“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Are you struggling with sin in your life? Or confusion? Let’s address that, shall we? To do so, though, we must consider the subject biblically, so let’s do that. Let’s look at the great doctrines of justification and sanctification because that’s the only way to logically address what’s happening to all of us in our daily walk with the Lord.
To begin, we’re saved by faith alone and because salvation is a work of grace, by the Lord and through the Lord’s action alone, we’re completely safe. We can’t lose our salvation.
There is, therefore, no condemnation. That’s a plain and categorical statement right there. But like most biblical truths, it’s deeper than we first think.
This isn’t to say that there is no struggle – especially against our sins. Or no imperfections. It doesn’t say that we don’t have failures on this side of the Kingdom. It says there’s no chance of the loss of salvation. The war is over. God has won the war we started at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That war ended on another tree…the cross. We live now in that truth. We live now in perseverance, not perfection. We have the perfect, personal and perpetual obedience of Jesus Christ in our account. There’s no danger of losing that because it doesn’t and never did depend upon us. This is what it means to be free in Christ.
And it’s also the power of our sanctification – that is, gratitude and love of God that’s poured into our hearts. When considering the security of salvation through faith alone – by grace alone – it’s easy, even natural, to wonder if a saved person can simply continue in sin. The question is so obvious, in fact, that Paul anticipates it. To wit:
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” Romans 6:1–2 ESV
To understand our personal battles with sin – whatever they may be…anxiety, anger, lust, laziness, gossip – we must reckon with the deep truths of election, justification, and sanctification. First, we are clearly chosen by God to be saved. Many struggle with this great biblical truth against the clear and obvious evidence.
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Romans 8:29 ESV
A God who doesn’t know all things and determine all things is not the biblical God, nor is He philosophically consistent with the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence. If human events and/or decisions limit Him in any way, if He’s up there in heaven wringing His holy hands hoping to be chosen, then there are powers (in this case, our free will) that limit Him. In our rush to protect God from the charge of unfairness, or in our philosophical confusion over the issue of free will, or both, we err to reject the great doctrine of election.
Also, we contradict ourselves. Even the most ardent critic of election concedes heartily that Israel was God’s chosen people. It’s true, but it also shows the pattern that we’re discussing.
So, those who are saved are chosen by grace and justified by the works of Christ, not their own. This obliterates human boasting and means that there’s nothing we’re ever going to do, nor did in the past, to make us right with God. The doctrine of salvation by faith alone shows the righteousness of God – that He is both just and justifier in the one who believes (Romans 3:26). Does this faith overthrow the law? Good question…and another logical one that’s asked and, thankfully, answered by God in holy Scripture.
“Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” Romans 3:31 ESV
Paul spends considerable time teaching (and reminding) us of the glory of the gospel. It’s mind boggling and, because of sin, and the lure of legalism, counterintuitive. The righteousness of God is so vast and high and inconceivable to us that we approach the subject with the wrong mentality altogether. We don’t see that it’s God’s grace at work in our lives even before we were saved that kept us from being utterly lost and destroyed by sin! We have a dreadful tendency to consider ourselves as sinful, yes, but not that bad. It’s not like we’re Hitler or something, right?
Wrong.
It’s by the grace of God alone that we’re not lost to sin.
This is the doctrine of “total depravity” in a nutshell. It’s not that we’re ever as bad as we could be (thank God) but that we’re infected with sin in everything we do – and unless God provides grace to us, we’d be pigs in the moral sty.
This elemental fact of life makes the following life-changing.
“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:3–4 ESV
We’re not only declared “not guilty” in Christ, but actually have personally fulfilled every aspect of the law vicariously (by faith) in Christ. We’re saved by works, after all…the works of Christ! Biblical faith means the transfer of our sin to Christ and His righteousness to us. The knowledge of this – the enormity and power of it – leads us to a life of deep reverence for God, great joy in our salvation, and needed humility. In other words, we begin a life of walking in the Spirit.
Walking in the Spirit means to set our minds on the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5). At this point, we’ve passed from the subject of justification to sanctification. The goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ through the application of the principles of the gospel by “setting our minds” on those great truths.
Sanctification is the discipline and training of love and joy. It’s the logical response to the reality of our undeserved salvation.
It is a choice. The error of thinking of free will in humanistic terms rears its head here. The truth of election doesn’t mean that we’re incapable of choosing. It means that only God is righteous and we must be saved by Him, via His initiation. It doesn’t mean that we have no capacity of choice. We obviously do, but we’re in the flesh before faith and now we walk in the Spirit.
In our struggles with sin, depression, and frustration in life we do well to remind ourselves that we’re called to a life of increasingly holy living through the renewal of our minds. This means that we set our minds on the glory of God. We don’t try “not to sin” or “not to be depressed” but fix our minds on His glory and the beauty that’s all around us even within a fallen world.
In boxing we’re never told, “go out there and don’t get hit.” That’s a fool’s errand and impossible command. But many of us live this way. We live by focusing on negatives rather than the ultimate positive which is God’s love for us and sovereign leadership in our lives. We were told to go “establish the jab…to counter this or that…” or, if you will, we were focusing on the things we could do rather than occupy our minds with negatives. Making no provision for the flesh is like this. Keep your guard up, yes, but not only that, work off your jab…do the basics!
The Christian life of sanctification includes basics too.
Read and meditate on the word daily! Too many of us neglect this as a daily exercise – and it is exercise because vice and laziness are always easy. To neglect prayerful and meditative Scripture time is akin to a boxer not working out. It saps our energy, kills our endurance and bad habits of mind creep in. Neglect of this simple but amazingly powerful tool – prayerful and meditative Scripture reading – is to literally make provision for the flesh. Ray Comfort used to say, “no read, no feed.” He meant that before he’d eat breakfast, he’d prayerfully read the word.
To meditate on the word is to read it humbly! It’s another grave mistake to think, “you know who needs to read this…?” You do! We do! The Holy Spirit will guide us and speak to us if we take the time to prioritize the word and humbly pray that we understand and apply it to our personal lives. Yes, today and tomorrow we might be struggling with some issue or sin. But so will a boxer struggle as he first gets started. But the discipline of these devotions will yield the fruits of practical holiness and draw us closer to the Lord so that we’ll outgrow – from the heart – the shackles of our current sins and situation. In our immaturity, our conformity to the fleshly way of thinking, we consider delivery from circumstances our greatest need when, in fact, our deepest need is Him…personally.
Trust me on this: seeking God personally, to really know and love Him, will itself change our circumstances because He is the God of all things. Often, rather unwittingly and through neglect of our devotions and prayers, we end up trying to use God to control our circumstances rather than loving and worshipping Him through them. The struggle with sin is the struggle with what our hearts really want. A new boxer, or an out-of-shape one, yields to the power of the lazy flesh; it wants sugar, the couch, and ease. The disciplined boxer is lightning fast, mobile, and well-conditioned. The Enemy fires a flaming jab at the conditioned Christian and he slips and moves away. The lazy Christian blocks temptation with his face.
Again: to neglect our daily and personal time with God in meditative prayer and Scripture reading is literally making provision for the flesh. If we won’t make time for His holy word, we’re making time for temptation. Our minds are either set on the flesh or on His word. To walk in the Spirit literally means to be word and prayer saturated. To be saved is to have limitless funds of righteousness deposited into our account. Thus, to stagger and stumble along, woefully beaten by our sins and weaknesses, sporting spiritual black eyes all the time, is like begging for change on a street corner after Elon Musk gave you his checking account number.
To prayerfully meditate on His word is to both listen and talk to Him. Reverently tell Him everything. He already knows anyway! So, give Him your heart! Jesus prayed on that last night of His earthly life, if you recall. And He prayed, “Father, if it be your will, please take this cup from me.” Oh, what treasures there are in reading and knowing Scripture which is given to us so that we’re instructed and encouraged. In this case, Jesus shows us that it’s okay to want and ask that a trial to be removed from our path. But the key is that we go to the Father in the first place and present ourselves before Him. Then, and only then can we pray the key to the whole thing: “but not my will, but yours be done.”
The peace of God is there for us when we simply admit that God’s will is best for us. Sanctification is, therefore, the continued and disciplined acting out of the new life in us…not by motivation of duty or legalism, but by love. God’s love and presence transforms us piece by piece, bit by bit, layer by layer. Like a boxer getting better and better, getting hit less and less, is the Christian who grows less sinful and more holy via love.
Imagine again that Elon Musk offered all his money under the one condition that we simply admit that it’s his money and that we’re broke. That’s a picture of salvation and that’s what prayer and meditative Scripture reading truly is: the constant “training in righteousness” that comes from going again and again to that inexhaustible account of grace and righteousness.
Meditative prayer and Scripture reading are great treasures of Christian life because we know that we have access to the Father through faith. We have nothing to fear! There’s no condemnation. We may be broken hearted, or beaten down, or scared, broke, and unable to form complete sentences before Him. But we cry, “Abba, Father (Romans 8:15)!” The Christian life is the life of fellowship…with Christ Himself and with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We aren’t alone! A struggle with sin is evidence of the Spirit alive within us, bearing witness that we’re His and that sin is a dead-end. And we don’t have to struggle alone but have sweet prayer and time with Him and His holy word to lead us. Not only that, but we have each other to lean on in Christ. There are no “lone-ranger” Christians because we’re called together as a family – as a church – a royal priesthood.
So, this is it. Let’s “work off the jab” and develop the habits of walking in the Spirit, not the flesh. To neglect the simple but great truths of Scripture leaves us weary and shot full of holes, though not ever condemned in Christ.
Set your mind on the Spirit precisely because you are saved. Ask and you will be answered. Seek and you will absolutely find ways to grow. Make no provision for the flesh because of Him and through Him. Ask for love. Ask for wisdom. And train up the Godly habits you need so that sin is ever less an option or desire. Indeed, set your mind on Him.
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