Sin Shall Not Have Dominion

I have seen many people come to God, and sometimes a person will be instantly set free from habits like smoking, drinking, or drugs. Yet another person may spend years struggling with sin and addictions before he either catches hold of the truth and lives in the freedom of his salvation, or he turns loose of his relationship with God and is lost for good. But the question is "Why?"

We know that God is no respecter of persons, and since the same rebirth took place in both people, why does one person live a life free of sin and addictions while the other struggles and falls away? You see, everyone has access to the same amount of power at their rebirth. What they do in the hours and days following their conversion--concerning the Word they hear and the grace they establish themselves in--determines the rate at which they become "free."

A person who is bound by sinful habits must understand from "Day 1" of his salvation that no matter how hopelessly overpowered he may feel or how powerful the sin may appear to be, the power of sin has been broken over him! Sin cannot make him do what he does not want to do!

Yet Satan continually uses deception and circumstances to keep us oblivious to God's truth--Sin shall not have dominion over us! (Romans 6:14) This deception of the enemy robs us of the faith we need to come totally out of the world's lifestyles, practices, and ways of thinking, and establish ourselves in God.

No matter how much we want to say, "I could not help it," "It was out of my control," "The temptation was much too great for me," or "The devil made me do it," we must understand: God did not let that sin overpower us; we did. When we understand this, we have taken our first real step into the freedom of God's Word and out of our problem.

A great injustice has also been done to the new believer because of incorrect teachings about the grace of God. Instead of being taught that God's grace "frees" him from sin, he is taught that grace "covers" him while living in sin. This wrong doctrine makes the new believer an easy target for the devil, leading him away from using his faith in what the Word says to overcome his flesh, and instead, into the deceptive thinking that he can live a lifestyle of habitual sin and still go to Heaven.

Let's say a sinner gets born again and struggles with his conscience because the Holy Spirit is convicting him of sin-related habits, such as drinking, smoking, and adultery. He hears a minister teach that once you are born again, grace covers you while you continue in sinful habits. So this newly-saved person wonders why he should even bother to give up his cigarettes, alcohol, and women when it doesn't make any difference. Why bother to stop if he is going to Heaven anyway?

Yes, there is grace for a person bound by sin. Jesus will walk through hell with a believer trapped in ungodly habits, addictions, and lifestyles until he is totally free from the bondage of sin, but he has to want to be free. Whether the "getting free" process is long or short, unending grace is available for the person who is striving for God's truth in his life. On the other hand, when a believer begins to make excuses for his sin and to justify ungodly actions, he removes himself from the covering of God's grace and heads down the path of destruction.

One reason a person will be set free from sinful habits right after his conversion is because he has allowed the Holy Spirit to incorporate the law of the spirit of life into those areas of his life. A reason another person will struggle and struggle with sin after getting born again is because he is being "selective." There are certain sins he wants to hang on to, because in his heart he does not want to relinquish control of his sins over to the Holy Spirit.

There are many Christians who haven't quite reached the place where they want the Holy Spirit to break the hold that the sin has over them in order to be free. They have erected strongholds--wrong ways of thinking--in their minds that are reinforced by their emotions. Each time the Holy Spirit convicts the conscience of a believer who struggles with habitual sin, his emotions go to war against him to protect the sin and to keep the stronghold intact. The person will become trained to believe that his freedom is not worth the effort, that it is impossible. It becomes easier for him to believe false doctrine, like "God doesn't really mind the sin," than to continue fighting his flesh.

However, the problem with sin, especially the kind that the Apostle Paul classified in First Thessalonians 4:5 as concupiscence--"sexual in nature"--is that it will not maintain an even amount of control in a person's life. The sin will want more and more until, eventually, the person is back in the world in a worse state than he was before being born again.

Believe me when I say that I am not intending to bring any person under condemnation but merely to point out the fact that we have been set free from sin and we can stop sinning if we want to.

When a person plays with sin, the enemy's intention is to leave him completely destroyed. Yet, this doesn't mean that he can't ask God to forgive him and make his life right again. He can ask, and God will!

Let's take a look at James 1:14,15:

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

This passage clearly tells us, when sin is finished, it intends on leaving us for dead. So the real danger of sin is that no matter what caused us to fall into it or to permit it in our life, the end result will always be the same. Sin leads to death!

Whether we have been led to believe that grace covers a lifestyle of active sin or that the temptation was too great for us to bear, we must remember what Paul said in Romans 6:14: "Sin shall not have dominion over us!" Ultimately, in order for temptation to get out of control in our life, there has to be something in us that wants to be enticed and to yield to temptation.

The word enticed, as used in James 1:14, means "having been excited at the prospect of gratifying the flesh more than wanting to resist the temptation." Whatever the cause, when a person gives himself over to enticement, the 15^th verse classifies the temptation as giving way to lusts. And when lust conceives, it brings forth sin; and when sin is finished, it brings forth death.

When a woman conceives, it means she has become pregnant with a child, but she did not become pregnant by herself. Usually there is a romance, an engagement, and then a wedding. In other words, mutual cooperation on the part of both participants.

Along the same lines, sin--by itself--does not overpower a person. There has to be mutual cooperation between the person and the sin to produce conception. This cooperation begins with temptation giving way to enticement, and enticement giving way to lust.

When a woman conceives, she is carrying inside her womb a seed with the DNA or programming for a human being. In the same way, when lust impregnates the human soul, it carries within its seed the programming for a full-blown, out-of-control operation of sin that will take over a person's emotions.

This sin will attempt to keep that person from recognizing the grace and freedom in God's Word until it is finished and "brings forth death." That is to say, until sin delivers that person back into the spiritually-dead state he came out of, as Jude 12 says, These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots.

In case you are wondering whether a man can be lost once he has been born again, notice that the 12^th verse says, "trees whose fruit has withered, without fruit, twice dead"!

Now, why would Jude say "twice dead"? How can someone become dead a second time in this life? Jude had to be talking about spiritual death. In other words, the person is born spiritually dead, then at some point receives Christ and is born again, and then becomes spiritually dead again. That would make him twice dead.

I want to make this clear: Enticement is the beginning stage of flirting with sin. It is trying to gratify the appetites of the flesh by feeding it just a little bit at a time. However, let me assure you once more, the devil intends on leaving that person dead!

One of Satan's strongest delusions concerning sin is to deceive a person into thinking he is getting away with it, or to convince him that he will be able to stop "tomorrow." Well, I have sad news for people caught in this deception. Those kinds of "tomorrows" are the exception and not the rule. "Tomorrows" almost never come. The devil wants to keep a person flirting with sin until conception, because once conception takes place, that person will swear up and down he cannot stop sinning; his emotions just will not let him.

It is not that people trapped in sin will not come to church--they will. You see them at the altar, then back in the world, then back at the altar, then back into sin because their emotions are pregnant with sin and their will to serve God has been outweighed by emotions that demand gratification of the flesh.

But as I said before, I have good news for the person who is bound by sin: It is not necessary to stay that way, "for sin shall no more have dominion over you." Jesus has set you free!

Let's take a step into freedom by turning and spitting in the devil's eye and telling him that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death! (Romans 8:2) No matter how out-of-control we may feel or how powerful sin may appear to be, it cannot make us do what we do not want to do. God has not failed us. He put His nature in us that desires to yield to the law of the spirit of life, and we can learn how to cooperate with life and not death.

To purge our emotions from our weakness towards sin and to fortify our will against yielding to the temptations of the flesh, we must mortify the deeds of the body by praying in the Holy Spirit every day. We also need to learn more about private worship, not just praising God in a song service at church, but the kind of worship where we are alone with God and we lift our hands and begin to worship Him because our names are written in Heaven, and we worship Him because His Word says we are free.

This is why James 1:2 says, Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, because worship and joy sustain us in the emotional realms of our soul where Satan loves to operate.

Also keep in mind that once sin reaches the conception stage, the devil will do everything within his power to convince a person that unless God comes along and does something really spectacular or "special," he can never be free.

Wrong! That is what the devil wants us to think. The last thing he wants us to understand is that God has already broken the power of sin over every man, woman, and child. The devil wants us to keep waiting for God to do something, while at the same time, God wants us to understand that He has already done everything! God wants to teach us how to reconcile our whole life to the Cross, which destroyed the hold that sin has over us.

Many people--bound by sin--have confessed their sins, repented of them, and asked forgiveness only to fall back into those sins again. But no matter how condemned a person may feel, he still needs to stand up after each failure and say, "Sin cannot make me do what I will not do because Jesus has set me free!" Then, instead of looking and waiting for Jesus to come and do something, he needs to turn and worship God for His Word that says He already has. This is how freedom begins.

Find a place that is private and start telling God over and over again how much you love Him. Just say, "I love You, Jesus. I love You, Father God. I worship and adore You." Keep worshipping and adoring Him like this for a while. Worship Him for who you are in Him based on His Word--and that is free from the dominion of sin! The more you worship your Father and declare yourself free from the dominion of sin, the more you will be transformed into the image of who you are as a born-again child of God, in whom sin no longer has dominion. You will renew your mind to the truth of God's Word.

Confess daily, "I thank You, Jesus, that sin has no more dominion over me. Therefore, I am free. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Therefore, I am free!"

            If you will worship and praise the Lord every day, for as long as it takes, I can assure you that you will be free!








Adapted from Dave Roberson