Sin Shall Not
When I was in the seventh grade, I had just started a new Jr High School. It took no time for trouble to find me. During home group time, I was leaning back in my chair, and a boy used his foot to tip me all the way back onto the floor. He laughed, and I got back up and sat down in my chair. I thought it was merely an innocent prank. So when I caught him leaning back, I returned the favor. He got very angry about it and told me to meet him at the flag pole after school. I shrugged it off as though he was just blowing off steam and being dramatic. So I just avoided him, and for days, he would bump me in the hallway and say, “Meet me at the flag pole,” and call me a name. One day, it was raining after school, and as a result, I got caught under the canopy in front of the school where the flag pole was, and there he was. He decided to increase his antics and grabbed my favorite shirt, twisting it and breathing out threats. I told him to let go of my shirt and leave me alone, or he would regret it. At that, he punched me in the stomach and then just stood there. When I straightened back up, I lit into him. I was stopped eventually by an older, bigger guy who said the principal was coming and picked me up and tossed me over the crowd into the wet grass and said run, little man. Once I got about halfway home, I began to cry, feeling bad I had so badly beaten someone up. Needless to say, that boy wanted to be my friend after that and never taunted or tormented me again.
I’m not sharing this brag about some physical altercation I won. I honestly felt bad about it once it was over. I’m sharing it to demonstrate that I tolerated a season of being tormented in front of all my friends and classmates by someone who should have had no dominion over me.
Too often, those who have been born again tolerate torment and taunting for no good reason. They put up with the idea that they should be subject to some sin that seeks to dominate them. They listen to a lie from the enemy and subject themselves to the idea that they are powerless and have a sin problem. They seem not to realize what New Covenant Scripture says about them.
Romans 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
No true born-again believer in Jesus is a slave to sin. The New Creation is set free from the power of sin and the slavery to sin. Sin has to be chosen and allowed. This is all tied to our new identity in Christ. Our identity is no longer a slave of sin but rather a slave to righteousness. We are no longer under the microscope of the law, which magnifies sin and brings death. We are under grace, which magnifies the life of Christ in us and the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. There is a power at work within us!
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, we also should walk in newness of life.
The key is walking in what we received from Christ! New life!
Romans 6:5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Instead of looking at sin as being powerful and thinking that our old self never truly died, we need to change our minds and agree with what Scripture testifies concerning us. We died with Jesus, and when we went into the grave with Him with all our sins, just as He took sin with Him into the grave and left it there. We did likewise. The sinful nature died and was buried with Jesus! The old nature is no longer alive and in control.
This is why water baptism in the name of Jesus is an active faith obedience declaring the old sin nature is dead and gone, and a new life in Christ has been received. That is why Paul, empowered by the Holy Spirit, can say authoritatively,
Romans 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
