Only As Free As We Beleive

“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” (Ro 6:14 AV)

 

As a saint who loves the LORD and seeks to please Him, we often fall far short of that goal.  Sin is a regular part of our lives.  We become hard on ourselves.  We tend to view only the failures.  We forget from which we came and the more we study the Bible, we become more aware of our failures.  It is almost as if we feel we are a worse failure after salvation than before.  The reason being, we were unaware of our sin before salvation.  We lived in sin and it was normal.  There was nothing to compare it to.  We came under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and trusted Christ.  Now, we read our devotions and see our souls in the mirror of the written word.  We read the Old Testament law and arrive at the conclusion that started our spiritual journey.  We are utterly wicked.  When we try to live for the LORD, all we see is the sin that gets in the way.  What we fail to see are the successes that the Holy Spirit has given over a length of time and those areas of our lives which we no longer pursue.  Note the present tense promise above.  Sin will not have dominion.  This does not mean we will not sin.  What the truth above teaches is we will no longer be dominated by sin!  Hallelujah!

We had the privilege of speaking with a soul who wanted liberty from the vice of smoking.  We shared with him the only way to get a complete victory was by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the changed desires that comes with Him.  Then I relayed my own experience.  After graduation from High School, I took up smoking.  I started with cigarettes.  At first, I stole from my mother.  Just one at a time.  As my body got used to them, I would buy my own.  I smoked for about six months before something happened that turned me off.  My brother Matthew and I each bought a pack of cigarettes and escaped to the treehouse.  In the privacy of our hideaway, we chain-smoked an entire pack in under thirty minutes.  We had seen relatives chain smoke, so we thought it was the thing to do.  This made us so sick!  From that point on, we switched to pipes.  My grandfather and father both smoked pipes.  We smoked for about six months until one day, on a road trip, my brother and I were passed on the left with two young ladies about our age.  They pointed and laughed at us.  That was the end of my smoking adventure.  The funny thing was, the desire for tobacco did not immediately abate.  It took time.  I never smoked again, but the desire was still there.  It took almost twenty years before I noticed I had zero desire for nicotine.  If I dwelt on the failure of desire for nicotine rather than the fact I wasn’t smoking, it would have been brutal.

To me, this verse is a reminder.  It is a reminder that we have already been given the victory over sin.  We may fail more than we had hoped, but we live on victory’s ground.  The next chapter of Romans describes Paul’s struggle with sin to a tee.  He acknowledges he struggles with sin.  But this is in the context of the verse above.  He struggles precisely because he is no longer dominated by sin.  It is the reality that he has been made from the domination of sin that motivates him to fight even harder against it.  Like a bully who cannot be tolerated, eventually, his victims realize he cannot completely win.  It was at that time when his victims fight back.  When we realize sin no longer has dominion over us, we will avenge the disobedience by living in obedience.  So, the thought of the day is we are free from the domination of sin.  We are not the same people we were when the LORD saved us.  We have learned by the power of the Holy Spirit to live more and more unto Him.  When we realize how free Jesus Christ has made us, we will then take up the zeal to fight back!