You don’t have to sin. You are no longer a slave to sin. Thank God Almighty, you have been set free from sin! (Romans 6:7-8, NIV)
Like the comedian Dana Carvey, imitating the first George Bush, you can say to sin, “Not gonna do it, not gonna do it!”
Read my lips: When you face temptation, you can make a decision to say “No!” to sin. You have the power within you, the spirit of Christ guiding you and empowering you to make the right decision – but the choice is still yours.
The problem is, most of us live as if we don’t have a choice. We live as if we were still slaves to sin, and if the enemy can get us to believe that – to accept it as Gospel Truth – then he’s defeated us before we even enter the battle.
The Apostle Paul, the smartest kid in the class, says we’re dead to sin, dead to our old way of life. He’s not saying we’ll never sin again. We are all human. We make mistakes – and we fall on God’s grace.
But Paul is saying sin is no longer natural to us. It was natural for the old you, who was put to death with Jesus Christ. It is not natural to the new you, who is alive in Christ. As we walk toward and in Christ-likeness, we stay obedient to the Holy Spirit – pushing toward the point where we can say, like Jesus, “I do nothing by myself; I only do what the Father tells me to do.” (paraphrase of John 5:19)
It’s easy to see this in people with addictions. They reach a point where they believe they have no choice but to chase after their addiction; we look from the outside and wonder why they can’t make the choice to abandon it. They’ve embraced a lie, and their belief guides their behavior.
I’m not suggesting addicts don’t experience a real craving, but even then there is a choice to get help. The addict doesn’t have to remain a slave to his addiction; we don’t have to remain addicts to our sin.
Sometimes I pray that God will bring specific people to the point where they understand they have a choice. They no longer have to live like slaves and bowing to temptations is no longer inevitable.