Why Do We Continue To Struggle With Sin

My Utmost For His Highest

In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. —Romans 8:37

{CHAMBERS} “Paul was speaking here of the things that might seem likely to separate a saint from the love of God. But the remarkable thing is that nothing can come between the love of God and a saint. The things Paul mentioned in this passage can and do disrupt the close fellowship of our soul with God and separate our natural life from Him. But none of them is able to come between the love of God and the soul of a saint on the spiritual level. The underlying foundation of the Christian faith is the undeserved, limitless miracle of the love of God that was exhibited on the Cross of Calvary; a love that is not earned and can never be. Paul said this is the reason that “in all these things we are more than conquerors.” We are super-victors with a joy that comes from experiencing the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.”

{ELGIN} (2 Corinthians 4:7-9) “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed”  It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact.  I have often wondered why I continue to sin.  Why God, when He saved me, didn’t somehow keep me from ever sinning again.  The letters to the churches in the New Testament are replete with encouragement and admonitions from the Apostles to stop sinning, to live rightly.

My life is vastly different from the way I used to be. If I talk about the things I used to do, my children and grandchildren have difficulty believing it.  They can’t imagine me smoking, drinking, cussing, carousing.  But that was my life before I was born again.  Today I still struggle with sin, but it is more thought life than external.  Jesus said that does not make it OK.  (Matthew 5:27-28)  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” You see our relationship is first with God and next with man.  What I think affects my relationship with Him. What you think affects your relationship with Him as well.  But thank the Lord, there is hope for us.  God does not wink at our sin after our new birth, but nor does He undo our new birth.  It is not because we, ourselves are perfect, but because of Jesus and our faith in Him that we are saved.  We are marked with the Spirit of God.  We are His forever. (Romans 6:1-3) “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?"

John Newton, the former slave trader, is quoted as saying “I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, "By the grace of God I am what I am."”