By Jordan Robison
“For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”- Romans 7:15-20
Paul wrote Romans sometime around 56-58 A.D. so around 1,960 years ago Paul was experiencing the same struggles that we experience on a daily basis. As Christians it is common that we have received a new set of beliefs but we do not know how to act upon them in our daily lives. We are told what it is to know Christ but we are often left without a “how-to” guide when it comes to following Christ so we revert back to our old B.C. patterns of the flesh.
In his book Lifetime Guarantee, Bill Gillham spends an entire chapter sorting through this conundrum of desiring to do good yet continuing to do the very thing we hate. In breaking it down he starts by trying to define what sin is and then how we can defeat sin.
Gillham states that sin is an “entity or power who wishes me to do ‘the very thing I hate.’ Something that indwells me [that] wants me to rebel against God.” The big point that Gillham wants to drive home in his defining of sin is that Satan cannot force us to do anything. He does not force us to act out and rebel against God. However, Satan does use sin to suggest that we do something. Sin creeps in and uses first-person singular pronouns to disguise itself as our own thought. “Instead of experiencing the communication, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and give her a piece of your mind!’ it will be served up to your mind as,’Well! I have a good mind to tell her off! By George, I’m going to do it!” Once we buy into sin’s idea and accept it as our own then we grab onto it, convert it into action and once again we have done the very thing we hate.
So how do we defeat this, where is our victory? “Your victory lies in appropriating your true identity as the saint you are in Christ. You must counter temptation along these lines: ‘No! I’m dead to that! That is not my thought. I recognize that strategy.’” Romans 6:11 says, “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” How does a dead man respond when you try to stimulate him? He doesn’t! We are dead to sin…do not let it stimulate your desires…recognize it for what it is and fight it.
When we accept Christ as our savior we are bringing Him into our lives to live through us. When sin pervades our thoughts, when temptation sneaks in we must recognize it for what it is and “choose to act as if I’m dead to sin by acting as though Christ is living through me.” We’re not just dead to sin but on the other had we are alive! We are dead to the power of sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus!
As we struggle with attempting to defeat sin on our own we fail to live out the victory that we have in Christ. As Gillham puts it, “Somehow their Christianity is not working. The reason it’s now working is they do not understand their true identity and how to offer themselves as a living sacrifice to Christ to live the victorious Christian life through them.”
So to wrap things up we turn back to Paul’s letter to the Romans. “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” – Romans 12:1-2 (NLT)
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