SIN Part 2

We are at war! Every day we battle with being satisfied with all that God is for us in Christ or being satisfied with sin. It is not a trivial, light, and unimportant battle. It is mortal combat and what is at stake is our soul. If you don't believe this in the way you think, feel, and live your life, then your position is very precarious. The enemy has lulled you into sleep or into a peacetime mentality, as if nothing serious is at stake. Therefore, we must not be complacent about sin. We must fight it on a daily basis.

John Owen understood this wartime mentality as well as anyone in church history. He wrote a little 86-page book called On the Mortification of Sin in the Believers Life. "Mortify" means "kill" in 17th century English. Today it just means "embarrass" or "shame." Owen's whole book is an exposition of Romans 8:13, "for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.". His challenge before us on the basis of this passage was:

"Be killing sin or it will be killing you."

We have seen that our Lord demands that we take the gravity of sin seriously and proactively.
"If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:28-29). It is as if Jesus said, "Do you want to enter into life? Do you want to live? Get violent. Stop making peace with ears and eyes and tongues and hands and feet that become instruments of sin and make war on your soul and destroy you. Cut them off, pluck them out, be ruthless and merciless to them"

Ed Welch quoted by John Piper said:

. . . there is a mean streak to authentic self-control. . . Self-control is not for the timid. When we want to grow in it, not only do we nurture an exuberance for Jesus Christ, we also demand of ourselves a hatred for sin. . . . The only possible attitude toward out-of-control desire is a declaration of all-out war. . . . There is something about war that sharpens the senses . . . You hear a twig snap or the rustling of leaves and you are in attack mode. Someone coughs and you are ready to pull the trigger. Even after days of little of no sleep, war keeps us vigilant.

There is a mean, violent streak in the true Christian life! But violence against whom, or what? Not other people. It's a violence against all the impulses in us that would be violent to other people. It's a violence against all the impulses in our own selves that would make peace with our own sin and settle in with a peacetime mentality. It's a violence against all lust in ourselves, and enslaving desires for food or caffeine or sugar or chocolate or alcohol or pornography or money or the praise of men and the approval of others or power or fame. It's violence against the impulses in our own soul toward racism and sluggish indifference to injustice and poverty and abortion.

Christianity is not a settle-in-and-live-at-peace-with-this-world-the-way-it-is kind of religion. Christianity is war. On our own sinful impulses.

We are commanded to constantly kill the sin that remains in our lives. "If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you Will live" (Romans 8:13). Dealing with sin is not an option. No matter what society says. No matter what the Christian culture says. When it comes to sin we are in mortal combat. Sin dies or we die!

Life is short and precious, we are weak and fragile, and eternity is looooooong, very long. Beloved we must not settle with sin. We must see its gravity and it's consequences. Sin crucified our best friend. No wonder we should hate it and not make friends with it. Sin utterly dishonors our Father in heaven. It demeans His glory; it brings reproach to His character and attributes; it diminishes His supreme worth and raises the worth of lessor things. Sin aims to destroy you forever. That is why we must develop a Holy hatred towards sin.

Last time I ended by saying that "faith delivers us from hell and the faith that delivers us from hell is the faith that also delivers us from sin." Some people seem to think that grace comes for heaven but not for earth or that God's grace is for justification but not for sanctification.

John Piper puts it this way:
" The daily practice of killing sin in your life – is the result of being justified and the evidence that you are justified by faith alone apart from works of the law. If you are making war on your sin, and walking by the Spirit, then you know that you have been united with Christ by faith alone. And if you have been united to Christ, then his blood and righteousness provide the unshakable ground of your justification.

On the other hand, if you are living according to the flesh – if you are not making war on the flesh, and not making a practice out of killing sin in your life, then there is no compelling reason for thinking that you are united to Christ by faith or that you are therefore justified. In other words, putting to death the deeds of the body is not the way we get justified, it's one of the ways God shows that we are justified. And so Paul commands us to do it – be killing sin – because if we don't – if we don't make war on the flesh and put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit – if growth in grace and holiness mean nothing to us – then we show that we are probably false in our profession of faith, and that our church membership is a sham and our baptism is a fraud, and we are probably not Christians after all and never were....

"justification by faith alone apart from works does not and cannot lead a person to make peace with sin. Paul answers his own question in Romans 6:1, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" We can't. If we died to sin by being united with Jesus in his death, we can't stay married to sin. The faith that unites us to Christ disunites from his competitors. The faith that makes peace with God makes war on our sin. If you are not at odds with sin, you are not at home with Jesus, not because being at odds with sin makes you at home with Jesus, but because being at home with Jesus makes you at odds with sin."
(http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/2002/83_How_to_Kill_Sin_Part_1/)

The grace that brings us into heaven is the grace kills sin; the grace that saves is the grace that sanctifies; the grace that gives faith to believe is the grace that gives faith to keep on believing; the grace that brings saving faith is the same grace that brings obedient faith. It's all God and all grace working out and manifesting in our lives through the obedience that comes by faith.

Our battle is called by Paul "the good fight of faith"( 1Timothy 6:12). The battle against sin is ultimately the battle against unbelief. We believe that Christ has defeated sin at the cross. We believe that our sin has been borne by Him. We believe that His righteousness counts for us. We believe our standing before God is soley on the finished work of Christ and His imputed righteousness upon us. We believe that His grace is sufficient to cancel all our past sins. Therefore, we also believe that this same Jesus Christ who we trust as our mighty savior from our sin is also our mighty savior in dealing with our present sins not only to forgive but to conquer them. We believe that Christ gives victory over sin past, present, and future!
''For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14)

Do you hear this beloved battling, struggling, Christian? Grace for you. Almighty grace! Amazing grace! Abundant grace! Sovereign grace! The kind of grace that can kill sin in your life. Killing sin in your life is all grace: past grace, canceling sin's guilt through the blood of Jesus; present grace, conquering sin's power through the spirit and being satisfied with all God is for us in Christ by the spirit; future, grace giving you new desires to desire what you ought to desire, so that you do what you ought to do more and more and more to your soul's delight and Christ's glory.

That is the battle. That is the fight. That is our war. May Christ become by faith our supreme desire, satisfaction, and joy. May He increase by faith and may sin decrease by faith.

To be continued...