Sin: By nature or by choice?

I apologize for the huge two week gap between these two posts. I’ve been ridiculously amazingly busy and haven’t had anytime to blog. I will post all that busyness hopefully sometime this week. :)

Over the past few weeks Gods really been challenging me to be righteous and dare I say it…sinless.  Is it possible to live a sinless righteous life? Is it possible to beat temptation completely? Can you be perfect? Hmm…its interesting to think about isn’t it? We hear constantly that “Nobody’s perfect” (Yes, I did just quote Hannah Montana) and that Jesus was the only perfect sinless being and we can’t be him. That’s true, we can’t be Jesus but I feel as if we have mixed the bible up a little bit and have made it seem like we can’t be like Jesus. I have a ton of thoughts in my head and I’m going to attempt to put them in normal words so please try to stay with me hah.

Jesus was perfect because he was born sinless. Jesus didn’t have a natural human father, he had a spiritual father. He did have a physical mother but the bible says that sins are passed down through the father…not the mother. So immediately, from the moment Jesus was born he was sinless, perfect and different than any other human. Therefore, we can’t be Jesus…but we can be Like Jesus. Could Jesus have sinned? …ever thought about that? Could Jesus have sinned? If Jesus was tempted that would have to imply that it was possible for him to sin, but he never did! Why? The bible said he was made into human just like you and me, how come he could resist and deny sin but we can’t?

The main point I’m trying to make is that the only reason we can’t be like Jesus is because he was born of a spiritual sinless father and we were born of a sinful human father. Other then that, we can be like Jesus. Were actually instructed to be like Christ-like multiple places in the bible and were told that we can do greater things then Jesus did. Wow! Imagine doing greater things then Jesus! I can’t even picture that…why? Because were so screwed up in sin, a sinless, perfect, Christ-like life seems impossible and unreachable. I’ll ask again, how come Jesus could say no and we can’t?!

Here’s what I believe Gods been showing me recently. We are born naturally into sin and are sinful and therefore can’t be perfect and sinless like Jesus was. However, in Romans 6 it says that after we accept Christ as our savior because he died on the cross we are made a new creation in Christ and we have the power and authority over sin just like Jesus did. I’ve always been told that men naturally have a stronger sex drive, its normal for men to lust. Does that mean I can use that as an excuse and say that I can lust because in its my nature? Not at all! After we accept Christ into our lives our natural sinness is in submission to our authority. Our flesh has to obey what we command it to do.

Picture going through your everyday life with the authority to resist all temptation. Does that even seem possible? Isn’t it crazy to think about? Think about living in authority and in the freedom Jesus died on the cross to give us. What if we did that? Just think about it. Don’t you want people to see something different in you? Don’t you want to get to such a deep relationship with God that you can resist temptation like its nothing!? I know I do! It’s what I feel I’m called to achieve.

I picture Jesus sitting in heaven looking down at all his children saying, “You dumbos! I died on the cross so that you wouldn’t have to live in all this brokenness and hurt. I died so that you could resist this and have authority over it!! Stop living in Satan’s lies! You don’t have to! You can be fee!!” It’s like a father watching his son throw his life away. It breaks my heart to see all my friends (myself included) choosing to live in alcohol, lust, abuse, cutting, sex, drugs, ect. We don’t have to..so why do we?! It drives me crazy!

Romans 6

Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ²By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

⁵If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ⁶For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,^[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— ⁷because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

⁸Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. ¹³Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

¹⁵What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. ²⁰When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ²³For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.