I said in our last post that we are corpses. We are dead in Christ, buried in Christ, our old man is dead in Christ. Before you were in Christ, you sinned without thinking, without contemplating this is selfish behaviour. You were often powerless to resist a temptation because you could only fight a soul temptation with your soul and that is an even fight that you may or may not win.
But now you are in Christ you have a new identity, a new spirit, a new life. You are dead to sin. Sin is no longer your lord, sin is not in control of you. It is not natural for a Christian to sin. A Christian cannot say “I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t stop myself” – that’s not true, you have the entire resources of Jesus Christ in your born-again spirit, and if you realize that you will walk above temptation.
But here is the bit that we must be aware of: even though we are most definitely dead and buried in Christ, we are still tempted by the world around us, your flesh still wants to please itself and there is still a devil who wants you to sin and be selfish. But what I want to say to you today is what while sin is evil and destructive, temptation does not have to be. Jesus was tempted, and He was perfect. You can be tempted and still be without sin!
Listen carefully: temptation is not just an opportunity to sin, it is an opportunity to not sin! When you yield to temptation, you are revealing to yourself that you are still flesh-dominant, that you put yourself above others, and the root of that is we trust ourselves rather than trusting in Jesus and what He has done for us, as us and in us. We did not count ourselves, reckon ourselves, dead to sin. When Paul says “Count yourselves dead to sin”, he is telling us that sin is still there, but it no longer has a pull on us if we count correctly!
We have already been rescued from darkness and already brought into the kingdom of the Son He loves (Col. 1.13). That’s the truth, we are in the light and do not have to walk in darkness. We died to the darkness and were born to the light. We can still choose to serve the darkness, so we have to continually remind ourselves we are dead to sin, we need to turn away from sin, consider we are dead to sin, and stop behaving like that – we do not have to fulfil the lusts and desires of the flesh! We do not have to do what the world counts important. We do not have to listen to devils.
We are all sons of the light and do not belong to the night (1 Thess. 5.5). So let’s choose to consider ourselves dead to the night and alive to the day, and let’s walk in victory! We belong to the light, that’s the truth, let’s live like it.
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