Part 10 of 14

The Essential Spirit - The Christian’s Basis of Victory Over Sin

 

God has provided a great 3-fold salvation for us from Sin and its effects.

1. We as Christians, first are freed from the penalty of our sins, since Christ paid the penalty for us.

2. Then also, as Christians who are in Christ, we already are freed from the power of Sin’s domination over us, by our death with and in Christ.

3. One day we will be freed from the presence of Sin, when we exchange these sin-laden bodies for new spirit-bodies, just as the resurrected Jesus demonstrated when He taught the disciples after His resurrection.

We know that Christians still sin. So, how then does Satan, as the Sin-spirit in man’s flesh body, have any influence over the saved Christian, who we now know is “dead to sin” (Rom 6:2, 11) in Christ?  Romans 6:7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

Here we need to first note and agree as to where the Satan nature as “Sin” is located, even in the Christian – in his flesh body members. In Romans 6:12 we see that sin is located in the flesh, “your mortal body”; where “sin reigns” by manifesting “its lusts,” meaning, “strong desires,” and we see in Romans 8:3 that in fact “sin is condemned in the flesh.”

In te Old Testament we have an account of the real experience of the children of Israel that also is figurative. It confirms the Christian’s spiritual real state in principal. Recall the situation of the children of Israel in the Sinai wilderness, when serpents were biting them and injecting their deadly venom, causing them to die. The children of Israel asked Moses to ask God to “take away the serpents” (Numbers 21:7). We should note that God did not answer their prayer to “take away the serpents.” The serpents and their poison were not “destroyed.” The serpents bite and their poison remained as a problem. But God did make the serpent’s bite “of no effect” if the poisoned victim looked to the brazen serpent lifted up on Moses staff. That looking away to the brazen Serpent on the pole is a demonstration of faith in what God promised. We also must believe that the Sin in our flesh is “made of no effect” when we look away to Christ and our co-death and new life we have by Him in us.

No doubt, Jesus spoke referring to this allegory in John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:  Jesus, in His humanity, by His human body, had to be lifted up both for “the sins of the world,” and also for the Sin nature to be dealt with. Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin (as a nature) in the flesh:

Jesus spoke here of Himself being as that “brazen serpent,” the one to “be lifted up” on the cross, bodily. Thus, Christ’s Sin-laden body was offered to condemn the Sin poison in the flesh of mankind (Rom 8:3). Now, we may simply look away to the cross, to trust Christ’s death on the cross as our death, making the Sin nature in our flesh bodies to be “of not effect.” The poison remains but it has no power over us. This has been the case since the day we believed and received new life in Christ.

From this account in Numbers we can see that it is by looking to Christ on the cross, that we see Him as us on the cross. We identify with Christ death as our death. By Christ’s death as us, Christ destroyed not the Devil, but rather “destroyed the works of the devil.” 1 John 3:8b … For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy (Greek, luo, loosed us from) the works of the devil.

As with every gain we have in Christ, our “death to Sin” is only effectual “by faith.” That faith springs from the One who did bear us on the cross, as to our crucified “old man.” We now turn our hearts to depend upon Him who now is our indwelling resurrected new man. Jesus said we are sanctified, set apart from sin and the world, “by faith in Him” (Acts 26:18 ). As we turn our heart to trust Him in us as our life and source, then our death in Him is manifested in that turning. That one turning to His life within us is the reckoning of our old self dead and now alive by Christ’s Spirit of life …upon whom Sin has no hold.