Matthew 1:21
"21 She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
When someone has faith in Jesus Christ they desire to be changed by Him into a new creation. He saves us from our sinful nature, beginning the cleansing process from our salvation experience until the day we die. We are in the period of lifelong purging of the filth from our hearts.
We are made perfect in our Spirits but our flesh battles against our Spirit all the time. We have to battle the thoughts the devil places in our heads that tempt us to sin against God.
Matthew 26:41
'Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. '"
We practice holiness by resisting the devil, each time we do he leaves and does not try that temptation again. However, he will attempt new temptations often using our "feelings" to make us weak.
James 4:7 "
"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
If someone asks forgiveness for a particular sin while not seeking Christ, they would still go to hell. We must trust in Christ asking Him to change our very nature of sin to be born again. It is His work, not ours. Those who think they can cleanse themselves without the work of Christ cannot be born again.
Matthew 23:25-26 "
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
But how does one clean the inside of the cup? It's simple, we cannot clean up ourselves by our own efforts, it is only trusting in Christ that will cause Him to cleanse us.
Do not think you will never sin again, but remember that He can cleanse us through His discipline to be able to have fellowship with Him.
Those who are born-again and do not resist the devil and fall into sin will be disciplined by their Father in Heaven.
Hebrews 12:4-11
A Father’s Discipline
4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;
5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
Nor faint when you are punished by Him;
6 For whom the Lord loves He disciplines,
And He punishes every son whom He accepts.”
7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?
10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.
11 For the moment, all discipline seems not to be pleasant, but painful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."
We must not be so proud as to think we perfectly resist the devil when he tempts us. We very likely no longer commit the big sins everyone can see, but if we are proud we will exhibit the sins of pride, self-righteousness, superiority to others, lying just a little so others may not notice or be able to prove it was a lie.
Pretending to be something we are not, kind to one person we wish to impress, and rude to the person we see beneath us is the sin of pride, not to mention all the other violations of the Scriptures, assuming we know the other person when we only have snippets of gossip and guesses based on the desired belief about someone.
When we operate from a stance of superiority and judging things that are not our business we violate the following Scripture.
1 Corinthians 13 "1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.
5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,
6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails; "
How about boasting about ourselves? Lacking humility to be able to confess wrong attitudes, or being unforgiving when others confess to you.
There is the sin of coveting what doesn't belong to us through displays of jealousy and refraining from encouraging someone who is doing a good thing because of that jealousy.
There are many sins of the heart that we can hide from others but often forget God sees them even if no one else can prove it.
Covert narcissism is the most insidious sin of all. It demonstrates a person's desire to harm others so secretively that they can deny it and no one else can see what they are doing, leaving the offended person without proof or allies.
Since the sin of 2 Timothy 3 (we call narcissism), is growing so rapidly, worse with each new generation we can expect to encounter the 2 Timothy 3 mentality every day in every way.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
Difficult Times Will Come (Ragingly Insane Times)
3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these."
The key to navigating through this world is to recognize what people are doing, knowing it has nothing to do with us and be ourselves led daily by the Holy Spirit.
The goal of the devil is to cause prideful reactions in us that manifest defeat. He wants more than anything for believers to be no different from the world. The more we look like the world the less influence we have on those around us.
When we 'love our enemies" we will tell the truth" but refrain from reacting to their response to the truth. If we are prideful we will fight back, allowing the devil to have his victory.
If we are confident and have the love of the Lord we will not fight back in a tit-for-tat argument. We will state the truth and walk away confident that God has this, He can use it without us.
Those who must win, those who fight until everyone has been upset are those who not only possess pride and self-will, but they also lack faith to allow God to do His Work. God doesn't need them, we must obey but ultimately the final say is God's.
If we do not have pride we will not fight to win as those who must win to feel superior. Our confidence in Christ will allow us to remove ourselves without having the last word. This is faith, that we allow Christ to have the last word in the lives of others, we are not responsible for them.
Born-again believers walking with God never have to use tactics such as mocking demeaning, battering, and forcing because we know we are not responsible for the outcome, God is!!!
Romans 12:19
"19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord."
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