Book 3 of Musings The Little Sins

The little sins we are practicing now will have far-reaching effects if we don't cease doing them.

God warned the people of Israel to destroy the enemy completely. Regarding the land God had given them to possess, they were to slay every inhabitant, young and old.

This may seem unduly harsh. But God warned them clearly that if they did not do as He commanded, sooner or later they would be practicing the sins of the people of the land, including using their children for burnt offerings.

God knows what He is doing.

The Israelites did not obey God. When they had subdued part of the land, they settled down. Continuing to fight against the Canaanites meant that some of the Israelites would be killed in battle. They saw no need for this and decided to live in peace in the part of the land they had conquered.

After several hundred years, the fruit of their compromise came to maturity. They lost their land and were carried into captivity. To the present day the Jews are not able to live in peace in the land that God gave them originally.

It is difficult for people to defy the rest of the population of the world and live as those whom God has chosen to be specially close to Himself. It is hard for the Jews and it is hard for the Christians. This never was more true than it is today as the electronic media are bringing together all the people of the world into one group. This one world that is on the horizon will not be the friend of the Lord Jesus.

God wants no sin in our life. For years we Christians have cultivated a spirit of compromise. You will hear it said no one is perfect. As long as we are living in the present world we will sin. The idea is that God recognizes that as long as we are in the world we are forced to sin, and so He has given us grace so we can be forgiven and go to Heaven to live forever. This is the current gospel and it is unscriptural.

The difference between the Law of Moses and the new covenant is that the Law of Moses is able to deal only with the symptoms of the sinful nature, while the new covenant attacks the sinful nature itself.

Before we will have the understanding and faith required for total victory over sin, we must understand it is not only possible under the new covenant to gain victory over sin, it is obligatory. For every sinful practice in our life that is not dealt with has the potential to prevent us from reaping the fullness of the promised inheritance, just as in the case of Israel.

The Lord Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. Christ has total authority and total power in Heaven, on the earth, and in the dark spiritual regions under the surface of the earth.

It is the will of Christ that everyone who comes to Him take his or her place on the cross with Christ. Our first life is over. Nothing of our first personality is to be saved. The placing of ourselves on the cross must be absolute, without any sort of compromise whatever.

Counting ourselves dead on the cross with Christ is the first half of total victory over sin.

Now that we have died, the Holy Spirit is free to bring our sins before us one at a time so we can confess the behavior as sin and utterly renounce it. When we do this we will be forgiven of that sin and cleansed from it. Meanwhile the remainder of our personality is covered with the Passover blood of the cross. God will spare our entire personality from destruction provided we are moving forward with the Holy Spirit in the work of confessing our sins.

But can we gain victory over all sin? Why not? What sin is so powerful Christ is unable to give us victory over it?

I think sometimes when we consider the prospect of victory over all sin we picture some kind of fantasy land in which we somehow have become something other than human. I am not referring to such a fanciful state. I am speaking of ordinary people being led by the Spirit of God to get rid of their sins little by little.

Let us take the sin of lying, for example. Do you lie once in a while? Do you know it is sin?

The question is, can a Christian be compelled to lie? Yes, or no?

The answer is, no Christian can be compelled to lie who chooses not to obey the urge to do so.

If the Holy Spirit points out to us that we have told a lie, we are to confess the lie as sin. We tell the Lord what we have done (although He already knows all about it) and judge the behavior as unworthy of the Kingdom of God. Then we tell the Lord that by His grace we never will lie again.

When we do this we find the strength to keep from lying in the future.

Should we lie again we are to go back to the Lord and tell Him about it. It may be that the lie is symptomatic of a deeper problem, such as cowardice. If we will keep on going to the Lord, He will guide us to total victory over the cowardice and the lying as well.

It is a battle. We have to be determined to gain victory through Jesus Christ.

This is where grace enters the picture. God's grace through Christ enables us to gain total victory over lying.

It is as simple and straightforward as this.

No Christian can be compelled to lie who is determined to gain victory through Christ over this sinful behavior. That sounds right, doesn't it.

Is Christ so powerless that He is unable to deliver you or me from a lying spirit?

If Christ can heal cancer, and He surely can and has on occasion, then why can't He deliver us from the power of a lying spirit? He surely can, and has on occasion.

Lying has no place whatever in the Kingdom of God. God does not lie and His people do not lie. All liars shall have their place in the Lake of Fire, whether or not they profess faith in Jesus Christ. The concept that liars can inherit the Kingdom of God through grace is unscriptural. It is a lie of Satan, and a tremendous misunderstanding in Christian thinking.

If we are going to be part of the Kingdom of God, then somehow, somewhere we are going to have to be delivered from the practice of lying. This obviously is true. The opposite, that there will be people in the Kingdom of God who lie, is unthinkable. In this case, Paradise would be no better than what we have today. Maybe the surroundings would be improved, but God would not dwell with us. The God of Heaven does not have fellowship with liars, grace notwithstanding.

What is sin? Sin is a collection of nasty little bondages, like lying. Satan has convinced the churches that sin is some kind of monolithic structure, impregnable, a darkness we are obliged to live under while on the earth.

Sin is nothing of the sort. Take the Ten Commandments, the eight behaviors described in Revelation 21:8, and the ninefold fruit of the Spirit, and we can get a pretty good idea of what sinful behavior is and is not. Sin has its limitations. It very definitely is a finite number of destructive practices that emerged from Satan's desire to supplant God's will with his own will.

All sin is an expression of self-will and comes from self-will. Once we choose to take our place on the cross, revealing that we want God's will in our life rather than our own will, it is a relatively simple matter to pick off the sins one at a time until we are living in victory.

We in America are living in a demonic environment. Because of the immoral practices of our citizens, the spiritual climate is dark indeed. This means we are subjected constantly to thoughts of lust, covetousness, and violence. But being subjected to these thoughts is not sin. It is when we yield to them that sin begins.

We have to read our Bible each day, pray, have fellowship with fervent believers, and keep on inviting the Lord Jesus into every aspect of our life. If we do not have the time and opportunity to do these things, then we need to ask the Lord for the time and opportunity. We have to do the things that are possible to us if we expect the Lord to help us.

Our hope has been that when we die we no longer will be tempted to sin. I am not so sure of this. After all, sin began in Heaven when Satan rebelled. Personally I think victory over sin comes through the Lord Jesus Christ wherever we are, not just by leaving the earth and entering the spirit realm.

Jesus Christ doesn't sin while He is in Heaven or on the earth. He doesn't want the members of His Body to sin while we are in Heaven or on the earth. He has enough power to make such total victory possible for us.

Please remember what I have stated in this brief article. For the believer, sin is a matter of choice. He can choose to sin; or he can work with the Holy Spirit in gaining victory over each and every sinful behavior. The believer will receive assistance (grace) every time he chooses to stop sinning.

The unsaved person does not have this choice. There is no way he can overcome sin through will power. This is one of the principal differences between the saved and the unsaved individual.

But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. (Deuteronomy 7:23-24)

Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God-I say this to your shame. (1 Corinthians 15:34)