God guides in his Word the bible in many different ways to wage the war against sin: sometimes we run, sometimes we shed blood, sometimes we endure, and yet we can victorious in Christ by the Spirit in us.
Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:22 NIV)
No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV)
Yet we must choose to look for the escape and to abandon all pride and set our eyes on Jesus to flee by the route God has provided. He will not make us run, for he allows us to be tempted and to grow in character through mistakes and victories.
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
(Hebrews 12:4 NIV)
It is a war that we must be willing to fight and shed blood to win. Our victory over sin is only through Christ with great anguish and great reward.
Yet there is most certainly hope.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7 NIV)
Praise God because we can victorious!
This is the concept of indwelling sin which is quite hard to understand in light of our death to sin in Jesus and new birth.
ReplyDeleteYet it is the struggle of even the heroes of faith from Job to Paul. We are no greater and this is our struggle while in the flesh and on this earth to follow God while in the flesh and tempted by sin.
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. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25 NIV)
Then Job answered the Lord and said: “Behold, I am vile; What shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth. (Job 40:3, 4 NKJV)