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Overcome

by Jerry Ousley
7/28/2023 / Christian Living

Overcome

By Jerry D. Ousley

Do I have sin in my life? Boy, do I ever! Paul wrote in Romans 3:23 that everyone of us have committed sin and fallen short of God’s glory. Not one individual who has ever lived on the face of this planet is free of that except for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Yes, He was “God in the Flesh.” He was completely Divine. But He was also in human form and we are told that He was tempted in all ways just like we are. He was God but He was also in a flesh and bone body and was tempted. Yet He did not sin (see Hebrews 4:15). He overcame sin becoming the only sinless being to ever live. Because of His sinlessness He was killed by those who hated Him, but His death became the sacrifice for the sin of the world. His resurrection become the first-fruit of the resurrection (both in salvation – becoming a new creation in Christ, and our resurrection from the dead in the Day of the Lord yet to come).

As I have just established, yes, I do have sin in my life and each day, just like any other Christian, it is my duty to overcome – to push it down and beat it out of me. If any one of us says that we have no sin, John writes “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8). In the example of Paul, we are to discipline our bodies and bring them into subjection just as an athlete trains and pushes himself or herself to be able to accomplish what they must. He said in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” Yes, we all sin, we are all guilty, but as believers in Christ, as Christians, we are to daily push ourselves towards what God wants us to be. This means that we acknowledge sin first in ourselves, and then to teach others what the Bible calls sin and warn them so that they too may become Christians and begin to discipline sin from their lives as well.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article naming those who identify as LGBTQ+ as being in sin. In that article and in others I have received a lot of negative reaction stating that I have stood in judgment in calling out that sin. Those (and I am not singling out any individual because I have had several to share the same thing) say that because I emphasized that sin that I was actually hating those involved in that sin. If that be the case then any sin I might emphasize becomes a judgment and makes me a hater of those guilty of that particular sin. For example, if I teach from the Bible against murder then by this way of thinking I hate all murderers. I am accused of judging simply because I called out a particular sin. But if this be the case then Paul is guilty of the same. Will any of you accuse Paul of hating and judging? I don’t think so.

I also realize that the old saying, “Love the sinner and hate the sin,” is nowhere to be found in the Bible. And it isn’t. I suppose we need to look at what judging really means. A judge pronounces punishment for crime committed. After a jury of peers finds one guilty, then the judge does his or her duty. Is the jury guilty of judgement? Absolutely not. They examine the evidence and decide if one is guilty or innocent. The judge pronounces the punishment for a guilty verdict.

In like manner, we who simply let others know what is sin are not judging but merely examining the evidence. Now, if I say that you are a sinner and are condemned to hell then I have made a judgement. But if I say, “what you are doing is sin and here is how you can overcome and be saved,” then I haven’t judged but merely examined the evidence showed you how to be freed from that. One on the internet (I will not call the name but he is supposedly a Christian writer) wrote this: “When I say it, (love the sinner and hate the sin) I am saying something about you blocks my ability to love you as God loves you; something about you marks you as less than, as undeserving, as not being good enough for my unconditional love.” I’m sorry, but that also is not in the Bible. Yes, we are to love as God loves. But just because I have called out your sin (or my sin for that matter) does not constitute a judgmental statement and it does not mean that I don’t love you. God Himself does this. So, by this philosophy then God is guilty of not loving us. Of course, that is ridiculous.

Our Lord’s sacrifice gives us all a way to be saved and freed from our sin. We all have the same opportunity to come to Him but part of being an overcomer is dying daily to sin. Each day pushing ourselves as an athlete in training to get the bad out of our lives. We all fail. We all experience a battle with the sin that has enslaved us for so long. It is then that we go to God confessing our failure and allowing His Son, our advocate with the Father, to take up for us.

But we must strive to be free from our sin. If we don’t then we are guilty of what the writer of Hebrews says in 10:26-31 where he says that if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of truth, then there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, because Jesus died once for all.

John, who wrote that God is love (1 John 4:16) also wrote this: “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4). To overcome means to conquer. We don’t justify sin and we don’t pet sin. We overcome and conquer sin. It may take a long time. We still aren’t perfect. Only He who is within us is perfect. But He will daily help us to accomplish what we must. Never forget that He is greater – Greater than us and greater than sin. We can overcome. Will you overcome?

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS

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