This article is based on Pastor Adrian Rogers' message, How to Live in Victory.
Because salvation is a gift, rooted not in the merit and goodness of man but in the mercy and grace of God, does that mean that it makes no difference how we live?
Paul puts that lie to death.
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?
After we are saved by the grace of God, we need to learn to live in victory. Grace is the inducement and the power to live a godly, victorious life.
This deals with your identification with Jesus, who gave Himself for you. Jesus has acted on our behalf, and what happened to the Lord Jesus happened to us.
For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 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.
When Jesus died for you, you died with Him. (See Galatians 2:20.) This is the key to living victoriously.
Suppose you are a slave, and you have a cruel master who owns you. He tells you when to wake up, go to bed, where to work, and for how long. But when you die, he is not your master anymore. He has no more control over you.
Our old master has been Satan, the flesh, and the world. Charges have been leveled against our sins. But if you are saved, then you died in Jesus.
Not only that but you were buried with Jesus.
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death…
The burial of Jesus is part of the Gospel. (Read 1 Corinthians 15:3-4.) Jesus carried our sins into the grave of God’s forgetfulness. The devil would love to intimidate you with the bones of your old life, but they are buried away.
Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Jesus carried your sins to the grave and left them there, but He came out of that grave living in victory.
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…
Christians are not just nice people, they are new creatures. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17.) The same power that raised up Jesus from the dead, lives in us.
You have to know your identification in Christ, and then you can make the appropriation.
Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The word reckon is a bookkeeping term. It literally means “count on it.” Not because you feel it, but because it is true.
Reckoning is not just closing your eyes and pretending it is true—it is acting by faith on what you know to be true.
So many want to say whether or not they “feel” like they have a victorious Christian life. Your feelings are the shallowest part of your nature. Salvation is the deepest work of God. Get your salvation out of the realm of fickle emotions, and begin to count on God’s facts.
We know—He gave Himself for us that He might give Himself to us. We reckon—He lives in us now. Now we must yield. He gave Himself for us so that He might live through us.
You may say, “If I’ve been crucified with Christ and buried with Him, how come the old me keeps coming back up? I know that I died with Christ, and I reckon it to be true. Why am I not living in victory?”
It is because you have not learned to yield. How do we yield to Christ?
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
In other words, there is a way for you to not let sin reign. When you died, your old master lost all control over you.
Before Calvary, before your identification with Jesus, there was no possible way that you could live victoriously, even if you wanted to. But now, you do not have to let sin rule in your body. You have within you all that it takes to have victory over sin. You have to use your power of authority—know it, reckon it, and yield to it.
You will say, “Satan, I don’t have to obey you.” He says, “Yes you do. You know how weak you are. You know my power over you.”
Take the power of attorney: the Word of God. Say, “Here is something that I know to be true. I do not have to let you rule my life.”
It is not enough to say, “Satan, be gone.” Not only do you dethrone sin, you enthrone the Savior.
Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
Come to Jesus and say, “Lord, here I am. I present myself to you.”
But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
You become Jesus’ slave.
You say, “I don’t think I want to be a slave.” Well, you are going to be a slave of Jesus or a slave of Satan. Everybody is a slave to something—either in Adam or in Christ. When you yield to Jesus, you become His bondslave. You say to Him, “Lord, you have a right to tell me what to do, when to wake up, when to go to bed, what to eat and not to eat, what to wear and not to wear. You have a right to tell me anything you want.”
Paul began this epistle to the Romans by calling himself a bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ. (See Romans 1:1.) Enslavement to Jesus brings perfect liberty.
What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.
Romans 1:1, 6:1-22; Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
