Don't Let Sin Preside Series

As a disciple of Jesus

sin may reside,

but it must not be allowed to preside

In his book “Listening to the Voice of God”, Pastor Roger Barrier shared that God once led him to preach a one sentence sermon. And some of you are probably praying for God to lead me to do that as well. But that one sentence sermon really summarizes well what we’ve learned this morning:

It is not possible to be content with your sins and really be a Christian.

There is no such thing as a Christian who lives continually under the lordship of sin, since by definition, a genuine disciple of Jesus lives under the Lordship of Jesus.

That does not mean that genuine Christians do not fall into sin, sometimes even gross sins. But if they are genuine disciples of Jesus they just can’t remain there because they will be miserable until they get right with God again.

Over 8 years ago when I was preaching through the book of Ephesians, Denny Howard shared with our Monday morning Bible study a saying that Pastor Adrian Rogers was fond of using and one that summarizes this section very well:

Unconverted sinners leap into sin and love it;

Converted sinners lapse into sin and loathe it.

So if you are not experiencing consistent victory over sin in your life really there are only two possibilities. If the fact that you are living under the dominion of sin doesn’t bother you, then there is a real possibility that you are not a genuine disciple of Jesus in the first place. And if that is the case then I can assure you that you will never get victory over your sin until you first make a genuine commitment of your life to Jesus and make Him the Lord of your life.

On the other hand, if the idea that you can’t get control over your sin really bothers you, then the other, more likely, possibility is that you haven’t done your part by taking to heart the truths that we find here in Romans 6. You haven’t adequately considered the fact that you are dead to sin as a result of being united with Jesus and you haven’t consistently reinforced that truth by engaging your will and choosing to present your life to God for righteous purposes rather than presenting it to sin for unrighteous purposes.

Wouldn’t you love to live a life that has been freed from slavery to sin? The good news is that God wants that for your life even more than you want it. And not only that, He has done everything that He possibly could to make that a real possibility in your life. Now you just need to do your part.

[Prayer]

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