Three Steps to Experiencing Victory

Introduction

As we have studied Romans chapter 6, we have seen that the Christian does not have to sin and actually should not continue to live in sin because of our Union with Christ. Because of our union with Christ, we are dead to sin. Its power over us has been broken by why is it that I still struggle fighting against sin in my life? Why is it that I seem to fail so often? Shouldn’t this just get easier?

Maybe you have struggled with worry, fear, anger, selfishness, lust seem to plague so much of your life. You feel guilty when you snapped at your wife because you selfishly wanted to be left alone. You felt guilty when you laid awake all night worrying about paying your bills because you knew it showed a lack of faith. You felt guilty that your heart desired that woman you saw walking by. The honest truth is the closer you get to Christ the more aware of these things you become. A carnal Christian sins and it doesn’t phase him as much. In fact in

Galatians 5:17 “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

This verse teaches that the more you walk in the Spirit the harder the battle will become because the Flesh rises up to fight against the Spirit. But does that mean that there is no hope for victory. The Flesh will always mount up a greater battle and we will fail? The answer is no.

I think we often struggle with failure because we do not understand how the victory comes. This was my experience for decades as a Christian, tell me if this has been you. The Holy Spirit convicts me that something I said wasn’t kind and so I go immediately to my knees as I should to confess my sin. Then I pray something like this, “Lord, please remove this sin from my life.” We expect a magic bullet to remove the sin from our lives by osmosis. And let me say God can and does sometimes work this way, but it is not his most common work, nor is it the best for our spiritual growth long term.

Let’s say you have a financial problem, but let’s also be honest and admit that this problem is not just a one time thing. You tend to have this problem over and over again because you make bad choices. You have a character flaw that keeps leading you back to this same place. Now tell me which is the better solution to your problem. I could come and give you $1000 to help you pay for your bills. The problem would be solved for today. Or I could give you the money today with an agreement that I can mentor you on how to handle you finances. I teach you how to make wise choices, make a budget, save for future expenses. Which solution is better for you? The latter one has longer lasting results.

God in His wisdom often acts this way and He has told us how that victory can be experienced.

Now as we look at the text, Paul is about to tell us how to have long term victory over sin in our lives. But I want you to see how he gets there; I want to tie it all together from vs 1-14. Oftentimes when Paul writes he has a set pattern. Paul will often begin with what we call the indicatives and then end with the imperatives. The book of Ephesians is a classic example of this because it is almost neatly divided in half between the two. When I use those words indicative and imperative, how many of you know what I am talking about? Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t. I am just trying to help us understand what Paul is doing here. An indicative is a statement of fact. It often serves as the reasons or basis for something. An imperative is a command or what we are told to do because of the indicatives.

So with that in mind the indicatives in this passage are:

You are dead to sin

you are raised to walk in newness of life

The flesh has been rendered powerless

You are free

You are alive

But the section we are going to look at today is filled with three imperatives:

Reckon yourselves dead to sin

Let not sin reign

Yield your members

These imperatives are our response to the indicatives. Because we have experienced union with Christ, this is what we should do to have victory over sin in our lives. We cannot separate the two. Trying to reckon, and not yield without the indicatives leads to legalism because you are trying to do it in your own strength. The only reason we can have victory is our union with Christ, but we must not sit passively by expecting God to magically change us. There is a faith response to our union with Christ. This is our part in seeing victory. So let’s unpack the three imperatives this morning.

Reckon

Romans 6:11 “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Paul starts off with this word Likewise. It connects vs 11-14 to the previous verses. But Paul is saying just as Jesus died and rose again, reckon yourselves to have died and rose again. Now that word reckon is not one used commonly except maybe in rural Oklahoma. I see a Cowboy chewing on some straw using this word. The word reckon- to calculate, consider, let one’s mind dwell on The closest we get to using this word is when we talk about reconciling our checkbook. If you haven’t ever reconciled a checkbook, this is how it works. When you write checks, you keep track of all the checks that went out in a log in the book. At the end of the month, you will receive a bank statement. To reconcile your checkbook you look at whats true in the statement and whats true in the checkbook and make them align. You go back and find things you missed, so that you know exactly how much money you have. You can do this with budgeting apps as well.

So reckoning is thinking about the truth of what God says about you: in this passage you are dead to sin and then it takes a look at your life and asks Am I living like I am dead to sin? Reckoning is primarily a mental process. It involves thinking. The bible speaks of this in other terms. One of the most common is renewing your mind.

But this is not mind over matter- we are not actualizing anything. That phrase actualizing is common in Charismatic circles. We are not thinking or speaking this into reality because it is already a reality. This is a belief in a reality that is true because of our union with Christ. What changes is not the reality of your death to sin, what changes is your mind. We often fail to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin for a variety of reasons. Let me give you four.

Reason’s we fail:

Don’t know- Some Christians especially brand new Christians just don’t know what Christ has done to help them overcome sin. They still feel like the old man because the memory of the old man is still fresh. Doug Moo makes this comment in his commentary:

The Epistle to the Romans 1. “Dead to Sin” through Union with Christ (6:1–14)

One may as well tell a drowning person simply to swim to shore as tell a person who is under sin’s mastery not to let sin reign.

A lack of knowledge can be a danger to a Christian. This is why discipleship is so important. This is why regular church attendance is so important. There are just some things we do not know on our own. Sure we can eventually learn them, but we will make mistakes along the way or we may just never get there. Having someone else to show us gives us a leg to stand up on.

Don’t think about- Another reason we don’t reckon this things to be true is because we just don’t think about it. Our minds are consumed with the cares of the world. Gotta make sure I work hard and pay the bills. Gotta take care of the kids and the lawn. No time for thinking about this stuff. When was the last time you thought about spiritual things outside of church? This reason reveals a lack of priorities or an inner laziness. This is a person who knows these truths but never puts them into practice.

Forget- Sometimes we just forget. We try really hard but we just didn’t connect this truth to our situation. It totally missed us. It’s like our kids when we asked them to clean their room and they totally forgot. Again it could be a lack of priorities or it could be a lack of spiritual maturity and insight. We know the truths but we struggle to connect the dots. The solution is once again discipleship and or counseling. Time with the lord practicing these things will make us more adept at putting them into practice.

Don’t really believe it- The final reason we don’t reckon ourselves to be dead to sin, is a lack of belief. Usually we think we tried but we failed. Now we have given up hope. This happens because we have had unrealistic expectations. God desires long term growth, but we want immediate change. We give up to soon on the work that God is trying to do and we become jaded. We stop believing that change is possible.

Reckoning is the key to true change because change begins in the heart. Proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; But his heart is not with thee.”

Proverbs 4:23 “Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life.” If you want to see real change, your heart has to change. Why is it that you sin? It is because you desire the sin. So the heart desires have to change and that begins by renewing our minds. Paul tells us to begin to think like what we are. Failing to do so is is like adults reverting to thinking and acting like a child, married people to being single or discharged prisoners crawling back into their prison cells.

Let not sin reign

Romans 6:12–13 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

The next command is to not let sin reign. Sin is like a tyrant who wants to claim control of your life. He is an invader and since you are dead to sin, you can fight back. You can say no. You can refuse his reign in your life. But how does sin exert its control over you? The next phrase tells us it is through lusts. Lusts are essentially desires. Sinful desires that course through our heart and mind. These lusts must be resisted, killed, put to death.

The bible uses other language to describe this step. In Colossians and Ephesians it is putting off the old man. Like taking off a garment and throwing it away. Later in Romans, it is mortifying the deeds of the flesh. It is killing the desires. Jim Berg uses the illustration of cutting the engine off to a motorcycle by turning the key or cutting the gas lines. You stop feeding it fuel.

In counseling, this has been called dehabitualization. You say no long enough to something and it stops coming knocking on your door. But you have to kill the things that are feeding the desire for the sin. If its lusting after other women, you have to stop looking at immodest women in your movies, you might have to get rid of your cell phone or some apps that hav been feeding your lust, you might have to avoid going to certain places like the beach. The battle will not be won all at once but by cutting off the fuel source you are stopping a bad habit of sin.

The other part to this is the phrase Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Don’t yield. Don’t give in. When it comes to wrong images that flash into my mind from something I have seen. I literally tell myself know and then visualize a blank screen. Make the choices one by one to resist and over time the choice becomes easier. You have the power to resist sin because of your union with Christ. Because Christ lives in you, you can say no.

Yield yourselves to God

Romans 6:13 “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

The third step is to yield yourself to God. That word yield means to put at someone’s disposal, to present yourself before (illustration of a soldier presenting himself to his commanding general) Elsewhere in scripture this is described as putting on righteousness. Nature abhors a vacuum. When you remove a sinful habit you need to replace it with the opposite righteous habit. We call this rehabitualization. Instead of doing the sinful thing, I am going to choose to do the thing God wants me to do. I am going to yield to his reign in my life.

Our members in this verse are our body parts. We use our bodies to act out on our sins. We use our tongues to lie and say hateful things, we use our feet to go places where we should not go, we use our hands to hit, we use our eyes to lust and we use our brains to think wrong thoughts. But we are Christ’s and he deserves the use of our members. That word instruments means as a tool or even as a weapon. We are to come to our commanding general and say Lord what do you want me to do.

So let’s tie this all together with one practical example:

Lets say that I have a problem with always criticizing people. Every time they make a mistake I am quick to point it out and run them down. I run them down to their face and to others around me, but the Lord has convicted me that this is evil. How is change going to happen? Slowly over time as I continue to do these things.

I need to remember and lean on, trust that Christ has already won the victory for me. I am dead to this sin so I am not its slave any longer. I can conquer it. But I also need to consider some things about my brother in Christ. I need to remember that he also is united to Christ so what I say about him reflects on God. I need to consider that he is a human being made in the image of God and my mind hopefully will remember passages like James 3:9–10 “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” I need to reckon this to be true and align my heart with God’s heart.

The next phase is stopping the behavior. When I am tempted to yield and criticize, I stop. Pausing before saying things rather than just spouting off helps with this. But I need to stop the things that feed into my criticism. Why do I criticism this person so much? Its because I am sitting there thinking about all the things they have done to disappoint me or hurt me; or all the things I think they should have done differently. The longer I think about these things the more critical I will become; so I must not yield to the sinful thoughts and desires feeding my desire to criticize. It could be that the sinful desire controlling me is pride. I want to feel better than they are so I need to tear them down.

The final stage is putting on the right behavior. This may begin with confessing my sin to them and asking their forgiveness. But it may also be focusing on the good God is doing in their life. Choosing active ways of showing love to them. Or even if the issues are real issues, lovingly confronting their behavior because sin is hurting them too.

Conclusion

Paul concludes his first paragraph with a promise.

Romans 6:14 “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

For years I didn’t see this as a promise but as a result. But Paul says that sin will not have dominion. It will not conquer you , but he ties it back in to where he started. Sin will not conquer you because you are not under the law but under grace. These two phrases are a contrast between the old age and the new. It begins to transition to chapter 7.

But I don’t want us to miss this last word grace. You will not live under sins control because of grace. First, God saved you from sin. That is saving grace. But God also is changing you; that is sanctifying grace and God will give you the strength you need to overcome sin- that is strengthening grace. None of this is possible apart from the grace of God in our lives.

This morning, If you are struggling with a repetitive sin problem in your life, you can have victory. During the invitation, I would like to invite you to come down front where we can partner you with a counselor who can help you walk through these steps to victory in your life.