We Can Be Victorious and Become Glorious!

We Can Be Victorious and Become Glorious!

To become a truly glorious church is not out of our reach, saints!

Can We Really Become Like Jesus?
We’ve talked about it, sung about it since we were kids, and still do. But do we really believe it? Most do not.

A root problem that keeps us from seeking to become like Jesus has to do with how we see ourselves as we relate to sin and righteousness.

How we interpret what the Holy Spirit was conveying through Paul in Romans 7:14–25 is critical to our victory over sin, which is critical to how we conduct our lives – whether we enjoy regular fellowship and leadership from the Holy Spirit, and anything else relative to how we represent the Lord.

That Romans passage has been controversial for centuries, but it’s very important to get this right, which is why I’m writing about it today.

Consider these passages to begin:
Paul wrote, “For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:18).
Paul also wrote, “…knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin” (Rom. 6:6-7).
Again, he wrote, “For sin shall not have dominion over you…” (Rom. 6:14).
And again, “And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Rom. 6:18).

Yet, in what seems to directly contradict all that, Paul wrote,
14 “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

 21 “I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

 “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin” (Romans 7:14-25).

There is No Contradiction, but Confirmation.
Paul may appear to be contradicting himself at first, but a closer look shows that he is not doing that at all.

Yet for nearly 500 years the larger Church community has given far more weight to what Paul wrote in chapter 7 than to what he wrote in chapters 5 through 6. In doing so, the vast majority of the Church has believed and taught that Paul, in his regenerated state, was “sold under sin” and hopelessly “wretched”; thus, we too, must surely be wretched! What a lie the devil has told!

That is the Problem.
It has aided and abetted the perpetual cycle of sin in billions of believers around the globe (including all those who live now or who have already died under the sway of that lie). It has also bound zillions of believers around the globe to a Church system of one sort or another, believing they need to be subservient to their church in order to maintain their status quo while they are such wretched, sin-bound “believers.” It has literally driven us from holiness rather than to it—and “without holiness, no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

Now, and for about the last 45 years, since I preached my first sermons on how God called us to be a holy people on a local radio station in Jackson, Mississippi, I get strange looks as if I’m speaking a foreign language. And when I try to explain how the Bible teaches that He is preparing a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish, I’m accused of preaching heresy! Amazing! And all I’ve done the whole time is preach straight down the line!

How Much Power Does Sin Still Have Over the Child of God?
This matters because it determines how we view ourselves as the “new man” relative to temptation and sin.

This matters because it defines whether we see the power of sin as towering over us still, or whether we see its power to rule us as broken, utterly destroyed through Jesus Christ, then continually kept in check by the power of His Spirit.

For centuries, the prevailing theological thought taught in seminaries when interpreting Romans 7 has been that even those of us in Christ are ruled by the power of the flesh, finding relief only by continually crying out to Jesus in desperation for a rescue.

My response to that is this: while Jesus is indeed our only Deliverer, and while we should daily confess our sins, finding our refuge through Him alone, the reality is that, through His death, burial, and resurrection, He has already broken sin’s power to rule over us like it did before His mission was complete. In chapter 6, the Apostle Paul clearly and explicitly establishes the fact that, through Jesus’ finished work, sin’s dominion over us was broken!

Growing up in an evangelical church, I vividly remember being taught that Romans 7 doomed us to a life forever gripped by sin. That teaching remains prevalent today.

I mention the evangelical church because it is through “Evangelicalism,” akin in so many ways to Protestantism, that we are supposed to have been brought out from under the bondage of Christian Orthodoxy, where the spirit of religion clearly reigns. Central to the practice of Orthodox Christianity has been the teaching that God’s people will always be under the burden and guilt of sin. A fringe likeness to that heretical gospel migrated over into Protestantism and later into Evangelicalism. Even in Evangelicalism, we were and are carefully trained not to think of ourselves as “saints,” but rather as wretched “sinners, saved by grace,” but still sold under sin! How awful!

God Showed Me Mercy
Since I began preaching, I have seen and taught how the enemy subtly fed this defeated-life interpretation to the Church with a specific agenda: to keep believers trapped in a cycle of sin, and to give us an easy excuse to tolerate it under the assumption that we are powerless to change. What a victory the devil has won when, through religious men, he has convinced the visible Church of that lie for centuries now! That fatal doctrine was and is leveraged to keep religious congregants under the thumb of the spirit of religious Christianity—which, by the way, can be as real in a modern-day, evangelical mega-church as it is in the most rigid orthodox churches. It may not be as obvious in modern settings, but in some, it’s just as real.

Chapters 5 – 8 Give Greater Clarity to Chapter 7
Please read Romans 5 through 8 afresh, then notice the logical order of Romans 1 through 8 below. Each chapter is loaded with various truths; but for the sake of the clear line of thinking through Paul’s letter to make his point and mine, consider these brief explanations:

Chapter 1 – The Gentiles are unrighteous without the written Law.
Chapter 2 – The Jews are unrighteous even with the written Law, the prophets, etc.
Chapter 3 – All, both Jew and Gentile, are unrighteous and in need of the Savior.
Chapter 4 – Faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ the Righteous, is the only way to gain righteousness.
Chapter 5 – With that faith in Jesus Christ, we have peace with God and stand before Him as righteous.
Chapter 6 – By identifying with Christ’s death and resurrection through faith, we truly died to the old man of sin that had reigned our lives and were raised to walk in newness of life under the leadership of the new man. The very power of sin was broken over us! Now, as a new creation, we are literally “bound to righteousness.” Sin can only rule over us if we choose to surrender to it again; thus, our identity changes. We are no longer “sinners saved by grace,” but “saints saved by grace.”

 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (II Cor. 5:17).

Chapter 7 –
A. To the Jew, Paul explains why it was impossible to obey the Law perfectly while sin’s power still reigned over them before they were born of the Spirit by faith in Jesus Christ.
B. To the Jew and Gentile, Paul explains why it is impossible to fully obey God by written laws or commandments even today—that is, if we seek to do so by the strength of our “flesh,” as the Jews sought to do. He explains that our flesh is still earthly, not fully redeemed, and the warfare between the flesh and the Spirit continues.

He concludes that in the flesh there is nothing good—nothing that can help us please God or walk in righteous obedience to Him. At the very end of chapter 7, Paul shows his desperation, and ours, to look to Jesus to deliver us from the grip of sin—something He has already done through His finished work!

The whole time, Paul is describing the weakness of the flesh in its attempts to please God. It just won’t work.

With total dependency on what Jesus Christ has already accomplished, “we live by faith in the Son of God” and walk in newness of life by His Spirit! The Apostle John tells us what to do when we do sin again: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

Chapter 8 –
A. To all who “walk in the Spirit,” Paul explains that there will be no condemnation [because we will not be committing sin when we are in step with and obedience to the Spirit, who cannot sin].
B. To all who are “in Jesus Christ,” there is no condemnation because He has cleansed us from our sins [our continuing to humbly confess our sins and seeking to overcome sin validates our saving faith].

Because of what Jesus did, breaking the death-grip of sin over us, and through His indwelling Spirit, we can live victoriously over sin! Jesus didn’t just wash away our sins, delivering us from the eternal death and judgment we deserved; He also broke the very power that sin had to rule our daily lives!

 Bottom line: Sin in our lives should be the exception, not the acceptable norm.

A Quick Review of 5 – 8 to Clarify:
Chapter 5 tells us how we “reign in life” by reigning over sin, all due to what the Righteous One has done for us; Chapter 6 further explains how that the power for sin to rule over us has been broken;
Chapter 7 tells us how we cannot live a righteous life, past or present, by the flesh—so we look to what Jesus has already done;
Chapter 8 tells us how we can live the righteous life of Jesus Christ by living in the Spirit, who also “mortifies the deeds of the flesh.”

Without Spot or Wrinkle…
“A glorious church” is not out of reach, saints! A holy life is not out of reach! Living a life that is pleasing to God in a world filled with temptation and sin is not out of reach, saints!

My Research Speaks for Itself:
I suspected that the maligned view of Romans 7 may have been born out of a response to the wrong view of “perfection” in the believer. Much of Reformed Theology originated as a response to other theological streams, and so did the Reformers position regarding the Doctrine of Sanctification (and “holiness”). Other notable Christian leaders down through the Church Age have also adopted various and sundry views on the same theme. All this has left Christians believing wrongly, or not knowing what to believe, so, staying away from the matter. None of that is good. The Enemy has dealt us a strong blow, but not one that the Spirit cannot overcome.

Nothwithstanding, what the Spirit is doing and will do to correct the thinking of the remnant, when I attempt to teach things such as “sanctification” and “holiness” now, wrong word associations are made leading to wrong assumptions—most turn me off without giving me the opportunity to explain or clarify a purely biblical interpretation.

As is the case with all doctrine, we should not allow particular terms in our Christian vernacular, or common associations with terms, to divert us or discourage us from seeing what the scripture actually says about a matter—any matter.

Below, you will find the results of research I conducted to see why the maligned interpretation of Romans 7 became mainstream Christianity that continues to today. I hope it helps you see the scheme of the Enemy, and solidifies your belief in the truth.

While Saint Augustine (in his later years), Martin Luther, and John Calvin popularized the view that this text describes the normal, daily struggle of a regenerated Christian, a massive cloud of notable theologians and leaders argued the exact opposite. They taught that Romans 7 describes a person who is unregenerate, an awakened sinner, or a Jew trapped under the condemnation of the Mosaic Law.

The most notable Christian leaders and theologians who held this “pre-Christian” or “under the Law” view include:

1. The Early Church Fathers (Pre-Augustine)
For the first three centuries of the church, the Greek-speaking Church Fathers almost universally held that Romans 7 described life before Christ or life under the Law. They believed treating it as the normal Christian life would undermine the Gospel’s power to grant victory over sin.

• Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–202): Taught that Romans 7 demonstrates the absolute weakness of the Mosaic Law to save or empower a person before the arrival of New Covenant grace.
• Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253): Argued that Paul was writing rhetorically by assuming the persona of a raw convert or an unregenerate soul still enslaved to old, sinful habits.
• John Chrysostom (c. 347–407): The great archbishop of Constantinople explicitly stated that Paul is speaking in the character of a man living under the Old Testament Law, not a person walking in the freedom of Christ.
• The Early Saint Augustine (354–430): In his early writings, Augustine firmly taught that Romans 7 described a man under the Law. He only changed his mind later in life during his fierce, reactionary theological battle against the Pelagian heresy.

2. The Post-Reformation Arminians

• Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609): The Dutch theologian actually ignited the entire systematic controversy of his era by writing an extensive, line-by-line commentary titled Dissertation on the True and Genuine Sense of the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Arminius argued that a regenerate Christian cannot be described as “sold under sin” (v. 14) or “brought into captivity” to sin (v. 23) because Romans 6 and 8 explicitly declare that the Christian has been set free from that very bondage.
• Hugo Grotius (1583–1645): The brilliant Dutch jurist and theologian supported the Arminian view, arguing that Paul used the first-person “I” as a rhetorical device to describe the plight of the Jewish nation struggling fruitlessly under the Mosaic Law.

3. The Methodist and Holiness Leaders

• John Wesley (1703–1791): Wesley followed the early Church Fathers and Arminius, using Romans 7 as a cornerstone for his doctrine of Christian Perfection. He argued that Romans 7 is a description of an awakened sinner—someone whose conscience has been pierced by the Law, who desperately wants to do good, but completely lacks the Holy Spirit’s power to actually achieve it. Wesley taught that the actual Christian experience does not begin until the triumphal declaration of Romans 8:1.
• Adam Clarke (1762–1832): The premier early Methodist Bible commentator wrote extensively on Romans 7:14, flatly declaring that applying this passage to a continuous Christian experience was a dangerous error that lulled believers into accepting a baseline of spiritual defeat.

4. High-Profile 20th-Century Calvinistic/Evangelical Exceptions
While the “under the Law” view is native to Arminianism, several highly prominent, classical evangelical leaders who otherwise leaned Reformed also rejected the idea that Romans 7 describes a healthy Christian life:

• Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1881): The legendary Westminster Chapel preacher dedicated a famous, multi-sermon series to this topic. He took a unique mediating position, arguing that Romans 7 describes an “awakened” person who is trying to achieve sanctification by their own strength through the Law rather than resting in the Holy Spirit. He insisted it does not portray the normal, healthy Christian life.
• Douglas Moo (Modern New Testament Scholar): One of the most respected modern, broadly Reformed, New Testament commentators alive today, Moo defended the view in his landmark commentary on Romans that Paul is using a rhetorical “I” to describe the historical experience of the Jewish person living under the crushing weight of the Mosaic Law.

In Summary:
1. The Bible does not teach what John Wesley believed and taught—that there is a “second blessing” that transforms us into some kind of heart-perfected state. John Wesley was used by God in a mighty way; but when reading his whole testimony years ago, I found that, regarding holiness and sanctification, he gave too much weight to his own experience. His Doctrine of Entire Sanctification and “perfection” is not correct. Yet, swinging the pendulum all the way in the other direction created more error. There is a balanced view of scripture that I’m seeking to present here, which is plainly understood by the spiritually minded believer straight from the text.

2. The Bible does not teach us that we will never sin in this life, but that we should pursue absolute holiness and righteousness. And it does not fail to address those times when we do sin, saying, “… If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9).

3. The Bible does teach us the following:

• Jesus broke the power of sin to rule over us. Full stop.
• We are to pursue a sinless life by walking in the Spirit. Full stop.
• We cannot possibly overcome sin through the strength of the flesh or the mind, because the flesh still rebels against anything born of God, who is spiritual and whose Law is spiritual. Full stop.
• We can absolutely overcome sin by yielding to His Spirit who lives in every believer born of His Spirit.

4. An honest observation of the Christian community today at large:

• Most do not really desire to become like Jesus as He really is (Mark 7:7-9; Rev. 3:1).
• The love of self is rampant and will, no doubt, lead many who profess Him to eternal destruction (Matt. 13:22; II Tim. 3:1-7).
• Thinking lightly of sin and continuing therein risks their eternal souls (Matt. 7:21; Heb. 3:12-14).

“Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified” (II Cor. 13:5).

5. What the majority of the visible Church teaches:

• Since it teaches that we are still “sold under sin,” whoever else teaches or pursues a truly sanctified life, as plainly stated in the Bible, is heaping condemnation on other believers.
• The only believers identified with true sanctified living are faith heroes of past centuries. The visible Church does exalt outstanding Christian leaders (sometimes, they are only myths), satisfying the spirit of religion, which is to steer all eyes away from the Righteous One who has won the way to complete victory over sin for all who believe.
• By teaching that the believer is still a “slave to sin,” rather than a “slave to righteousness,” the Church maintains its religious serfdom kingdom, where all who go in are its serfs.

 “… lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away” (II Tim. 3:4b-5).

Jesus said: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent” (Rev. 3:19).

 Let us heed His love rebuke and light chastening now. He has been gracious. He is willing, if we are willing.

Putting Off the Old Self and the Deeds of the Flesh

• Ephesians 4:22–24 – “…that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”
• Colossians 3:8–10 – “But now you must also put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man…”
• Romans 13:12–14 – “The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light… But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”
• Galatians 5:19–21 – “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like… those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

 Pursuing Holiness and True Sanctification

• 1 Peter 1:15–16 – “…but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.'”
• Hebrews 12:14 – “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”
• 1 Thessalonians 4:3–4 – “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor.”
• 2 Corinthians 7:1 – “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

 Walking in the Spirit and Being Fruitful

• Galatians 5:16 – “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”
• 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.”
• Colossians 3:12–14 – “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering… But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.”