Christian Living

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Of the struggles that beset us as Christians, the inward battle raging within our hearts and minds is the most insidious. We may very well be experiencing strife between ourselves and others, feeling oppression and animosity from those who simply don’t yet understand the higher life to which we’ve been called, and even experiencing persecution for the fact of our walking with Jesus. But the greatest conflict that any of us face is actually fought within ourselves, the result of the clash of His newly established presence within us and the habits and attitudes of what we were before we came to know Him.

“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:14-19 ESV).

Sound familiar? The World so often rants and raves at the antics of Christians (some who are perhaps so in name only), Christians who refer to the holy standard of the Righteous God, yet so often exemplify imperfection, failure and exhibit the very things that they condemn.

Does that mean that we Christians are hypocrites as we admonish the world to repent from sin and seek God’s face? Do our failures in to achieve moral perfection coupled with our crying out for a return to holiness simply demonstrate that we Christians are simply being self-righteous and like tossing around commandments just to make other folks miserable?

No, not at all. Just think for a moment on what it is that God is actually doing in you. First, He receives you as you come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ, allowing His perfect sacrifice to pay for your sin. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in home of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2 ESV).

Secondly, He marks you invisibly with His own Holy Spirit so that His claim on you is secured and your confidence in His saving grace for you is anchored adamantly in Him. “In Him you also , when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14 ESV).

When you come to faith in Jesus, you are sealed with His presence in the person of His Spirit. Take a look at yourself when you stand before Him thusly clad: you are not a weak and defeated slave to sin, with the tattered and filthy rags of all your failures, overt rebellions and the junk of a fallen heart. When you’ve really placed your faith in Him, you have been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus and the mantle of His presence has been laid upon your shoulders.

“…and [the Father] will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you….. The Helper, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you”(John 14:16-17, 26 ESV).

The Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God at work in the world and in the hearts of God’s children. Through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives today, the might of God is made available to us and we may count on His strength and resolve to deliver us from the chains of our old fleshly nature with all its baggage.

As we read His Word, the Bible, we can rest assured that He will indeed “teach us all things and bring to our remembrance His will for our lives” (from John 14:17). Furthermore, as we pray, we may also count upon His help, struggle as we might to find just the right words. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He Who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27 ESV).

All of this is to simply say, that our Father has not intended for us to fight our war with sin on only our feeble strength of will. He invites us… no, He implores us to turn to Him and invite His “wonder-working power” in the arena of our hearts.

When we read Romans 12:1-2, we find that if we seek every day to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices” to Him, He moves through our trust and obedience and does the work of transformation of our hearts and our minds. A saturation of His presence trains our minds to think in different channels than has been our habit and allows us to “swim up the stream” of the conventional wisdom of the world. It slowly but surely has the effect of loosening our flesh’s “vice grip” on our minds and habits as He starts cutting the chains of our old nature away and sets us free to live the liberated life that Jesus has promised us.

“Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23 ESV).

Copyright © Thom Mollohan.

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