How Faith Fights Sin

This past Sunday at Meadowview we introduced our 2023 theme - "Increase Our Faith". Throughout the year we will be focusing on several general aspects of the Christian life and some specific aspects of the Meadowview life in which we need  greater faith. 

As followers of Jesus we know faith is important - crucial for our salvation. Sunday we read several passages that teach the necessity of faith (belief, trust) in Christ. 

So we know that faith in Christ is necessary for our justification,  but how does faith help us fight sin in our day to day lives? How does faith help us make progress in our sanctification? 

To answer I invite you to consider these verse from Romans 6:5-14:

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ For one who has died has been set free from sin. ⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰ For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹ So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 

¹² Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. ¹³ Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

It is our ongoing faith in the gospel that enables and empowers us to use our lives for righteousness rather than unrighteousness. These verses challenge us to develop a faith (by the grace of God) that "knows" and "considers" the truths of our union with Christ to be true; a faith that believes that when Jesus died so did the dominion of sin in my life; a faith that trusts because Jesus rose from the dead I am now fully alive to God in him. 

When sin seems to have the upper-hand in your life, spend some time meditating on Romans 6:5-14 and plead with the Lord to "increase your faith".