Victory over sin

If you judge yourself – that means, you admit your sin truly before God here in time, you can taste forgiveness in this light. God’s Word says: “If we judge ourselves, God is so good and just to forgive us our sins.”

People can overcome sin neither by means of psychology, nor by modern theologies, nor by oriental meditations… The victory depends on our deep communion with Christ. The essential thing is to be in Christ Jesus, our Lord, by faith. It means that in the particular present moment I am in Him not only passively but at that moment I love Him with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength.

To love Him means to offer Him my spiritual powers – heart = emotions, soul = powers of the soul, i.e. memory and reason, as well as my members. To love Him with all my strength means to give Him my will.

This is the strategy of the spiritual fight, the fight against sin and the spirit of lies and death. This fight is connected with eternal life in Christ Jesus. If you don’t fight, you have lost already. You need to realize what or who you are fixed on. Naturally, man is dragged by sin through impulsive feelings, false truth and evil habits. This leads to slavery. We cannot overcome by our human endeavour. We are given the victory as a gift of God in Christ Jesus. The strategy of the spiritual fight is not trying to overcome sin but focusing on Jesus because He had already overcome sin by His death at Calvary. Therefore, it is impossible to speak of human, partial victory. Even if we achieved some, it would lead to pride and ultimately to far greater failure and shame.

So the essence of this spiritual fight can be expressed by the following “watchword”: Where is Jesus now? And where am I? If I am absorbed in myself, in my fantasies, in my own truth, in my own good, in my own justice etc., it’s only a question of time until I suffer humiliation and finally face death. If I am on such a level, I am influenced by human pride which uses lofty terms like “be up to standard”, “theological learning”, “theological knowledge”, “have no complex” etc. But you will lose on such a level.

If I want to overcome, I must be in Jesus Christ. Communion with Jesus is a matter of the obedience of faith. It means walking in God’s presence, or, in other words, abiding in Christ and His Word, or walking in the Spirit. These terms in the Scripture point to the gift of victory over sin. Therefore the Apostle John says: “Whoever abides in Christ does not sin, and cannot sin.”