One of the foundations of our walk of faith is this principle – that all power belongs to God. This includes the power to live a godly life. Let’s look at Romans 8:10-11
10 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
The Bible tells us that when we respond to God’s call of faith, He makes us into a new creation. We are born again with a new spirit that is of God and is life from God. However, we still live in a body that is tied to the old life of sin. That is why we still experience temptation. It’s the body of sin trying to regain control of our minds to serve our old ways.
We only have one nature. The old nature was put to death by the Spirit, and we were raised as a new creation. Sometimes it seems like we have dueling natures, but it’s actually the flesh trying to serve itself. Since sin brings forth death, the above passage explains that the body is still dead because of sin, but that is not who you are. You are a new creation, born of God, and your new nature desires righteousness even more than the old body desires sin.
If this is true, how do we keep our flesh from dominating our lives and drawing us back into sinful behaviors? It all boils down to who we put our trust in. The Christian life is lived the same way we enter it – by grace through faith, everything is a gift of God and not of your works. If you try to live out your faith by human effort, you are trusting in your body to fulfill you instead of receiving the gifts of Grace by faith.
In Isaiah 45, God says, “Look to me and be saved.” As a life-picture of this, God setup a scenario in the Exodus account. As Israel journeyed through the desert, they fell into sin and judgement came calling in the form of venomous serpents. God gave an odd cure for this deadly problem. He had Moses put a serpent on a pole and lift it up. The command was that if anyone was bitten, they were to look at the pole and they would be cured of the poison of the bite.
This was a foreshadow of Christ. Jesus said that just as the serpent was lifted up in the desert, even so He would be lifted up on the cross. It’s the cure for sin. Anyone who recognizes the poison of sin in their life can find deliverance by looking to Him. Then the Spirit will work within them to destroy sin.
When sin arises in your life, you have the promise that even though you live in a body dead to sin, the Spirit who lives in you will give you power over sin. He gives life to your physical bodies through the Spirit of God within you. Instead of looking at your failures and sins, you look to the power of the cross and trust in Him. Then He suppresses the sin and empowers you to experience the walk of life. Look at Micah 7:19
He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.
You will cast all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
Not only does God forgive your sins, but He subdues sin. He brings your flesh under subjection when you look to Him. Sin is no concern because God removes it so far from you, that it’s as if it is in the deepest part of the ocean. Then He empowers you by His Spirit to rise above the weakness of the flesh. As you learn to look to Him, the flesh loses power and the Spirit gives you power. The challenge of the Christian life is to learn to look to Him instead of yourself. Stop trying to will yourself into obedience, and start trusting in God’s promise to work within you. Walk by faith and experience life as God has designed for you!
Eddie Snipes
March 2024