Christians do not have license to sin. God forbid that we should live that way. If we live that way we are slaves to sin. Christ died to free us from the penalty of our sin so how can we live in it? None of us are perfect. However, we must learn to live Spirit-filled lives so we can learn to yield our members as servants to righteousness unto holiness. That is a very good description of our sanctification.

12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; 1 Timothy 1:12-13 (NASB)

The older I become as I journey down this narrow way the more what passes for Christianity seems more and more absurd. Why? I suppose it is that I have become very convicted that we are very guilty of taking God for granted. Instead of worshiping Him for who He is, we seem to be totally focused on His works. While we should worship Him for His works with a grateful heart, we are leaving out direct worship of our Wonderful, Awesome, and Majestic God for who He is.

Our salvation is an incredible gift by His grace. That is why it troubles me so when Christian leaders cheapen it with their man-focused, easy-believism. Easy-believism produces professing Christians who believe their salvation came as a result of something they did. I know this because I was one of them for nearly 20 years. If this is our mindset about our salvation, we believe that our walk as Christians is also totally dependent upon our will power. It is as if what the Bible teaches about regeneration is unheard of or at least completely misunderstood. Also, Jesus’ own words about the exclusivity of who are His disciples and who aren’t seems to be in code because few seem to grasp what He is saying.

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:24-26 (NASB)

Easy-believism either colors over or totally ignores this passage. Jesus tells everyone that to be His disciple, they must deny self, take up their own cross and follow Him. This speaks of dying to self. This is total submission and surrender to the Lordship of Christ. The Apostle Paul taught on this in Chapter 6 of his incredible epistle, the Book of Romans. Let us start with vv1-4.

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.Romans 6:1-4 (NASB)

What is the Holy Spirit telling us in this passage? Genuine Christians are to forsake their sinful pasts. The Greek word for “baptize” which is the root of “baptized” and “baptism” in these verses is βαπτίζω (baptizō). It does mean to be immersed, but in this passage as well as in 1 Corinthians 10:2, for example, baptizō means “to be identified with.” Christians are immersed into Jesus Christ and into His death. Paul tell us that since this is true, if we are genuine Christians, then it is absurd for us to continue in sin. The word sin in v2 translates the Greek noun ἁμαρτίας (hamartias) the genitive singular feminine case of ἁμαρτία (hamartia), which means “sin, wrongdoing, guilt by missing the mark”. Its Christian meaning, referring to sin, is to miss the true goal and scope of life. Our sin is an offense in relation to God with emphasis on the resulting guilt.

I once wrote a post about whether it was okay or not for believers to use foul language and cursing. It was in response to a group of “emergent” leaders who were trying to say that it was not a problem to do that. Their point was to try to determine what words were okay to say and what weren’t. They had no concept of what they should really be about and that is to not sin because it is an offense against our Holy God. The more I debated from the stance of our sanctification, the more they accused me of hypocrisy, ignorance, and arrogance. We are to live this life as totally dead to self and alive to God as we walk in newness of life because we are new creations.

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