God gains victory when we crucify our flesh and slay ourselves. This daily devotional looks at how we can do that.
Nuggets
- Real disciples no longer follow our sinful nature – we crucify the flesh.
- We take a major role in crucifying the flesh by slaying ourselves.
Devotions in The Goodness of Grace series
We’ve been working our way through Griffith’s sermon entitled Grace, the Only Source of Goodness. We’ve look at good struggling against evil.
Now, we come to God’s victory. We do that through crucifying the flesh.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
For this series, we are looking at Griffith’s sermon entitled Grace, the Only Source of Goodness.
- In the first two devotions, we looked at our lives without God.
- In the next two devotions, we looked at how our new lives with God created a renewed, inner life in our spirits and minds.
- In the last two devotions, we looked at the nature of the conflict.
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Let's Put It into Context #2
“When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures” (Gal. 5: 19 NLT)
Without God, we give in to our sinful nature.
Griffiths talked about our animal appetites, selfish passions, and mental perversities. He pulled out three of the sins to use as examples of what he was discussing. He highlighted fornication, hatred, and idolatry.
Fornication was the example used for animal appetites. Griffith used hatred to explain selfish passions. It is easy for some to slip into the practice of idolatry.
Crucifying the Flesh
“And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5: 24 ESV)
Real disciples no longer follow our sinful nature – we crucify the flesh.
We’ve talked a lot about the different ways to which disciples are referred.
- Born of the Spirit
- Walking in the Spirit
- Children of God
- Elect of God
- Doers of the law
- Heirs
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Glossary
To read a related devotion, click on the appropriate button below.
We are always talking about following God’s laws and commandments.
We earn most of these titles when we mortify sin. Mortify means to place a death penalty on our sins. Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
Glossary
Ooo, baby. We would love to not be able to sin after conversion. But that doesn’t happen. We still have the capacity to sin.
Think about it. What would we gain if we could no longer sin?
God is all about giving us our free will. Free will is the ability within us to make decisions, which determine actions that produce character.
If we didn’t have free will, then God would be a dictator.
Oh, yeah. We would love not being able to sin at all. But it would no longer be our choice.
Plus, it wouldn’t be in our best interest. We would no longer grow.
When we look at mortifying sin through the lens of crucifixion, we really put it in context.
Crucifixion was a long and painful process. Mortifying sin will take the remainder of our lives. And ooo baby, is it painful!
It can also be humiliating. That is because it is cutting our pride and all our other sins out along the way.
It is important that we battle sin. It is only by overcoming sin that we grow to be like God.
We can only overcome sin by the grace of God.
What is our motivation to overcome sin? We do it for Jesus’ sake.
How do we overcome sin? Some of it is self-denial. We make a conscious decision to give up the sins.
Some of it is self-control. That goes along with what we were saying about free will. We have to actively make the decision to not sin.
That means we have to have self-discipline. We took a whole year to talk about that.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
We have to realize that, when we say we are cutting out sin, it is more than just abstaining from sin. We have to subdue our desire to sin.
Doesn’t that make sense? That gets it down to the heart level.
That is also in line with sweeping out the heart so that Jesus and the Holy Spirit can take up residency there.
We have to remember that just eliminating the sin isn’t enough. We have to change our habits. We have to become the character of God.
If we let sin continue to have residency in our lives, we are more apt to give into the temptation to dust it off and sin again. God doesn’t want us waffling back and forth between sin and holiness.
God wants us to be holy consistently.
I like what Hacker had to say. He wrote, “Mortification is the very scope and aim of our regeneration, and the infusion of the principles of grace (Galatians 5:25). In vain were the habits of grace planted if the fruits of holiness and mortification be not produced; yea, mortification is not only the design and aim, but it is a special part, even the one-half of our sanctification.”
Oh, yeah. It is going to be very difficult to mortify our sins. We are going to fail frequently. We will never totally get rid of them on this earth.
The only way we can even try is through the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Slaying Ourselves
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3: 5 ESV)
We take a major role in crucifying the flesh by slaying ourselves.
Maclaren had a great definition of character. He wrote, “Character is the outcome and test of doctrine.”
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Hmmm. Character is the outcome and test of what we believe. What we believe comes out in our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
We have to control our thoughts, feelings, and actions so that they go against our sinful nature and present God’s nature in us.
It is our Christian duty to gain control over our sinful nature as much as possible in order to repent of our sins and turn away from committing them. To do this, we have to slay our passions and desires.
We have to identify the passions and desires that do not follow God’s laws and choose to address them. Paul listed several that we need to address in Colossians 3: 5.
Making the Connections
Upon conversion, we are to give up the life of sin. We give up the “… sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures” (Gal. 5: 19 NLT) and all the rest.
We are to imitate Jesus. Spurgeon told us what that looks like. He wrote, “They are different men. There is a change in their heart and soul, conduct and conversation.”
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That’s what we have been talking about. We have to change our nature to follow God.
How Do We Apply This?
Okay. I have to process what Jelf said. He wrote, “It is the living faith of the baptized disciple, which proves him to be a Christian, a member of Christ, not merely by virtue of his baptismal adoption (though that is a gift unspeakably great), not merely because of his profession (though it is an honour to him beyond all words, to be allowed a place in the ranks of the glorious Church as it moves on after the Great Commander), not only this, but a member of Christ, “in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).
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- Being a living sacrifice is in our job description. We are living sacrifices by having a living faith.
- Going through the motions and making a profession of faith followed up by baptism doesn’t gain us salvation. We have to make a genuine profession of faith and change our lives accordingly.
- The genuine profession of faith is shown by being in Christ. We do this follow what Paul told Timothy: “… set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (I Tim. 4: 12 ESV).
Bottom line is we have to live our lives the way God commands us.
- ABCD
- Resist evil (Rom. 12: 9).
- Live a life that follows God’s laws and commandments.
- Gain wisdom.
- Start with faith and grow it.
- Don’t expect smooth sailing in life.
- Diligently pursue mortifying sin in our lives.
- Grow our faith through the daily exercise of it.
- Pray daily
- Fear God.
- Corral our thoughts.
- Don’t expect us to not have to do anything after conversion.
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Father God. We pray for guidance in slaying ourselves. Show us where we need to die to self so that we may live for You. May we crucify the sin in our lives so that we may be closer to You. Amen.
What do you think?
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