Often in Church we talk about the new creation we have become through Christ. Through his death and resurrection, the old is gone and the new has come. And yet we have a tendency not to take it. Truth is, we like the old self. It’s easy and comfortable. The old self makes us feel good and feeds our ego. But Paul is clear in Romans that when we surrender our lives to Christ, it is no longer we who live but Christ in us. We have died and now Christ lives in us.
We tend to dumb this down in the Church. We lessen what it means to give one’s life to Christ. We read stories of Jesus telling a man to go sell his possessions and give everything to the poor and say, “well Jesus doesn’t mean I have to do that.” We see Jesus telling his followers to leave everything they have to follow him and say, “well that was a different culture.” We read scriptures of fleeing youthful lusts and passions, fleeing sexual immorality, and yet say, “it’s a process.”
When I think of the expectation God has of us to leave our old life to embrace the new life he’s given us, I think of alcohol and drug addicts. When addicts are checked into a program, they don’t keep alcohol and drugs around to wean them off slowly over time. They stop. Cold turkey. Going through withdrawals can be an extremely stressful and painful process, but the result is worth it. We are all sin addicts. We live for pleasures of self in direct contradiction to the commands of God. And in the same way, it’s an extremely painful process to stop. It means giving up what we have held so close for so long. It means we may lose friends. Change is painful. Change of this magnitude is extremely painful! But the new life in Christ is worth it all!
I heard someone a couple months ago talk about his experience overseas with recent believers. He said something I will never forget. He said, “What we call sanctification, they call prerequisites.”
God does not expect us to be perfect before we come to him. God will not even force us in any way to get rid of sin. Yet because of his incredible love for us, he has provided a way for us to change and pursue holiness. For some reason, we have made it so easy to become a Christian and keep our old, dead self. It’s easy to tell others not to judge because they are not perfect either. It’s easy to get upset about my preferences, my pleasures, my desires, my self-centeredness, that we in essence say “Thank you God for eternal life, but I’ll run my life”. I’m not saying we have to change in order to accept Christ. I’m simply stating how surrendering our lives to Christ means we have to literally surrender our lives to Christ. It means fleeing from our old self and pursuing holiness to the best of our ability. Trust me, I know it is not easy, but it is essential.
Hebrews 12 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…”
Our tendency is the focus on the cloud of witnesses and running the race. We skip the middle, to throw off every sin! We cannot run this race until we throw off every sin holding us back!
The author of Hebrews is not saying, take steps to get rid of sin in your life. Make sure you sin less today than you did yesterday. But, because we are surrounded by these great witnesses, throw away this sin! Get rid of it! Not slowly but all at once! Let it go and run! We are empowered by the very Spirit of God, we are surrounded by an incredible cloud of witnesses cheering us on and strengthening us. Not so much to run the race, but to throw off our sin which keeps us from running.
Ask God to point out areas of your life holding you back from fully running the race set before you. I pray God will give you the strength day in and day out to be holy as he is holy.