SIN – a Self Indulgent Nature

Posted on Tuesday, May 5, 2015, 3:19 pm By d2ladmin

Click here, then on the "Listen button" to hear this article. - Enjoy - Rogersings +8^)

I have discussed man’s sin nature in several articles but I think it deserves a discussion of it’s own, especially today where people are so lost in their sin that they call sin … love and good … evil. The Bible has a lot to say about sin, and sin is mentioned in the Bible almost three times as much as love is mentioned. Therefore, I find it amazing that in this Information Age when we have an easy and convenient way to educate and warn everybody about sin, we are, in fact, on the whole, more deceived by sin and captive to sin than any generation that has lived before us. When people call me a homophobic, racist, islamophobic or a sexist, I tell them I am a sin-a-phobic – I am afraid of sin!

Galatians 5:16-17 “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please“

Romans 7: “17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^c For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In one sense sin is a condition we inherit from Adam that causes us to be Spiritually disconnected from God, not knowing God’s will or concerned about doing God’s will. Our sin condition also bring with it judgment from God of both a physical and a spiritual death. In another sense, sin is an action or decision of the will that is done contrary to God’s will. Essentially, because we are Spiritually disconnected from God, we naturally act independently from God. We are born “rebels” towards God, not concerned or aware of His will. In a finally sense sin is an agent or nature that causes us to rebel against the authority of God’s sovereignty over our life. Sin causes us to think we are in charge of our life and we can decide what is best for us. Sin causes us to fear death and try to suppress the reality of death or come up with a way to justify how we are good enough to overcome the effects of death (by making a religion of rules and good works). Sin also causes us to try and fill the desire we have for pleasure, significance, security and love by any means except in surrender of our will to God’s will.

Thus, the condition of sin (being Spiritually disconnected from God) results in an action of sin (doing our own will) in order to try and satisfies the nature of sin (the desire to be in control and get what we want). Our sin nature causes us to choose our will over God’s will, which is only natural since we cannot understand or know God’s will since we are Spiritually disconnected from God. I think it helps to simply spell it out sin is a “self indulgent nature”, thinking and acting on our own, without the Spirit of God.

Now, man is a three part being; body, soul and spirit. Our body is our temporary home where our soul and spirit reside. Our body will one day wear out and die but our soul and spirit are eternal. Our soul and spirit have a beginning, when God placed us in our mothers womb but our soul never dies. Our soul is who we are; our feelings, personality and reasoning. We also have a spirit which resides within our soul. For the sake of visualization, man is like an egg; the shell is the body, the egg white is the soul and the yoke it the spirit. Now, if someone calls you an egg head, they are not talking about the shape of your head (your body) but they are trying to hurt your feelings (your soul) because you have made some stupid decision probably because you listened to the Spirit of this world (Satan) instead of listening to the Spirit of God.

So you see we are born Spiritually disconnected from God but we have a Spiritual gateway where we are able to receive Spiritual input from either the god of this world (Satan and his Demons) or the God who created us. You could say that because of Adam’s original sin, we are born with an empty Spirit, a big hole where “God’s will, God’s wisdom and God’s love” are supposed to reside. The Bible uses the term “heart” to refer to our spirit which is restless, sick and deceptive because it is disconnected from God. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” Of course the Bible is not talking about the physical heart of man but the spirit of man, the sin sick heart

Now, when the will of man transgresses the will of God, pain can be felt in the human heart as a result of input from God’s Spirit that convicts the spiritual heart of man. Feelings of guilt and remorse (Godly sorrow) are a warning message from God that your decisions are self serving and destructive. You decision is counter to God’s will for your life. You decision is not based on a love for God. You have made a selfish/sinful decision. That is what sin is … not choosing God’s will. The warning is meant to lead a person to repentance from sin and a turning to God for forgiveness and salvation from sin in Jesus Christ. The cure for the sin sick heart is a new Spiritual heart that is connected to God, filled by God’s Holy Spirit. This is what it means to be born-again; to let God’s spirit be born in you and direct your decision by a heart of God. Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.“

In other words, feelings of guilt and remorse and disgust with yourself are really the prompting of the Holy Spirit of God which is knocking on the door of a person’s heart trying to lead that person to repentance from sin. But if a man ignores this knocking on the door of his heart, over a long period of time this hardens the heart and makes the person obstinate, arrogant, prideful and set in his way of self indulgent nature (sin) thinking. A life of sin is a really a viscous circle of human reasoning and action that put up fight and try to block out the nagging question from God of “who am I and why am I here?”. Man’s identity and peace is found in his Creator. We are made by God to be lead and loved by God as a child of God. Our soul and spirit are born wrestling with God but God is not wresting with us but He is trying to embrace us with loving arms.

Sin, that is not repented from, is like a giant vortex of water spinning downward, sucking the person down into the darkness of their own mind, a place of captivity so cruel and dark that eventually the light of God cannot penetrate the darkness and no escape can be made from it. God is love and His voice calling to us is soft like a bride groom wooing His “Bride”. Sure, God may hit us with a 2×4 of bad circumstance so we can hear His still small voice but God does not make you love Him. I believe God repeatedly reveals to each person His love for them and their need to be saved by His love (this is called grace) but if that person rejects God’s love over and over again, eventually this hardens the heart of the person where he can no longer hear the Spiritual voice of God. As you follow your own reasoning you deafen and harden your heart toward God until the mere mention of God’s name will cause you to display angry and violent behavior. On the other hand, being lost in your sin may even feel soothing and satisfying at times, like the vortex of a whirlpool in a hot tub but eventually the plug is pulled, the deception of what you thought was an escape from death and your need for love is exposed, and like the water in a toilet, the vortex of water is sucked down the drain and you along with it.

Sin will take you farther than you want to go
And teach you what you don’t want to know
It will keep you longer than you want to stay
And cost far more than you can ever pay!

When people refer to sin, they are usually talking about the fact that they have chosen an immoral behavior, like calling in sick to work to play golf or cursing at other drivers for any number of annoying reasons. And though most people will admit to making an immoral decision, they think that it is no big deal because they also think that God grades them based on a curve. They figure God is really only concerned with serious immoral behavior like murder or bank robbery. Most people think that if their good “moral” choices out weigh their bad immoral choices then God justifies them as “good enough” and fit for heaven. And God is judges more serious acts of immoral behavior more severely than lessor acts of immoral behavior but more over God is concerned about every action we take and motive we have. Sin is “any” action of our will or motive of our will that is made apart from a surrender to God’s will. God doesn’t grade on the curve of man’s moral motives but He grades on the cross of Christ. Christ died to pay for our rebellious sinful selfish will and to make a way for us to be reconciled to God. This is God’s desire, that we repent/turn from our sinful/selfish way and receive eternal life in Jesus Christ, born again with a heart of God.

I wish we could identify “where” our sin nature is located so we could do a “sin-ectomy” but only God is able to perform this kind of surgery and one day He will perform it on “born again” believers when that person’s body dies or they are raptured to heaven. This is a profound mystery that we can’t fully understand but the implication is that our physical body is corrupted by sin and it temps us to sin (Romans 7:14-25). Yet, we are not to live the Christian life by focusing on avoiding sin but we are to abide in Christ so we will be Spiritually aware of sin, kept from it and able to overcome it. Preach the gospel to yourself … dwell upon the fact that you have accepted Christ as his Savior. God’s Holy Spirit is in your heart which has saved you from the penalty of sin and is saving you from the power of sin and will ultimately save you from the presence of sin when you have a resurrected body in the presence of Jesus!

Jesus Only Y’all – JOY!

While we are on earth we will never be fully free of the burden of our sin nature which “tempts” us to sin but we can live a victories life in Christ by turning from sin and surrendering to God’s Holy Spirit to overcome the sin. The best news is that the believer will one day get a new resurrection body when his physical body dies, a body that is “free from sin and never dies”. Also, I believe that when we die we receive the fullness of God’s Spirit and we become “complete” in Christ. However, the person who does not accept Christ as his Savior while on earth will experience both the death of his physical body and the death of his spirit. The unbeliever will be eternally lost from knowing the love of God and his soul will be tormented eternally in the lake of fire.

The difference between the believer and unbeliever is not in the soul of man or in the body of man but in the spirit of man. Man is more than body and soul, he is also Spirit, made in the image of God. Man is born with a Spiritual hole in heart that only God can fill. Man is more than an animal, we are accountable to God for what we choose to do and who we choose to honor. When we reach the age of accountability before God, we are accountable to recognize who created us and who created the food that feeds our body. We are accountable to consider why God made us and if we are fulfilling the purpose for why He created us. When we look around see the wonder and beauty of creation and at the same time see the destruction that is caused by man and the death that is upon all creation, we have no excuse but to acknowledge that something terrible has gone wrong with God’s creation and with us. That something is “sin”.

Sin is what kills the body and sin is the reason we are born Spiritual disconnected from God. Sin is the reason we are born fighting God and the world. Our sin nature is the condition we inherited because our parents Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden. Sin not only effected man”s spirit (disconnecting him from God) but sin effected everything in creation including the spirit of animals. Yet, man is made higher in God’s eyes than animals because man is made in God’s image. That is why we should love and care for people more than for animals. Yes, I realize that it is easier to love our pets than it is to love our neighbor but loving our pet is not a commandment from God (Matthew 22:39). Animals are God’s property that we are to care for as good stewards but people are God’s representatives of Himself. Therefore, we are to love people as though we are loving God (Matthew 25:34-40).

Man has a spirit that is moral and responsible for doing right and wrong but animals are not accountable to God in this way. I think animals have an eternal soul and spirit but it is not like ours. We are told in the Millennium Kingdom that the nature of the animals will be redeemed and they will no longer fight, kill and eat one another. I think we one day we will see resurrected animals and perhaps be reunited with our pets on the new earth. Even now dogs love us but this I think is mostly natural instinct from God and partly a conditioned response based on how they were raised. Regardless, it is an animal’s natural instinct to always honor God because animals do not have the capacity to sin. On the other hand, man naturally dishonors God because of sin but praise God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ our spirit that can be redeemed and set right with God, free from sin.

Man’s soul and spirit is eternal, created in the image of God. Our soul is who we are; our personality, our reasoning capability; our feelings and the memory of our experience and the product of our choices. Our soul operates our body based on input from our senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch) which is processed by our brain. Our brain is not who we are but a brain that is injured or sick can effect the way we relate to the world. Our soul also gets input from the Spirit within us but because we are born disconnected from God this Spiritual input is from the god of this world, Satan, telling us we are OK and deserve the best of everything in life, even if it hurts others. The problem is that because man’s spirit is disconnected from God at birth, man does not have God’s Spirit within his soul to direct him and help him overcome the temptation to sin. And the greatest sin of all is to reject Jesus Christ as Lord of your life. This is the unforgivable sin, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, spoken about in Matthew 12:31.

For the unbeliever, sin is more than avoiding temptation in your life from the world (the temptation to choose fame and fortune over God), the flesh (the temptation to choose pleasure and protection over God) and the Devil (the temptation to choose pride and power over God) (1 John 2:16), sin is the deadly disease that keeps a person from recognizing that God has authority to rule and reign over their life. Yes sin is real and the Devil is real. Satan is like a roaring lion who seeks to devour you and keep you captive to sin (1 Peter 5:8). Satan tells the unbeliever that you are your own boss and you deserve the good things in life and to be respected by other men. Satan tells you there is no such things as sin and there is no such thing as God. Satan tells you that you are doing your best trying to make your way through this world and that is all that is expected of you. Satan is a thief (John 10:10), he steals away the truth concerning your judgement of death before God because you are a sinner. And Satan deceives man into thinking he is OK, which makes the message of hope of a new life in Christ seem foolish and unnecessary (Matthew 13:19).

And although the Spirit of man is constantly bombarded by the lies of Satan, the Spirit of God is also constantly knocking on the door of a man’s heart, calling him to repent and turn from following his own way. The bottom line is that man is not designed to be the pilot of his soul, his Global Positioning System (GPS) is faulty. Man can not get home to God without receiving the God Positioning System (GPS) of Jesus. God knows the best course for man and He longs to give man the best of life but man must first recognize that his GPS is “Guilty Polluting Self”. And though God’s Spirit strives with man to woo him into a love relationship, if man continually ignores the prompting of God to repent and turn to God, eventually man’s spirit become deaf to voice of God, and results in a hardened heart, eternal separation from God and death of the spirit of man.

To explain how sin infects our sin our flesh, let me offer this explanation. When we are young, our brain is pliable to absorb and retain the memory of our decisions, teaching us how to care to feed our flesh (with food and pleasure) and protect it (shelter and rest). It is natural to love our self and no man ever hated his flesh (Ephesians 5:29). If we respond at a young age to God’s spirit and are born again in Christ and live a life of faith in Christ, our brain is filled with “roads of good habits” which make fighting our sinful flesh less difficult as we age. In a way, sin is not so much something we have, but something we lack … we lack the Spirit of God in us to help us recognize sin and lead us away from the temptation to sin.

However, man usually doesn’t come to a saving faith at an early age but he is busy ignoring God and doing his own thing. This process of rebelling against God and doing things our own way makes “ruts of bad habits” in our brain and this is the “flesh” that we continue to fight, if and when we become a born again Christian. For instance we can develop a rut of a bad habits by building memories of sinful gratification when we gawk and lust after a woman. Thus when we see a woman in a certain way, our memory of gratification from past sin tempts us to sin and dwelling on the lust creating an even deeper rut in our brain. The lust causes us to day dream about having sex with woman which creates an even deeper rut. The lust can even lead to inappropriate advances and sex outside of marriage. These kinds of memories are lethal and harden the heart, making hearing God’s spirit almost impossible. Note, being tempted to sin is not a sin but giving into the temptation is a sin and deepens the rut.

As as a born again Christian you are to deny the temptation to sin and surrender your thoughts to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), asking Christ for His power to overcome the temptation and fill in the ruts in your brain (Galatians 5:16). This is not the power of positive thinking that misleads the world but the power of “Christ” that overcomes the world. The believer views his sin nature as a burden that he is constantly overcoming as he relies on Christ to live the life that Christ prepared for him while the unbeliever view his sin nature as the his happiness that he relies on to live the life that he desires. The believer looks forward to the future when the burden of his sin nature will be gone but the unbeliever dreads the future and suppresses thinking about the future because they they have no assurance of eternal life.

When we physically die we will still have our conscience thoughts (our soul) but not the defiled body and brain with the memory ruts that tempted us to sin. We also will not be tempted by the world, the flesh or the Devil any longer. For the born again Christian, we will have the remembrance of what our sin did, when we look at the hands of Jesus but we will have no desire to sin, no remorse or guilt for our past sin, no tears or pain (Revelations 21:4). The believer will be filled with fullness of God’s Spirit and be free from selfish/sinful thinking that we have to control something in order to enjoy it. Moreover, we will finally realize that service to God is greatest blessing. The paradigm of earth will be turned upside down in Heaven. The difficulty that a believer has now in denying self and serving Christ will now be our strongest passion and desire in Heaven, however the privilege to serve Christ in Heaven will be based on the amount of faithful service that is given while on earth.

Plus the believer will receive a resurrected body that God has designed to live eternally in both the Spiritual realm (heaven) and the Physical realm (earth). On the other hand, the unbeliever will also loose their sinful body at death but since the unbeliever has not been Spiritual born again in Christ, they will die Spiritually, unable to be united with the love of God. And we know from scripture that the eternal existence for the unbeliever is one of torment. Perhaps the greatest torment is that the unbeliever will be all alone with his delusions of grandeur of why he thinks he deserves to be honored above others but there will no one around to validate him, argue with him or set him straight.

We don’t have to be slaves to sin and die in our sin separated from God. This is the message of the cross and God holds us accountable for whether we choose to follow our sin nature or repent from our sin nature and accept the free gift of salvation from sin by believing that Jesus Christ paid for my sin. We are created by God to reign and rule over the earth with Christ and we therefore have this innate desire to rule over earth now, the problem is that we don’t have the Spirit of God and the means to know how to fulfill this desire. We are born singing the song “I did it my way”, which is the path of sin and death, both physical death and spiritual death. It is not acting on our own authority to control things on earth that makes us rulers but it is surrendering our will to God and acting under God’s authority that we find our true purpose for why we were created and our joy for who we are, children of the Most High God.

The whole Bible is about redemption, the “first” man Adam sinned and the “second or last” Adam, Jesus knew no sin (1 Corinthians 15:45). Our redemption and born again identify is found in Jesus Christ but we must recognize that we are first born sons of Adam, sinners. In other words walking Spiritually with God is like walking physically, it is a “two step process”. The first step is the “dead one” and the second step is the “alive one”. We must worship God in Truth and Spirit. The first step is the truth that we are dead in sin and the second step is the Spirit of God that gives us eternal life. The first step is “repent” and the second step is “accept the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ”.

You see how walking with God works … put to death the flesh and be led by the Spirit. The first son born, Cain, rebelled against God and killed his brother, Able, the second son who offered a pleasing blood sacrifice to God. The first king of Israel was a man of fine physical appearance, Saul. And the second king was a man after God’s own heart, David. Fight the flesh, focus on the Spirit. Lean not on your own understand but trust in the Lord with all your heart. It is the theme and pattern repeated over and over throughout the Bible. And in case you hadn’t noticed this is the theme of this web site “Die 2 Live”.

Here is another way to explain where we got our sin nature:

We lost our Spiritual connection to God when Adam sinned. And eve though Eve sinned first, sin would not have been passed down to us unless Adam sinned too because Adam was given the moral authority and responsibility to “oversee” Eve. Adam was supposed to protect Eve from Satan and from his lies and to do all he could to prevent her from eating the forbidden fruit. But Adam remained passive toward his responsibility to guard against sin for himself and his wife and because of sin this same passive action plagues man today. Man can’t blame God for giving him a woman that sinned, man is responsible to resist and stand against sin personally and stand up against sin for his family and to stand up against sin as it effects everyone and everything.

A Self Indulgent Nature, SIN, is the root of all the problems in the world. Sin is rebellion to God’s authority to rule over a person’s life. No social program or psychoanalysis or human reasoning or religion can fix the root of rebellion that plagues the sinful heart of man. We have all tried our own way to satisfy the hunger for identity and purpose in this world but like Solomon said “it is all vanity and striving after the wind”. It is the stinking thinking of a sinful heart that leads man to think he can be satisfied with life if he is able to control life but in fact our satisfaction is found in realizing that we are not the ones who are supposed to be in control of our life. Our worth and joy is found in becoming a child of God, surrendering our life to God’s authority, trusting God to lead us and give us the very best. And from the very beginning, it has always been that way. We are simply not designed by God to satisfied without the Spirit of God in us, leading us to a life ever lasting.

To explain how God’s Spirit works in man, we understand that God made man in three parts; your physical self or physical senses (emotions, smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch) your soul self (feelings, personality and reasoning) and your Spiritual self (God’s image upon you – will, wisdom and love). Your physical self and soul self were designed by God to be guided and lead by your Spiritual self, which is feed by God Spirit. However, when our parents, Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the Spiritual sense in them was cut off from God’s Spirit and this left a void of leadership to the soul self, it left a sin self, a self indulgent nature. The soul self no longer had the clear righteous presence of God to determine what was pleasing to God. The soul self of Adam and Eve realized the problem and tried to cover their nakedness, a nakedness that was previously covered by the righteousness of God. However, now in their fallen state they knew they were both Spiritually and physically naked, so they hide from God and covered themselves with leaves. And it’s a good thing they recognized their nakedness before God because it was a sign of repentance toward God that they wanted to be back in fellowship with God. So God sacrificed the first innocent lamb, and the blood of the animal temporarily covered their sin, their Spiritual nakedness, as did the skin of the animal provide them clothing to hide their physical nakedness until the the perfect lamb of God came and gave His blood on the cross of Calvary, once for all. Christ covers those who believe in Him with His perfect Spiritual robe of righteousness and one day our resurrected body we will be clothed with an actual wedding garment of His righteous.

And this is the problem with every man or woman, we are born Spiritually disconnected from God, a sinner. It is not merely the doing of unrighteousness deeds that makes you a sinner, but you sin (choose to follow your self indulgent nature) because you are a sinner (Spiritually separated from God’s nature). You are Spiritually disconnected from God, a rebel by birth, a sinner. If you physically die, in the state which you were born you will remain Spiritually disconnected from God for all eternity. This is called the second death where the soul of man is eternally tormented in the lake of fire.

There is only one cure for the our sin sick condition and that is to be born again, to be Spiritually connected to God by the being Spiritually born to God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. By repentance toward self will and believing that Jesus is able to give you an eternal life where you will know God’s will, you are born a child of God, a son of God and a friend of Jesus. There are not any works you can do to earn salvation or any negotiations you can make to retain control of your desires. It is a leap of “faith” to believe that Jesus can give you the life you really desire, but it is not a “blind” leap of faith. On the contrary, all the evidence points to the fact that Jesus is Lord and what He said is true. Jesus said we are dead in sin and must believe in Him for eternal life. John 8:24 “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” Jesus proved that everything He said was true by living a perfect life, doing signs of healing and miracles of providing for people’s needs and by the most convicting proof of all, He rose from the dead!

Now this is the good news of the gospel, that Jesus paid the price for our sin and that God freely offers us eternal life in Jesus Christ. God even puts His Holy Spirit in a born again believer so we can do His will, and be changed into the person He created us to be. The good news is that the Jesus Christ can give us eternal life free from the penalty of sin and He pus His Spirit in us to give us power to overcome our old sin nature and He will one day take us to heaven to be completely free from the presence of sin. However, the bad news is that the memory and influence of the old sin nature does not disappear when the new Spiritual nature of Christ is born in us. And though we have the power of Christ to overcome sin in our life, we must continually die to the old sin self in us and live by the power of the Christ that is in us.

Paul explains the struggle of the born again Christ this way in Romans 7:14-25 14For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. 15For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. 16But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. 17So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. 20But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. 21I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. 22For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 23but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Now Paul wrote about this struggle as a born again believer, it is in the passage of the letter he wrote to the Roman believers right before he writes perhaps the greatest statement of triumph in Christ that is found in the Bible, Romans 8. If Paul struggled to be free from the effects of sin you can bet we will struggle too. As born again believers we have the Holy Spirit to direct our life and overcome sin but we also have a free will, which has memories of our previous life of sin and the temptations of the world of sin around us and the desires of our flesh which is failing and dieing because of sin. Our free will that chose by grace through faith a new life in Christ must continue constantly to choose by grace through faith to do God’s will and live the new life of Christ. We can not loose the new life of Christ by choosing to to sin like we did before but we can loose the power to overcome sin if we do not “choose” to continually surrender our will to the Holy Spirit and we can loose rewards in heaven and we can become miserable and receive discipline from God if we “choose” to sin and grieve the Holy Spirit. Paul explains it this way in Colossians 3:2-3 “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” This is what it means to “take up your cross”, it means to choose to die to self and live for Christ. This is the message of the life in Christ and the tag line to this web site “die2live”. This is what believing that God has the best for you means and the like the great hymn states, “I Surrender All”.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” – Galatians 2:20

Note, if you are a believer, then “when” you sin, you can repent from this sin and regain the power and fellowship of the Holy Spirit in your life. 1 John 1:9 was written as instructions for the believer when he sins. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And here is more good news for the believer as stated in Philippians 1:6 “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” For a believer, God is eventually going to complete the good work He began in you but you will enjoy the process much more if you “choose” to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and enjoy the walk with Jesus home. Peace, love and joy can only be found in surrendering our life to Jesus Christ and though it is hard to deny the old sinful self, when we stand in the presence of Jesus in heaven, it will all make perfect sense and those who love Jesus now and live a life of faith will be rewarded beyond our wildest imagination.

There is an lady I know who recently went to be with the Lord. She was the most godly, humble and prayerful woman I have ever met. If you were going through a trail or big decision in your life, she knew it and would write a heart felt letter, filled with the wisdom of God’s word. As she was reaching the end of her days of service to the Lord on earth, she wrote down her final thoughts about what was the “key” to living a life of faith and purpose. She said it is all about “Jesus”. The more time she spent dwelling on Jesus, the more satisfied she became and the more she was able to pray effectively and ministers to others. I wish you could have met Faye but you will meet her in Heaven if you have received the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ but more importantly you will met and be with Jesus forever!

5Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. – Phillippians 2:5-11