As I understand it God does not deliver us from sin. He delivers us from the power of sin evidenced by the fact that sin shall no longer reign in your mortal bodies. By doing this we have the power not to sin. The choice is ours.
I believe that the death of Jesus was a complete and final act and through it, he dealt with ALL sin once and for all. He is not dealing with it piecemeal bit by bit as it happens. We were and are washed clean through the blood and that blood was only shed once. That means sin has been deprived of any power that it had. It is up to us to avail ourselves of all that was accomplished on the cross bearing in mind that the Word says you he has quickened who WERE dead in trespasses and sin. Past tense. So you are not dead in sin, you are dead to sin. And if someone or something is dead, what can you do to it? Nothing.
Although Satan is the prince of the world and is causing all sorts of problems, for us we can tell him to go and get stuffed because he has no power over us. All he can do is lie to us and try and convince us we are not more than conquers and that God is not too happy with us.
I believe that one of the problems with this issue is that the church so often teaches us about God but does not teach us to know God. Knowing about God is quite different from knowing God. Knowing about God is religion. Knowing God is relationship. Paul said that I may know him (not about him), and the power of his resurrection and be made conformable to his death.
If that was the central theme to all church life, wow, we would be unbeatable.
Thanks for you thoughtful reply. As you say, knowing God is key to our shining forth as His children. So often, we have thought if we just get our doctrine right, everything falls into place. if this is true, then either a) our doctrine is really messed up, lol.... or......b) it takes more than correct doctrine to shine as children of God. Actually, there is a c) here. Both of the above.
So what is the hindrance to our growing up into a deeper and richer relationship with our God? Why does He feel so far away hen we try to pray? Is it not that sin still rages in our lives? Remember what Jesus said in John 8?
He that sins is a slave to it and does not abide in God's house always.
We may be children of His, but the guilt of our sins and our lack of faith that we are new creatures builds a wall between us and God. Sin causes us to hide from Him, just as it did with Adam and Eve. .
Yes, there is no condemnation on God's part even when we fall into sin...but...... there is plenty of self-condemnation, robbing us of that closeness. How does God truly
dwell in our hearts? By faith! And what is the effect sin has on our hearts? It undercuts our faith and hardens our hearts, callousing them over, and we lose the sweet presence of God inside us, even though He is there.
The good news of the gospel is that not only has He forgiven us but that He will also now keep us from yielding to satan when temptations come. Do you see, we have been operating on half the good news, and our lack of faith in the truth of what Christ truly accomplished on the cross robs us of His manifest presence.
Our God has promised that in every temptation, He will limit satan's power so that he cannot tempt us more than our ability to resist him, and in fact, actually will make way of escape so that we can bare it and not cave to it.... every time.
So why do we continually fall when temptation hits? If it is simply a choice of ours, then why do we again and again choose to ignore the way of escape and proceed into sin? If we cannot help but choose darkness over light, this is not free indeed at all.
But.... what if we finally came to understand that when Christ died, our old nature really did die. Like REALLY. Choosing to obey or disobey, the freedom of choice, is a gift.... until we finally see the curse behind it, for when presented with a choice to serve God or please self, self almost always wins. is this not true? But when we finally come into agreement with God that the old us is no longer in the equation, we can willingly make the final sacrifice to God, the one God desires of us..... our most valuable pearl..... freedom of choice. Whoa.
Yes, we are all servants of God, but more often than not, as was in my case, not very good servants. We like to do our own choosing as to when we will and when we won't obey. But there comes a time when we get so fed up with ourselves for constantly disobeying, and our final hope of ever changing that evaporates, that we reach the same crisis point Paul reached in Romans 7. We finally HATE ourselves, our old self pleasing nature.
We finally are ready to admit our powerlessness to free ourselves from sin's power, and finally cry out to God to deliver us from our real enemy.....the old us. This is when we grow from servants with free wills to bond servants, who willingly give up the right to choose and ask God to choose for us. And when that point of brokenness and powerlessness arrives, God breathes on our faith and allows us believe who we really are. New creatures. Children who have given up willingly the right to choose good or evil. Children who are now kept by the power of God through faith. Glory!
When we arrive at this blessed place, we are no longer content to simply fail again and again and be forgiven. We want more. We want to abide in Him and not ever fulfill the lusts of the flesh, not ever willfully choose to disobey. And praise God, when that moment comes, God lets us see the truth of who we really are, who we have truly been since the day we were saved. His children who are dead to self and who possess brand new natures. No more trying to die to self. We now accept the truth that we really are already dead!
It is then that our progressive sanctification actually begins, for it is when we truly are abiding, with our sins not clouding our vision of Him, that His nature begins to grow up inside us. We may start out as little seeds but that seed is totally pure, and praise God, that seed is destined to grow up into Him in all things, growing up into a tree capable of giving shade to others. No more three steps forward, two steps back (or more truthfully as was in my case, four steps back, lol). Real progress. Real fruits beginning to grow in us. And we will be amazed, knowing that it is God doing it IN us.
This is when we finally leave our wandering in the wilderness, where we were ever learning but never profiting from what we learn. We finally cease from our own labors. and cross over into the land of promise, and never go back. Do our battles end here? Heck no, they begin! But the battle is now not an internal one with the old us and the new us fighting it out like the black and white dog. Not at all.
Now, as our faith truly begins to grow in His many promises, we take authority and rule over our fleshly body, bringing it under our control. Even our thought life becomes a battlefield of victory, as we bring every thought.... think about that.... every thought! ...... into submission to God in us. Wow! Oh, the thoughts still come like flaming arrows from satan, but our shields of faith doo their job, quenching the arrows, as we hold fast to the truth that evil selfish thoughts are simply satan trying to get us to "bite" and accept that they come from our hearts. They do not.
This revelation of who we truly are is about to spring forth in God's church to every single child of God. And just as promise, no man is going to have to tell us "Know ye the Lord", for ALL of us will know Him, from the least to the greatest....and in that order, lol.
I pray this helps in understanding what i so poorly am trying to get His children to see.
blessings,
Gids