by Jacob Ninan
Many Christians are confused to see promises in the Bible for a victorious life and at the same time finding that victory is eluding them in real experience. They try different things hoping that perhaps that is the missing link. But after some time many seem to give up altogether and come to the conclusion that victory is not really possible for them, and then settle down to busying themselves with different activities. But victory is a promise from God, and God is able to fulfil what He has promised. Let us try to understand this issue, and see what may be holding us up.
What God has offered us
Many people are aware of the problems we face in this world, such as poverty, sickness, unemployment, interpersonal quarrels, difficulty to find marriage partners or to have children, and many others. There are different organisations trying to help people to deal with such issues. But overall, such problems are only becoming worse. What we need to understand is this. All of man's problems originate from sin. Every time we sin, we create consequences from which we will have to suffer (Gal.6:7,8). We suffer also when somebody else sins against us. It is also a fact that the sins of human beings from the time of creation have affected many aspects of life on earth, such as sicknesses, natural calamities, chaotic weather, etc., and we all suffer from those. The first sin was when Eve, and then Adam, fell to the deception of Satan. They believed that by eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil they were going to become like God, and they disobeyed God even though God had warned them earlier about the consequences (Gen.2:16,17). Instead of becoming like God in the way we would imagine, such as becoming loving, kind, patient and merciful like God, they got cut off from God's protection, provision and fellowship. That was the immediate 'death' they suffered, and physical death also came later on. Disobeying God and submitting to Satan made them not only separated from God but also subject to Satan as his children (Jn.8:44).What God offers us is a reversal of this calamity, to take us to the place of unhindered fellowship with Him, where we can enjoy everything He has to give to us. This starts with giving us forgiveness for our sins, and then power to overcome in temptations, and, as the result, to stop sinning. Finally, we can become like God in our character, as we stop sinning and start doing His will. There is a long process involved here, some of which will happen only in the new earth and the new heavens. When we go to God with repentance from our sins and place our trust in Jesus as our Saviour, God forgives us instantly. We are cleansed from our sins, adopted as His children and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us. That is how we get an instantaneous transformation in our mind, and our new mind wants to stop sinning. The next step in our transformation is a lifelong process where we receive help from the Holy Spirit to deny our sinful desires when we are tempted, and choose to do what He wants. That is how we can become more and more like Jesus in our character.
We don't become free from the power of sin in this world in such a way that we become sinless or perfect. Since we will carry with us all through this life the remains of our old sinful nature, which is sometimes referred to as our flesh, we will continue to face temptations to sin. But if we are on the path of victory, what we will enjoy is a clear progress in our victory over sin. Before we were born again, we were 'dead in sin' (Eph.2:1,2). We were dead towards God, and we just followed our sin nature. But when we are born again, God gives us a mind that is 'dead to sin' so that we no longer want to sin, but we are beginning to hate it. When we hold that position of not wanting to sin, we can seek God for help to overcome in temptations (Rom.6:11,12). God gives us grace and sin stops being a dictator over us (v.14). (Remember, God gives us grace in two different ways, one as mercy to forgive our sins, and the other as help to overcome in our temptations (Heb.4:15,16)). So, the victorious life is not one where we don't even face temptations, but where we receive grace from God not to sin when we are tempted. It is not only that we can stop doing sinful things, but also that our mind and heart can become purer. It is only in eternity that we will enjoy complete freedom from sin and its consequences.
The Old Testament picture
There are many things we can learn from pictures God has drawn for us from the experiences of people in the Old Testament. In the context of getting victory over sin in our life, we can look at the history of the people of Israel who were living as slaves to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. This is a picture of all people when they are under bondage to sin under Satan. God delivered Israel from Egypt in a miraculous way and led them towards the Promised Land which He had promised to Abraham and his descendents. When they came very near to the Promised Land, they sent out twelve spies to search out the land. The spies came back and reported that the land was indeed 'flowing with milk and honey' just as God had told them. But then ten of them felt that they would not be able to conquer the land because there were giants living there. The other two spies tried to convince everyone that it was God who had promised them the land, who had taken them out of Egypt in a miraculous way and led them so far, and that for God, those giants would not be a problem. However, the people decided that they would rather go back to Egypt, and they even wanted to stone their leaders and find new ones to lead them back (Num.13,14).Out of the large crowd of the children of Israel who had been delivered from Egypt, only two people, Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who chose to believe that God was able to do what He had promised, in spite of the giants being in the land, were finally able to enter the Promised Land. All the rest of them perished in the desert, as God made them wander round and round for forty years till they died.
Many Christians know that for us, the Promised Land is not about land. But the general thinking among many is that it represents heaven, which we enter after passing through Jordan, which represents death. I wonder how that can be interpreted from the experience of Israel. What would it mean that most of Israel were not allowed to cross Jordan? Another thing we must note is that there were Canaanites living in the land, and they had to be fought with and conquered. How does that represent heaven because there is not going to be any fighting in heaven? My understanding is that for us, the Promised Land represents becoming like Jesus, because that is the most precious promise God has given us (2Pet.1:3,4). Crossing the River Jordan represents choosing to become a disciple of Jesus, and laying down our old way of life. Just like Israel had to fight with the occupants of the land and then settle down there, we have to fight against the lusts that are there in our flesh, and conquer them. The challenge before us is to conquer all our enemies in our flesh, and not to be like the people of Israel who allowed some of the enemies to continue to stay among them and become a snare for them. The extent to which each of us will conquer our flesh will naturally differ from person to person. In practical terms, the victorious life is not one where there are no problems or temptations, but one where sin does not rule us, where we do not find ourselves powerless before sin, but where we are learning to conquer more and more of our lusts. God has provided for forgiveness when we fall (1Jn.2:1).In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, the apostle Paul refers to this experience of the children of Israel regarding the Promised Land. He says that even though all the people left Egypt and had miraculous experiences such as seeing how God supernaturally showed a distinction between them and the Egyptians, crossing the Red Sea on dry ground, receiving supernatural food from the sky, experiencing the presence of God in the cloud and fire, etc., most of them perished. Paul wants us to take a warning from this experience, lest we should not be able to experience what God has promised for us. God's promise for us is that we can partake of His nature, as we overcome our sinful desires. Can you see, that for many people, this is not the promise that interests them because they are only looking for earthly blessings in this world? For many others who are hoping for a victorious life, it looks like being impossible or far away from actual experience. Our aim here is to look at several reasons why we find ourselves unable to get victory.
1. Unbelief
In the case of the Israelites, why they were not able to enter the Promised Land was because of their unbelief (Heb.3:19). They did not believe that God who had promised them that land and who had taken them through mighty deliverances till then was able to give them the land in spite of the presence of giants there. They looked only at their own abilities in comparison to the challenges they faced, and leaving God out of the picture, they decided that they were no match to the giants (Num.13:33). For us, it is very important to understand that the giants we face are not the people or the situations that trouble us. Such things will always be there in our life, and the victory we should look for is not to come to a place in our life where there is nothing to trouble us (Jn.16:33). They are not our enemies, and it is not they whom we have to overcome. This is a precious truth concerning our life that can open our eyes to see the real battle.What happens is that whenever somebody or some such situation comes up against us, there are some lusts in our flesh that get stirred up. If we succumb to the pressure from our flesh, we will sin (Jas.1:13-15). So, the real victory for us is to overcome these sinful or self-centred desires in our flesh, and to choose to do the will of God. That is how God is going to deliver us from the power of sin in our life and lead us towards becoming like Him. That is where our focus should be. This, I repeat, is an important secret of spiritual life.
It is possible that some of the sinful tendencies we see in ourselves look like giants compared to our strength to overcome them. Perhaps we have been slaves to some desires for years. Remember, the people of Israel were slaves to Pharaoh for 400 years. It is only natural that when we look at ourselves and our history in the past, we feel like grasshoppers in front of the giants. When we look around, we may also find that other Christians are also defeated by their sins, and hardly anyone seems to even think that victory is possible.
The answer lies in the fact that it is God who has promised us victory (Rom.6:14). It is His grace that is going to deliver us. We are no longer under the Law where God's blessings depend on our obeying the Law. The problem there was that while the Law told us what to do, it did not give us any strength to do it. But now, under the new covenant which Jesus has brought, He not only gives us a higher law, where we move our focus from external acts of sin to our thoughts and motives, but He also gives us the strength of the Holy Spirit, enabling us to keep His laws (Rom.8:2-4). Remember, another thing God has given to those of us who have been born again is a mind that is set against sin (Rom.6:1,2). If we trust God's promises and in His ability to do what He has promised, that is what will drive us relentlessly towards victory. Even if we fail again, and Satan traps us or deceives us in unexpected ways, we can know that victory will become ours one day, because we trust in the One who has promised. Remember what happened to Abraham who was promised a son when he was 75 years old, and the son finally came only at 100! But Abraham held on in faith (Rom.4:19-21). If we don't believe God like this, or if we are only interested in earthly blessings, be prepared to walk around in a spiritual desert till the end.
2. Unwilling to become disciples
Many Christians do not like a differentiation among themselves. Many of them are Christians only in name, and they don't want anyone to say that unless we are born again, there is no chance at all for any of us to enter the kingdom of God (Jn.3:5). The next set of people are truly born again, but barely, because they satisfy themselves thinking that they have the minimum requirements to get into the kingdom. They think that they are now fully safe with God and nothing more is required. They insist that salvation is entirely a work of God's grace, and they say that if anyone says we have to now obey God, they would be going back under the law of Moses. There are several mistakes such people make. A faith that does not produce in us a heart of obedience is dead, and such faith cannot really save anyone (Jas.2:20-22). It will be fatal mistake to tell ourselves that we have faith and therefore we are saved, without having any interest in overcoming sin and becoming like Jesus.Jesus wants us to become His disciples and then make disciples from all nations, teaching them to obey everything He has taught (Matt.28:19-20). In the days of Jesus on earth, there were twelve disciples who walked with Him wherever He went, listened to all that He taught and witnessed all the miracles that He did. But they were not the only ones called disciples. The Bible says that Jesus had many other disciples too, who followed Him around. Remember, Jesus' desire for all of us is that we should become His disciples. The goal of becoming a disciple is to learn from the Master and finally to become like Him. Only such people can hope to finally become like Him. We can understand now that one reason why a victorious life eludes us may be that we have not been willing to become Jesus' disciples. Perhaps we may have got the wrong impression that discipleship is about becoming leaders and that ordinary people like us are only supposed to be believers! No. Those who followed Jesus as disciples later came to be known as Christians (Acts.11:26). I repeat, Jesus wants all of us to be His disciples. Becoming like Christ is not only for leaders but for all of God's children (Acts.14:21-23). The elders were chosen from among the disciples.
When we make a decision to become a disciple of Jesus in order to learn from Him and become like Him, we must know that we will have to pay a cost for it (Lk.14:28). The cost is to give up our own plans, desires, ambitions, preferences in order to make Jesus above everyone and everything else in our life (Jn.12:24,25). The value we give to our closest relatives must become secondary compared to Jesus (Lk.14:26). The meaning here is certainly not that we should actually hate them, but that when it comes to pleasing Jesus or them, we must not allow our love for them to override our love for Jesus (Matt.10:37). In order to be pleasing to Jesus, we must be willing to deny ourselves at all times and die to ourselves, and count nothing that God has given us as too valuable compared to Jesus (Lk.14:27,33).
We will be willing to commit ourselves to this kind of discipleship only if we value Jesus above everyone and everything else. If we think about it, the Holy Spirit will immediately show us if there are things in our life that we hold on to so much that they are more important to us than Jesus. Deciding to give greater importance to Jesus than those is what will cost us if we want to be pleasing to Jesus. If we are not willing to pay that price, then we can understand why we are not able to enjoy a victorious life.
3. Unwilling to give up the world
The whole world is presently under the dominion of Satan. Jesus called him the ruler of this world. Satan controls all the different areas of power in this world and he manipulates them to work against God. When Satan was tempting Jesus, he said that Jesus could have everything in the world if only He would bow down to Satan. We face this kind of temptation every day. Promotions, fame, positions or opportunities to make money, etc., are many times tied up with whether we are willing to be deceiving, tell lies, sign false statements, pay bribes, manipulate people, etc. Many times looking for pleasure leads people to compromise God's values. Satan still offers us the world if only we will bow down a bit to him (Matt.4:8,9).There are Christians who justify themselves when they compromise, by saying that if we have to live in this world, we will have to do some of those things! On the contrary, those who want to be disciples of Jesus are willing to lose everything rather than grieve their Father in heaven. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit in different situations to learn what is pleasing to God and what not. Only then we can overcome temptations and become more and more like Him.
4. Unwilling to put the entire trust in God
When Moses was 40 years old, he thought that he was going to save the people of Israel from Egypt, took things into his own hands, and finally had to flee for his own life from Egypt. He who grew up in the palace, getting trained to become the next Pharaoh, spent the next 40 years in the desert, working as an unknown, lonely shepherd. When he became 80 years old, God called him to go back to Egypt in order to lead the people of Israel to the Promised Land. God had planned for Moses to do this even earlier. But before his spiritual training was complete, and God had become great in his eyes and he had become small before God, Moses had ventured out on his own and failed miserably.Perhaps we have a lot of Bible knowledge. Or we have leadership qualities, organisational skills, special musical talents, etc., and we may imagine that we are someone special, called by God to be great! Or we may be disciplining ourselves hard and expecting to become perfect shortly or Satan to flee from us! But then such people face failure after failure, and cannot figure out why they of all people should be defeated! The problem is that they have not realised the salvation is only by the grace of God and that there will be nothing that we can be proud of in the end. If only we come to the end of ourselves, and learn to submit our whole life to God, can we begin to experience His grace and enjoy His victory in our life (1Pet.5:5,6).
5. Wrong teaching
It is a sad fact that many Christians have not even heard that God wants them to have a victorious life. Many others have heard wrong teachings that have led them astray. For example, some teach that salvation is entirely by the grace of God, and so people are waiting for God to miraculously save them entirely from His side sometime in the future. But no, there is a part we have to do in getting victory over sin, and that is to deny ourselves and do God's will, when we are tempted. Another teaching says that since God sees us through the righteousness of Jesus, we are already victorious in His sight. Therefore they think that everything is alright between them and God, and do not care to look at the sins they are falling into. Yes, God looks at the righteousness of Jesus when He justifies us and accepts us. But we do have to honestly look at our sins, if we are to overcome them and become like Jesus. Some others teach that if we receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit or some other special experience, if only some servant of God lays his hand on us, we fast for forty days, etc., our sinful nature will be eradicated. But then they imagine when they fall into sin afterwards, that it cannot be a sin, and so they call it a mistake. Some others comfort themselves by saying that they are under the blood, and there is nothing to worry about."What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?" (Rom.6:1). "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!" (Rom.6:15). "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2Cor.7:1). This verse tells us to be careful not only about the sins we commit externally with our body, but also about the sins that may be going on inside us. The whole purpose for Jesus to come to this earth was to save us from our sins. Let us not miss going after victory, using various forms of excuses.
6. Biblical illiteracy
Another reason why people are not aware of the seriousness of continuing in sin is because they are ignorant of the teachings of the Bible. The Bible is God revealing Himself and His ways to man, and it is our privilege that it is widely available for us to read and understand. But the sad fact is that many Christians, including some preachers, are not knowledgeable about what the Bible says. It is neither necessary nor possible that everyone should go to Bible colleges. But if we are to get to know God closely and understand His ways, we need to value the Bible and get to know what it says.We must also remember that the Bible is written in such a way that we need a sincere and honest heart in order to be able to understand it (Jn.7:17). This verse tells us that a key to understanding God's word is a desire and willingness to do what God says, once we understand it. If we study it as a matter of duty or from an intellectual point of view, it is certainly not going to help us to become godly. In this Book we find clarity on the way of salvation. Salvation is a matter of life or death, and the Bible shows us its path, bringing out the relationship between how we live now and what we will face in the future in eternity.
7. Shallow or no conversion
Many preachers who appear to be preaching the Gospel have actually watered it down so as to attract more people to join their church rather than to present the whole counsel of God in order to lead their hearers to salvation. Contrast this with what the apostle Paul did to instruct people in way so as to avoid missing anything that could profit them (Acts.20:20,27). As a result of this watered-down preaching, many people who have never seen themselves as sinners in the sight of the holy God, acknowledged and repented from their sins, and rejoiced in Jesus as their Saviour assume that they have already entered into the kingdom of God and are safe there. Many such people are not even interested in salvation per se, but only in earthly blessings. It is therefore no wonder that among such people there is no longing or eagerness to receive victory over their sins. Sin is not what they are battling with but they are only occupied with dealing with problems of daily life.Conclusion
If sin is still ruling in our lives after we have been born again and become children of God, we must realise that we are missing out on a major part of the salvation that our Lord Jesus Christ gave His life to earn for us. Then we need to start studying the Bible seriously to understand His promises and how we can receive them. We need also to start praying that God will open our eyes to see Him and His ways clearly. Jesus came to save us from our sins. Even if we have been slaves to sin so far, we must still trust God's promises and hold on to them till they are fulfilled in our life. Sin must not have dominion over us.