Putting away sin and walking before the face of God in victory and deliverance is akin to awaking from a dead sleep. It is as if God pours cold water over our heads. We awaken from our slumber and self-imposed darkness caused by the pursuit of self-gratification in  a way so jarring that it is as if we have arisen from the dead. It is critical at this point to not fall back into the sin that had made us stumble. We do this by turning completely from it to devotion to our Lord. We rejoice in Him. We joyfully worship Him and understand that our standing before Him is based on His work in redeeming us, not in anything we have done. 

1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect. Romans 12:1-2 (LSB)

Deception is our enemy’s most powerful weapon. When a person is deceived into believing a lie they are not intending to participate in something that is wrong. No, they believe they have the truth and all those who oppose what they believe are just wrong. When the lie leads people to believe that their form of ‘religion’ is true Christianity, regardless of how unbiblical it is, they are not actually intending to be evil following an evil system. They are ‘sure’ they have the truth. They are sincere. I am sure the priests of Baal whom Elijah defeated at Mount Carmel were sincere as well.

For the last several years with the advent of neo-evangelicialism, the ‘seeker-sensitive’ and church growth movements as well as the continued spread of the Word of Faith and Health, Wealth and Prosperity heresies, those whose consciences were bound to the Word of God have been raising the alarm that the ‘religion’ within these movements is not genuine Christianity. However, the spiritual forces behind them are very powerful. There are whole cities and towns in the U.S. right now where not one church remains that has not been compromised by one or more of these deceptions. Since the focus within these churches is wrong we find that solid biblical doctrine is replaced with self-improvement, self-help, entertainment, and a recreation of God in the form that man wants.

A common core of the tattered remains of much of American Evangelicalism can best be summed up in what is known as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This religion is based around the following five points.

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

When I presented the gospel to my daughter when she was about 9 years old, I asked her some diagnostic questions about her understanding of salvation. These five points are pretty much what her ‘default’ religion was. She loved church. She loved Sunday school. She loved Jesus, but she had no concept of sin and hell. She understood that good people went to heaven and mean people did not. Who is responsible in this system for one’s salvation? It is each person. God is not involved. What does this do in relation to ones sanctification? Well, first, these people who believe that this ‘religion’ is equivalent to genuine Christianity will consider doctrinal words such as justification and sanctification as simply attempts by others to put them under some form of legalism. Since point 3 is what these people are all about, they react violently and vehemently against all clear Biblical teachings that teach that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. No, they hate that one since their own form of religion is all about them.

Several years ago I wrote and posted an article titled The Horror of Sin. In it you will read about the regenerate Christian’s horror or revulsion when encountering sin. This reaction happens because genuine Christians understand that it is sin that caused their Lord to go to the cross. He suffered and died because of these sins. Notice that all professing Christians do not react to sin this way. In fact, at that time, some responded to that post negatively insisting that any call to personal holiness and walking in righteousness is wrong since there are so many ‘addicted’ to sins from which they are unable to find the victory. They insisted that bondage to these sins is the product of shame in the face of the standard of personal holiness.

Carefully consider that last paragraph my brethren. What do we find in the Bible? Is there one mention in Sacred Scripture of support groups such as AA? No, the Bible does not mess around with calling sins addictions. No, sin is sin and victory is found in repentance. John Owen understood how to find victory over besetting sins my brethren. He wrote about it a great deal. His best-known work dealing with this is The Mortification of Sin. In this little book, Owen’s thesis is that sin is a living thing within each of us. After salvation we are given the duty by God to wrestle with it and do battle with it with the goal of seeing it lying dead at our feet just before we breath our last and go to be with our Lord forever. Owen’s scriptural base for this book, actually a series of sermons, is Romans 8:13.

12 So then, brothers, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the practices of the body, you will live. Romans 8:12-13 (LSB) 

Imagine that my brethren. God gives us right here in this very powerful verse why so many professing Christians are unable to find victory over their sin and why others do. What is it? Those who find themselves constantly partaking of the sin “which clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1-2) are neglecting what is holy while pursuing what is of the flesh.

1 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2 (LSB)

To live according to the flesh is to not live by the Spirit. Those who live by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh. Those who live according to the flesh are consumed by an overwhelming drive to satiate the desires of the flesh. The writer of Hebrews tells us that victory over that is found as we ‘lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.’

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