Let me quote what a wise man once said: “Christian life is like a three-legged stool. The legs are doctrine, experience and practice (i.e. obedience), and we will not stay upright, unless all three are there.
Over the years, somehow, believers have not kept all three together. Some have concentrated on doctrine, some on experience, some on practice, and the result is that all-round Christlikeness which all three together would produce has not appeared wholesomely.

The imbalance of our efforts to honour the Holy Spirit as teacher, Lord, and leader ends in quenching His influence, so that amid much talk and bustle, including much writings, meetings, conferences and gatherings, the end result is that we find little or no life and power.

As a church, we need to go back to biblical basics about the source, nature and expression of the Christian life; in other words, we need to return and grasp deeply the basic truths of the gospel.
I have shared several sharings on this (from different angles) because of the burden that we professing Christians have somewhat lost this; the basic truths are far from being luxuries – they are necessities for Christian living.

The Apostle Paul wrote this repeated question in the Epistle to the Romans and the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “Do you not know?…do you not know?” (Rom.6:3,16;7:1; 1Cor. 3:16; 5:6;6:2,3:9,15,19; 9:13,24). Paul was appealing over and over to the early Christians that they ought to have known, but had either forgotten or never learned.

The conviction that Christian doctrine matters for Christian living is one of the most important growth points of the Christian life. Practical Christian living is based on understanding and knowledge. How we think is one of the great determining factors in how we live – this conviction underlies the whole of the teaching of the New Testament.

The Lord Jesus himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, speaks from start to finish about day-to-day realities -here we find instruction on how to behave, on the motivations which lie behind our actions, on prayer, anxiety, and many other practical matters These practical matters are to be built on the foundation of what we know of God, his nature and the ways in which he deals with men. The great motive for prayer our Lord lays before us is that we know that God is the Father (and we are his children) and that he knows what we need before we ask. The pattern prayer Christ gave us a manual of doctrine if ever there was one – the Fatherhood of God, his heavenly existence, his holiness, his name, his kingdom and its coming, the nature of the divine will, his daily providence, his forgiveness, the problem of temptation and the existence of the Devil! The Sermon on the Mount is an unashamedly doctrinal sermon – the message is that the knowledge of God and the sure understanding of his character and ways provide the basis for all practical Christian living.

The great truths, which we tend to isolate in a category of ‘doctrines’, are in fact the very foundation of Jesus’ encouragement of his disciples and even himself in an hour of great practical need. It is as though he were saying that only the man who has a grasp of these heights will be able to hold firm when he descends to the depths of human experience. The Lord Jesus teaches doctrine in order to fill our lives with stability and grace. The doctrines of the gospel are meant to mould us so that our lives begin to ‘set’ in the likeness of Christ.

As we find our minds expanded by the grace of God, our hearts should be correspondingly enlarged with love to him for all that he has done for us in Christ. This in turn should lead us to a richer experience of his love for us. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that we put doctrine in its right place simply by ignoring experience. Nor should we despise spiritual experiences. On the contrary, we should rejoice in them. But we ultimately benefit from experiences only when we trace the great doctrinal principles which they illustrate. Finally, we must put into practice what we know and understand – obedience to God is non-negotiable – it is in fact an expression of our love for him and his ways!

(B)
We have looked at how God’s Word impacts our minds to truly understand the truth, and this understanding and knowledge ‘travels’ through to our hearts, and enables us to will God’s will in our lives. In this statement, it explains the need of receiving God’s revelation through ‘theology’ and ‘Scripture’, and the required positive response of the heart, resulting in practical application and obedience to God and His revelation. Notice that wrong understanding and knowledge cannot ‘ignite’ a wholesome response in the heart and in practical outworking.

In that light, we need the “LIGHT” of God to dispel the darkness in our understanding and the ‘poverty’ of our response to Him. Jesus is the “Light” who came into the world, and the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and Jesus, brings “Light” by enlightening our minds and enabling our hearts and will to align with God’s plan and will for our lives, and for the life of God’s people.

Firstly, SALVATION:
It is the glory of the gospel that it meets our need. It comes to us in our sin and begins to undo what had been wrongly done in our lives in order that God’s image may be restored. But it also pronounces us already to be, in Christ, what we will be in ourselves only when we are transformed by the last great crisis into his perfect image (1 John 3:1-3).
The gospel does not make us like Adam in his innocence – it makes us like Christ, in all the perfection of his reflection of God. This is the essence of the salvation Christ provides, and it undergirds the pattern of Christian experience and doctrine which is found in the New Testament (Rom.8:29).
Christ provided this salvation when He came into the world as the Second Man, the Last Adam (1 Cor.15:45-47). Out of his perfect reflection of the image of God we may draw by the power of the Holy Spirit. We share in his death to the dominion of sin (Rom. 6:10). Under him we shelter from the wrath of God. knowing that he has borne our guilt (Gal. 3:13). He was made sin for us although he himself knew no sin, so that in him we might be made the righteousness of God (2 Cor.5:21). He died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God (1 Peter3:18). On the cross he triumphed over Satan, and exposed him as our enemy (Col.2:15).
But mark this: In his name therefore, we may also conquer (Rev.12:10). Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor.1:30). All we shall ever need we will find he supplies by his grace.

But, why is it that Christians in general find that we are constantly failing and are defeated in our quest to be holy and to please God? Why is it that we, if we are honest, find that the truths in the gospel do not seem very real in our lives?

UNION WITH CHRIST

Union with Christ is frequently described as our being ‘in Christ’. Union with Christ is the foundation of all our spiritual experience and all spiritual blessing. These are given to us ‘in Christ’ and only those who are ‘in Christ’ ever experience them. Eph.1:3-14).
From beginning to end, the Christian life is Christ-centred and we are constantly to look to him for all the spiritual provision we need. All spiritual blessings are in him, and it is only as we ourselves are ‘in Christ’ that we will find the blessings which are ours in Christ becoming realities in our own experience.

In John 17, in the Lord’s prayer, he spoke of the disciples’ union with one another being as close as his own union with the Father, because based on their union with him (John 17:23,26). Just as a shoot is grafted into the vine and receives its nourishment from the vine, so the disciple is ‘in Christ’ and draws from Christ all spiritual benefits.
Ponder over the following:
If we are united to Christ, then we are united to him in all he has done for us (Col.3:4)

The fruit of our union with Jesus is always life. It is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us – being grafted into the vine, the life of the vine might become clearly visible in our lives (Gal.2:20).

Through union with Christ, all that is in his incarnation become ours through faith. His self-offering becomes ours to bring us pardon for our guilt; his life of obedience becomes ours to give us a new status of sons of God. But when we are joined to him there is also a sense in which his life and power become available to us to transform our lives.
Take Note: Transformation and victory over sin are available to us because Christ’s life and power are available to us!! If this is so, then Christians can experience true transformation and victory over sin in our lives, although that does not preclude ‘struggles’ and ‘battles’ in our lives.

We shall look into this further and try to encapsulate some of these practical truths as best as we know how. These are essential truths for us to know in order to live for Christ in our lives as individuals and collectively as a church.

(C)
“Died to sin…”
We have been considering the meaning of our “salvation” in Christ and our “union with Christ”. We now look at what our union with Christ achieves for the believer

In Romans 6, the heart of what Paul wrote is that in Christ the Christian has died to sin and is raised to a new life to God.
Our death to sin is accomplished through union with Christ. Paul wrote:
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”(Rom. 6:3-5).
If we were baptised into Christ, it was into a Christ who died and rose, so that we have been baptised into his death and resurrection. Just as Christ’s death led him in to a new resurrection life to God, the same is true of the Christian who has been united to him.
Implication: Those who have died and been raised with Christ to newness of life cannot consistently live to sin. To do so would be a denial of their new identity.

Our union with Christ involves the death of ‘the old man’ (Rom. 6:6-7).
The ‘old man’ is what were before we were united to Christ i.e the man we were in Adam. When we came to Christ, and were made one with him, that ‘old man’ was crucified with Christ and died. Paul was not saying that indwelling sin is destroyed but rather that its status and dominion have been broken in our lives through Christ. Formerly, it reigned like a king but now, although still present it has been de-throned and no longer has a rightful claim upon our lives (Rom.6:12).
The crucifixion of the old man and the destruction of the body of sin make an enormous difference to our lives – we are no longer what we once were; we are no longer related to sin in the way we once were. We are no longer enslaved to sin because we have been set free from it.

Our union with Christ leads to new life in him

We do not continue in sin, not only because we have died to it, but also because also because, by our very nature as Christians, we are living new lives to the glory of God.

Implications
Sin does not have dominion over us! Since that is the case, we are to make sure, by fighting against its ever movement, that it does not invade our hearts as though it had dominion. If we consider ourselves to be what we truly are, dead men brought to life in Christ; if we build on this sure foundation, refusing to yield our body to sin as its slave, then we will discover that the assurance Paul gives us, ‘sin shall not be our master’, will also be our daily experience.
The great mistake many of us make is to look only at our sin and failure, and then ask, a little despairingly, What can I do? but our need first of all is to understand what God has done; to see that what he has made us through his Son is man or a woman who has died with Christ to sin’s dominion and has been raised with Christ to newness of life. We are those over whom sin no longer has any dominion.
We can say, ‘I’m not under sins’s dominion! I am a new creation! (2 Cor. 5:17) I am not what I thought I was, not what I once was! I’m now a child of God!
How can we, of all people, continue to live as though sin reigned?
But this freedom from the dominion of sin is not the end of our struggle against sin. In fact it is the beginning of a new conflict with it. For while we have died t sin, sin has not died to us.

THE CONFLICT
The World
The world is a very real source of temptation. It ‘squeezes us into its mould’, and often we are hard put to resist the pressure of its influence.
The mind of the Christian ought not to be filled with thoughts of earthly things, or find attractions in them, for we ought to be living as if we might have to leave this world at any moment… the Apostle Paul is not advising Christians to get rid of their possession – all that is asked for is that we do not find them completely engrossing (1 Cor. 7:29-31 – remember the parable of the sower when the seed is choked by thorns). The world moulds us, as well as chokes us. We have to make every effort to avoid the danger of its grip pressuring us into conforming with its way of thinking. A man can be outwardly conformed to the Christian way of life while he is inwardly conformed to the spirit of the world. That was the great fault of some of the Pharisees.
The snare of the world is that it draws us from Christ. We do not know precisely what the cause of Demas’ desertion from Paul was. But we know what caused his separation from Paul. Instead of living as one who loved the appearing of Christ, he loved the world. Something in this present age, i this world order, drew him away from his first love for Christ and for his suffering people.

The devil
The Christian engages in conflict with another enemy – Satan. When we deal with him, there are two dangers to avoid: the first is to pay too little attention to him and the second is the error of making too much of him so that we lose sight of Christ and his victory and are paralysed with irrational fears about the power of evil.
We are not only to know something of his person of Satan (from the Scripture), but also that we should not be ignorant of his designs (2 Cor. 2:11). The enemy can masquerade as an angel of light (2Cor. 11:14). How then can we distinguish the true leading of Chris from the deceptive work of the Devil.
a. Christ’s voice is always in accord with the true meaning and application of Scripture, while Satan often mishandles Scripture.
b. Christ’s wisdom has the characteristic of Christ himself. It is pure and peaceable (James 3:17)’
c. Christ’s entreaties are gentle, just as he himself is gentle. But the entreaties of Satan are describes as ‘flaming darts’ (Eph.6:16).
d. Christ calls us into the fellowship of his suffering (Phil.,3:10)l but the great hall-mark of Satan’s leading is to draw us away from that union and fellowship with Christ and his cross – he wants to take our affections as far away as possible from loving and trusting our suffering and crucified Master.

Distinguishing between Satan and our own hearts
a. Sin is long concocted in the thoughts, before consent be given; but usually we may know a motion comes from Satan by its suddenness. Temptation is compared to a dart because it is shot suddenly.
b. Motions coming from Satan are more ghastly and frightful, as motions to blaspheme and self-murder (Eph. 6:16).
c. When evil thoughts are thrown into the mind, when we loathe and have reluctance to them; when we strive against them, and flee from them, it shows they are not the natural birth of our own heart, but the heart of Satan is in them.

The battle ‘within’: the continuing presence of indwelling sin

We shall look into this, the Lord willing, subsequently.

(D)
Indwelling Sin

The cause of our battle ‘within’ is the continuing presence of indwelling sin. We have noted previously that the Christian has died to sin, but this does not mean that sin has died to him. It remains, and it is still sin. What has changed is not its presence within our hearts, but its status (it no longer reigns, it is no longer our master), and our relationship to it (we are no longer its slaves).
We must realise that this is indeed a radical change and it provides a glorious deliverance from the power of sin in the life of the believer. It means that the Christian deals with sin in his life from a perspective of victory.

Not only has our relationship to sin changed, but God has planted within us his divine seed (1John 3:9), and in this sense has ‘added’ to our powers as well as subtracting from sin’s status. We have good reason to enter the conflict with the enemy of sin in optimistic mood.
However, not for a moment dare we delude ourselves into thinking that the victory will be won consistently without blood, sweat and tears. Although sin remains not as reigning sin, but it is still real sin. The picture ‘painted’ in the New Testament is that the conflict within is heightened by the tension between ‘the flesh’ and ‘the Spirit’. The flesh refers to the whole man in his creatureliness, weakness and sinfulness; and the sin of the flesh includes the activities of the mind as well as the body (cf. Gal. 5:19-21). The flesh, in this sense, denotes the whole personality of man as organised in the wrong direction, as directed to earthly pursuits rather than the service of God. In a word it is human nature dominated by sin!
But the Christian is not in ‘the flesh’ (Rom.8:9). He is ‘in the Spirit’. He is dominated by Christ through the Spirit. Yet the flesh remains in him in the sense that sin remains in him. While the flesh remains, the Spirit of God, operating via the new life God has given us, makes war on the flesh (Gal.5:17). We are told that ‘those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Gal.5:24). Here Paul does not describe the decisive act of God in us through union with Christ, but our decisive rejection of sin when we join ourselves to Christ by faith. At his conversion, the believer made a brutal response of rejecting sin, and he continues to ratify and affirm this response throughout the whole course of his Christian life (Repentance at conversion and repentance as a way of life for the Christian throughout his journey on earth).
Scripture assures us that the powers which are for us are far greater than those ranged against us. The victory is secure; but the height of the battle is joined when God summons us to put sin to death (mortification of the flesh and sin, and the rejection of sin as our master; Christ is now our new Master who loves us).

In this battle, crucifying sin is a central practical issue in Christian experience. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons some younger believers make shipwreck of their faith is because they have never learned how to deal with indwelling sin, or, what is worse, have been encouraged to see it as an irrelevance. It is one of the signs of our morally-confused church life today that there is so much hesitation here. We have lost confidence in the clear commands of Scripture.
To mortify sin is to deal radically with sin – it is a necessity (in the Lord’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly in Matt. 5:29-30).

The same idea is present when the Lord tells us that if we want to be his disciples, we must deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow him. The cross was the most vivid symbol-word for death. To follow Christ means to pronounce the death-sentence upon sin and in the process of putting the sentence into effect by a daily crucifixion of all that sets itself against God’s purposes in our lives.

Each of us has to learn, often in a hard way, where our personal areas of weakness lie. But the necessity to mortify sin is ‘universal’. This dispels the teaching that we can be ‘perfect’ morally on earth, some advocate that not being conscious of personal sin at any time equals to being ‘perfect’; others claim that it is possible to attain a state where sin no longer is a problem in their lives – and many of these individuals are not fully conscious that their claim to be ‘perfect’ is a form of pride which straightaway dismisses the claim of ‘moral perfection’.

No man can be Christ’s disciple without daily carrying the cross. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its lusts (Gal. 5:24).
Mortification from a self-strength, carried by ways of self-invention unto the end of self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world. If we build it on man-made rules (don’t do this, don’t go to that, don’t touch this, keep away from that) we live under the delusion that we are truly dealing with indwelling sin when in fact we are merely altering our our outward habits (note that ‘legalism’ is one such form). This is no lasting foundation, and when the crisis of the ‘evil day’ comes (Eph.6:13) we will find ourselves on sinking sand.

The true foundation for dealing with sin is union with Christ.
In our union with Christ, we have died with him (GAl.2:20; 3:3); we have been raised with him (Col.3:1); we have our present lives hidden with him in the heavenly reign (Col.3:3); and we will be inseparably united with him in his coming (Col.3:4) – this is in fact the basis for slaying sin. Since these things are true for the Christians, we are to mortify whatever belong to our earthly nature (Col.3:1,5). Our new identity in Christ is itself the new incentive we need to deal with sin.
No Christian ever comes to the place in this life where he/she has so completely destroyed indwelling sin that it no longer exists (1John1:8). For such a deliverance we must wait; nor is putting sin to death the same thing as diverting it. Altering sin’s form does not change its nature – we may be guilty of diverting our sinful habits into another, more socially acceptable, less discoverable form of sin, and in the process, we ‘excuse ourselves’ and appear ‘innocent’, and we may even rationalise away our ‘sin’ and blame it on ‘old age’ or ‘bad habit’ etc.

The killing of sin – it means the constant battle against sin which we fight daily – the refusal to allow the eye to wander, the mind to contemplate, the affections to run after anything which will draw us from Christ (and this includes what we read, what we are exposed to in social media, and so on) – anything can be an ‘idol’ in our life and take the place of God in our daily living.
It is the deliberate rejection of any sinful thought. suggestion. desire, aspiration, deed, circumstances or provocation at the moment we become conscious of its existence. It is the consistent endeavour to do all in our powers to weaken the grip which sin in general, and its manifestations in or own lives in particular, has. It is not only accomplished by saying ‘no’ to what is wrong, but by a determined acceptance of all the good and spiritually nourishing disciplines of the gospel. It is by resolutely weeding the garden of the heart, and also by planting and nurturing Christian graces there, that putting sin to death will take place. Only when the hearts are so full of grace will less room exist for sin to breathe and flourish.