City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

⁹ However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. ¹⁰ If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. ¹¹ But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

¹² So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— ¹³ for if you are living in accord with the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Romans 8:9-13 (NASB)

Commentary

“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

“You can achieve anything you want if you believe in yourself.”

“You can be whatever you want to be if you put your mind to it.”

We’ve all heard these sayings. They make people feel good. Unfortunately, none of them are true. 

It doesn’t matter how much I believe in myself, I’m not going to be the NBA’s MVP or win golf’s U.S. Open. Even when I was a scholarship basketball player in college and a junior golfer with a single digit handicap, I didn’t have the natural athletic tools or ability for those achievements, and no amount of conceiving or believing was going to change that. 

There is, however, a truth hidden amongst these facile, feel-good statements. While it is not true that what you believe can make everything achievable, it can certainly make anything unachievable. For example, if I didn’t believe I could make the high school golf team, I probably never would have tried. If I didn’t think I could pass my criminal law exam in law school no matter how much I studied, I probably would have quit studying long before I was fully prepared. 

In the scripture above, the Apostle Paul reminds the Roman Christians that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead resides in them. Paul says that even though Christians may be living in bodies marred by the effects of the Fall of Man, the Spirit is more powerful, and as a result, they can put to death sin in their life. This is not a statement proffered by a motivational speaker but one guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus. 

Application

The implication is inescapable: if the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead, the Holy Spirit must be powerful enough to enable you to have victory over sin in your life. The implication of the resurrection is your sanctification. 

However, if you don’t believe you can have victory over sin, you will not. If you don’t think you can resist sin, you will eventually give into it, and you will never enjoy the full freedom Jesus died and rose from the dead to secure for you. 

Prayer

Lord, thank You for securing the opportunity for me to live in victory over sin.