Jesus - victory over sin and death

[PeterJens]

Adam gained knowledge of good and evil, but learnt he was naked,
separated from God, and would die.

We are born into this separation.
Adam was born in Gods image with love in His heart. Without
communion with God, slowly sin creeps in, hurt, disappointment, love
get shut out.

We inherit this isolation and tendency to sin and decay.

As we grow and develop we learn reaction patterns, ways of handling life
that are automatic, part of us, which we do without thinking about it. This becomes
our sinful nature, embedded and reinforced as we go.

The more we invest and sow to sin the more it becomes our master, and we
withdraw as victims to this emotional machine.

Jesus through the cross comes to set us free and remove the reason why
we sin, the hurt and pain that drives us. He brings healing, love and openness.

But even after coming to faith we have our embedded part of our personalities.
As Jesus's word works through us through obedience, new reactions and approaches
become established and the old man dies.

Paul expresses this struggle in Romans 7:18-23
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

But this is something that changes through discipleship and perseverance.
There is no limitation or restriction to what the Lord can do and change as we learn
how to put into effect our new love in our hearts that Jesus has put there.

As Paul describes it it is like another person doing things. In a sense it is, it is the old
man and its programming. But through love, obedience and healing things can change.
Paul progressed to walking in purity, love, righteousness and being blameless.

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Rom 6:18

This is programmed responses by walking in the Spirit and turning our hearts in obedience
to the Lord.

There is nothing that binds you to sin in Christ, it you take hold of His words and put into
practise obedience to His commands with a changed loving heart.

 

[PeterJens]

Some believe Jesus can never free us from sinful behaviour. But this is not true and has
no biblical foundation, only what people read in to romans themselves.

What is obvious to me is how heard it is to understand the nature of who we are as people.

For those who never resolve their emotional history and let Jesus in to their hearts, it is
just words or intellectual assent put on their identity that they have built up prior to faith
in Christ. So strongly do people hold on to this identity, it is them alone, and though in
Christ they are a new creation, they stay as they were and refuse to let God transform
them.

Now everyone should undertand this is the most difficult thing that can happen to anyone.
Everything we have learnt before the Lord being in our lives is suspect and needs putting
into context with Christ and our relationship to Him and everyone else.

 

[PeterJens]

Victory & the Old self

for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
1 John 5:4

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Cor 15:57

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
1 Cor 15:54

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” 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 Cor 15:33

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;
Eph 4:22

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices
Col 3:9

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Rom 6:6-7

The above verse is an idealised statement about the whole of your life.
Our old self lives with us beyond the intial step of faith. We have to choose
to put to death it practices and patterns that in our life, and build new ones
because we now can with a changed heart.

But this battle is a war of discipleship between obedience against the old emotional
pulls that easily pull us in another direction. The power of this battle is Gods words
and the presence of the Holy Spirit ministering life, through repentance, confession
and see the cross upon which Jesus died.

Now another alternative is to disown ones old self and call it the flesh, and the desire
to follow God the new spirit born of God, and create a split personality. But this
is a kind of schizophrenia, which never addresses the heart and emotions and let
God rule in ones whole heart. It denies the victory Christ has over the whole of ones
being, and that we are not fully capable as a whole being.