DAILY DEVOTION.
DAY TWENTY SEVEN.
ROMANS 8:13. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.So how do we as Christians deal with sin in our lives, we all have areas in our lives that we have to deal with on a daily basis, not one of us is free from temptation, Paul says that in that verse that if we live in the ways of our own flesh, we will die. What Paul is saying here is that we will suffer spiritual loss in our loss in our lives. So how do we deal with sin? Paul goes on to say that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we kill the works of the flesh, and through that power we will live. I have heard far too many Christians say that if they could only defeat the sin in their lives then they could walk in the Spirit, No!!, We can only defeat sin by surrendering to the Holy Spirit and His power. In Galatians 5:16 Paul says this; I say then; walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. He goes on to say in that chapter in verses 24-25; And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Note what Paul says in verse in verse 16, that if we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit we will not yield to the desires of lusts of our flesh,but he doesn't finish there, in verse 24 Paul makes this statement; And those who are Christs have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So how do we crucify the flesh? In Romans 6 Paul gives us the answer, in verse 6 he says that our old man has been crucified, our old nature is dead, it was crucified with Christ, it is only through the power of the cross that our old man could be dealt with, and because our old man is dead sin no longer has power over us, we are no longer a slave to sin. He goes on in verse 7 to say that if we have died, then we are freed from sin. It is only as we come to the revelation that it is only by the power of the cross that we can be freed from sin that we can walk in the power of the Holy Spirit because it is the Holy Spirit that gives us that revelation, we don't have the power within ourselves to deal with the old man, unless the old man is dead we cannot overcome the power of sin, it is only as we know that the old man was crucified with Christ, that we are no longer old sinners, but new creations in Christ. We are new creations because we are in Christ, because we have been born of the Spirit, because the Spirit has made us alive, and as Paul says in Galatians 4:25, If we live in the Spirit let us walk in the Spirit. Praise God, we are set free from the power sin, it no longer has dominion over us because of what Jesus has done on the cross, we are now new creations in Him, made alive in the Spirit and through the power of the Spirit we can be free.
