Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Growing in Righteousness

We have seen in the past, that before allegiance to Christ, we were slaves to sin. We were sentenced by God to eternal punishment. We were powerless to change the way we lived.

We gave allegiance to Jesus, and God applied his death to us. Ghrist's death cancels sin's penalty. Christ's death frees us from sin's power.

The problem is: we still sin. We still fall. There is something that holds onto us. There is something that still exerts a control on us, because we desire to live righteously. We desire to live as we were designed.

There is a Scripture passage that talks about "living according to the flesh." That is, we agree with our flesh. We say to ourselves: "This gives me comfort. This helps me. This gives me meaning." So, we continue to engage in sinful activity.

Or we say: "This person hurt me. O deserve better. I deserve to be recompensed by this person." And we agree not to forgive.

We continue to sin, because deep inside our spirit, we don't see that we are agreeing with sin. We don't recognize that something is bad. Pain can blind us. We can refuse to surrender something that we have used to protect ourselves for decades.

If we have given our allegiance to God, we belong to God, and we have made a decision to agree with God, and with his Spirit, overall. We agree with God in a general, over-arching way.

Now, we begin the process of transformation. We remain open to God to reveal specific areas where we actually agree with sin, and not with him.

First, we are with God: this are is sin. Then, we are to turn away from this specific practice. Then, we agree to practice what God says fits in this place. Then, we practice God's substitute.

Transformation is always a four step process:
  • Recognize what is wrong
  • Choose to stop doing what is wrong.
  • Recognize what is right.
  • Choose to start doing what is right. 

All four steps are needed for real progress, real growth, to occur.

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