Jesus and sin don’t typically go in the same sentence. Especially if there is no “didn’t “, “doesn’t”, or “won’t” stuck in between them. But for twenty-one years I’ve been sinning with Jesus. Or I guess to me more accurate, I’ve been there while Jesus sinned. I think we often times stop salvation short of what it truly is. The gift Jesus extended to us wasn’t Heaven or just freedom from punishment. The gift Jesus extended was to take the blame, the guilt, the shame, and the punishment of every sin you ever committed and every sin you ever will commit. So when you say yes to Jesus, you aren’t telling Him you want to come to Heaven. You’re telling Him you want Him to take credit for everything wrong you’ve ever done and you want to be scotch free.
Well if that’s true, won’t everyone just sin all the time? Maybe. If all He did was take credit for your sins, certainly. But what He did was also extend the gift of death and life. How is death a gift? If I told you Jesus would offer to take the part of you that wants to sin to the cross with Him in exchange for a new part that wanted everything He wanted, would you take Him up on it? If I told you He already had, would you believe me?
“Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, know this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.” – Romans 6:3-7
So when you say yes to Jesus, you aren’t just telling Him you want Him to take credit for everything wrong you’ve ever done and you want to be scotch free; you’re telling Him that you want to die with Him and be resurrected with Him. But the beauty of this is not in the fact that you die and come back, the glory is in the fact that sinner you dies with him, and righteous you is brought to life. You weren’t designed with sin in your heart, you were designed with righteousness in your heart. When you were born into sin, your heart died. But when you were born into Christ, your heart was resurrected. So when I say that accepting this wonderful gift means you can no longer call yourself a sinner, I’m not stretching the truth. You were a sinner, but you died and were resurrected with a new heart (your true heart).
So why do I still sin? Because someone duped you into believing you still wanted to. Satan hasn’t been trying to undo the work of the cross. He knows the power of it and he knows he is too weak to overcome it. He’s lost and he is well aware of that fact, but he will never stop trying to skew it. I’m fully confident that if you had a complete revelation of who you are now, you would never even feel the slightest desire to sin. So today (and for the rest of your life), I want to challenge you to stop trying to stop sinning. It’s fruitless, pointless, and lifeless. Jesus never asked you to stop sinning, He asked you to die with Him so He could bring you abundant life.
So what if instead of focusing on sin, you asked your Daddy what He thought of you? What if instead of begging Him to help you overcome your sin, you asked Him to show you that He already has? What if instead of asking Him to forgive you for being a failure, you asked Him to show you that you are a complete success? What if instead of trying to hide when you sin, you let Jesus in? He’s not afraid of it. You don’t gross him out and He’s not disappointed with you. He wants to be with you. So if you’re sinning, let Him sin with you. You’ll never experience freedom from sin, if you don’t let Him into your sin. Jesus doesn’t work from the outside. He doesn’t come in after you’ve cleaned up. He comes into the middle of it and brings life where there was once death.
The reason you sin is not because you are a sinner, the reason you sin is because you think you are.
