Does that sound like a pipe dream, to be able to ‘win’ against sin? Have you ever felt powerless to stop sinning? Have you repeatedly regretted your sin after you’d done it, but never ‘caught it’ in time to stop yourself? Have you ever begged God to change you, to make you stop sinning, to fix you? Have you ever felt hopeless in your fight against sin? I have. Many times. But God! I am so grateful to be able to say that I am no longer ‘stuck’ in those same ongoing patterns of sin, and you don’t have to be, either! If you are a child of God through faith in Jesus, then because of the Holy Spirit in you, you have more power against sin than you think you do!
Take heart and believe the God of hope (Romans 15:13), my friends. Jesus, who dwells in you through His Holy Spirit, has already won this fight! “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14 ESV)! We are no longer part of the kingdom of sin, no longer slaves to its power. We still have our flesh (our natural inclination toward sin), and we will until we’re made new in the presence of God, but we are not slaves to that flesh anymore. We have been set free from our slavery to sin (and from the death penalty our sin earned us) through the sacrifice of our wonderful Savior!
“We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. … So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. … For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
Romans 6:5-7, 11, 14 ESV (emphasis mine)
Fighting sin will never be easy, but it is possible – because the power of God who raised Jesus from the dead resides in us through the Holy Spirit
(1 Corinthians 6:19, Ephesians 1:15-23)! Praise God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).
To be clear, I’m not saying we can live perfectly without sin. Sinless perfectionism is not biblical. But sanctification is! We will be, as Paul said, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” until we are with the Lord in eternity. We are not yet made perfect. But we press on to make it our own, because Christ Jesus has made us His own! (Philippians 3:12-14)
As always, I encourage you to go to the Scripture I’ve referenced in anything I write or say, both to check the context to make sure I’m accurately presenting truth, and also because God’s Word is living and active (Hebrews 4:12) – His Words are life, not mine. His are infinitely more important! My goal is simply to help you take God at His Word and believe (and act on) what He has said. In this post especially, where we’re looking at practical ways to live out what we’re told in Scripture, practical ways to fight the sin that so easily entangles us (Hebrews 12:1), it’s essential that you go to Scripture itself. Take the time, make the effort. It’s worth it! (To help with this, I’ve added a pdf file below with all the Scriptures I reference in this post.)
Our good God has provided in His Word all that we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), all that we need for maturity, everything to equip us to do every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17) – including resisting temptation! Here are four basic biblical steps you can take – because of Christ in you – to fight sin and win, in the power of His might.
How to Fight Sin Biblically:
1. Recognize it as sin.
Sin is anything outside the character of God, anything outside God’s design for you (He created you, so He knows what’s actually good for you and what’s bad). Sin is anything that’s not righteous (1 John 5:17a). Now, sin doesn’t change or diminish God’s love for you. God has always loved you so much that He provided a way for you to be united to Him through the sacrifice of Jesus even when you were in full rebellion to Him (Romans 5:6-11). But sin is always displeasing to our good God, who loves you and wants you to flourish and desires what’s best for you. Jesus had to pay for every sin – everything that you’ve done that doesn’t match what God would have you do – on the cross.
Look in God’s Word to find out what He says about the sin you are struggling against. Don’t lean on your own understanding, lean on His. Define your sin biblically. Take it seriously. It’s not just “not good for you.” It’s not just “less than ideal.” It is sin in the eyes of our holy and loving Creator. If it was the only sin you ever committed, it would have earned you eternal death (here’s why), separated from God forever. If it was the only sin you ever committed, Jesus would have had to suffer and die on the cross to offer you salvation and life. This sin is not inconsequential. It matters. Let the gravity of it sink in, and meditate on the magnitude of God’s love and grace and kindness toward you in the midst of that sin.
Humble yourself before your Creator. Recognize the magnitude of His holiness and of your sin. This is not easy, by any means…but it’s good. God gives grace to the humble. (James 4:6-10)
2. Repent.
Confess to God that what you’ve been doing is sin – agree with God that it is sin – and turn away from it (and from your desire for it) to Him. Choose God and His ways over your desires and your ways. This is repentance: turning away from sin and to God. Your desires are not your identity, and your desires are not in charge of you. You can choose to value and desire right things (God and His ways, as revealed to us in His Word) even when your flesh still has wrong desires. We will deal with wrong desires until our corruptible flesh has been made incorruptible (1 Corinthians 15:53-58, Philippians 3:12-16), but we are not slaves to those wrong desires (Galatians 5:16 & 5:24). We have the God-given power and responsibility to repent and turn to Him, regardless of our feelings and desires.
Reject your sin as wrong. It helps me to say it out loud: “Lord, I reject that, and I choose You. I choose to believe You over my own desires and feelings. I choose Your ways over mine, in Your strength, by Your Spirit.”
3. Remind yourself that:
God is our only source of true satisfaction.
There simply is no true satisfaction outside of God. Sin promises satisfaction, but it never actually delivers – not in any deep or lasting way. Our desires tell us sin will be satisfying, but they lie (Ephesians 4:22). With sin, we are less and less satisfied as time goes on. But God’s promise of satisfaction is true! Our good God offers us total and complete satisfaction (Matthew 5:6), contentment (Philippians 4:11-13), fulfillment (Philippians 4:19). With Him, we are more and more and more satisfied the more we know Him and submit ourselves to Him. “He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things” (Psalm 107:9 ESV).” (More about these beautiful promises here and here.)
God is faithful, and always – always – makes it possible for us to choose not to sin.
He tells us this in 1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV: “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” We may feel like we can’t bear it, we may feel like we can’t resist the temptation, but the truth is, we can! Because God is faithful. Feelings lie. God tells the truth. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. He will provide a way to not sin. This is truth. Cling to it, and make your choices based on it.
4. Choose to do a Right thing instead.
Right when you’re tempted, right when you really want to sin, choose to do a right thing. As soon as you notice that temptation, in that very moment, point your mind and heart to your Savior. Pray. Worship. Sing to God. Recite Scripture. Read Scripture. Serve someone. Serve the Lord. Do something that honors Him. Brush your teeth or take a walk, clean the bathroom or call a friend. Replace the sin with something righteous.
The biblical principle here is that we “put on” Christ, we “put on” righteousness, we walk in the Spirit instead of in the flesh. We see this all throughout Scripture – anytime we are told to stop something, to “put off” a sinful behavior or thought pattern or character quality, we are also told what to “put on.” This is an important part of our fight – learning what God would have us do instead of our sin, learning how God would have us rightly think about that issue. Replace that sinful action with right action. Fill the empty moment with right things. Fill your mind with right thinking, with truth based on God’s Word. We must have something new and good to put on when we put off the old and sinful.
Defining what God says about something and how He means it to be used for good has been very helpful in my own fight against sin. For example, when I face sinful desires for food, which God calls gluttony – desiring food when my body doesn’t need it, desiring only tasty food without regard for nutrition, eating more than I need, looking to food for emotional comfort instead of physical nourishment, etc. – I remind myself of God’s good intention for food: God gives me food to nourish and satisfy my physical needs. Nourish and satisfy! Those are wonderful things for this physical body that He wondrously created. When I point my mind and desires to this truth, and to honoring God and trusting in His good design, I am able to make right choices based on right thinking. We can do the same for every sin struggle. Point your mind to the truth and goodness God intends you to walk in.
I encourage you to take a moment and read Colossians 3:5-17, Ephesians 4:17-32, Romans 13:12-14, Ephesians 6:10-18, and Galatians 5:16-25. These are great passages to study deeply in our struggle against sin and self. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5 ESV, emphasis mine). What are you setting your mind on?
“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
Romans 6:16-18 ESV
If you struggle with sinning impulsively, without thinking, if you don’t catch yourself in time to stop before you sin, be preemptive. When you know a temptation is likely or is coming, get ready. Prepare yourself. Study and memorize Scripture about that temptation. Give yourself reminders. Avoid the temptation if you can; make no provision to indulge your flesh (Romans 13:14). Decide in advance what you’ll do instead of indulging your flesh when temptation does arrive. Choose in advance whom you will serve, whether God or self, your Creator or your enemy, the One who loves you or the one who lies to you. Practice right thinking, based on God’s Word. Rehearse it. Make a plan. Ask the Lord to bring His Word and truth to your mind when you face temptation. And then follow through with your plan as soon as you are aware of temptation. You can, because God has promised His strength in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). He has promised a way of escape from temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). He has promised that you are no longer a slave to sin (Romans 6, especially verses 6, 11-14, and 16-18). Take Him at His Word. He cannot lie (Titus 1:2). This means sin does not have power over you any longer! You can decide not to sin, because of His power in you through His Holy Spirit.
And if you do sin, when you sin (because, again, we will not be perfect until we have our new bodies in the presence of our Lord), as soon as you are aware of it, repent. Confess. Start back at the top: recognize your sin, repent of it to the Lord, remind yourself what is true, and then rehearse doing what is right. This is how your mind is renewed – by purposely realigning it with the truth God has revealed in His Word every time you notice that it’s off course. You are not a slave to your sin. You have more power than you think you do – because you have Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20 ESV
Friends, I have found these biblical steps from the truth of God’s Word to be amazingly effective in my own life. This shouldn’t be surprising! It’s just doing what God says; of course it’s effective! But when we haven’t been taught how to live out, in practical ways, the truth God provides for us in Scripture, we can feel caught in sin and out of control, even though we truly can have control over ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit in us.
The fight against sin is still hard, and I don’t always walk in the Spirit; I don’t always obey my good Creator. Sometimes I give in to my flesh, sometimes I indulge my sinful desires. But it’s never because I have to. It’s never because I can’t help it. When I sin, it’s always a choice. When we sin, it’s always a choice. And while that is a big responsibility, it is also so freeing! Because God has given us His strength, and His Spirit dwells within us. He has made us new. He has already changed us! And He has equipped us and enabled us through His Word and through His Spirit to walk in that newness of life, in righteousness, resisting temptation, honoring Him.
Now we must choose to do it. And praise God, because of His goodness, we can.
I hope you’ll download and print this pdf file, and use it as a springboard for your study and memorization of Scripture in your biblical fight against sin!
More Than This Mess 