by John Pederson

Every Christian faces within himself a vexing contradiction. He knows sin and its selfish expression is wrong, is hateful to God, and he is convinced of his need for forgiveness. Yet he still finds himself lapsing into sin, saying and doing things he hates. The Bible teaches that Christians will face this vexing, troubling contradiction all their life, so long as they inhabit this present body.

Nevertheless, this does not mean the Christian should give in to discouragement in the face of this contradiction. Rather, the Christian should resolve to strive and fight against his persistent enemy, against that principle of sinful disobedience within.

The question is, “How do we fight?”.

How do Christians wage the warfare their earthly sojourn entails? How may Christians expect to see the hatefulness, selfishness, lust, envy, jealousy, anger, and pride within them displaced by love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, patience, and self-control? Is it even possible for a person to display such qualities?

The answer to this question shows the great divide between the gospel of Scripture and its counterfeits. The reason is simple: How we fight is based on what we believe. Nothing so dramatically illustrates the contrast between the gospel and what is not the gospel than what fundamentally motivates a person.

What makes this even more important to consider is this: Christians who believe the gospel can be side-tracked, bewitched, and misled by false teaching, and can mislead themselves. They can and do require correction, clarification, and even rebuke if they give their ears to false doctrine, and they can see the influence of false doctrine where this matter of their motive is concerned. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, spoke of he “works of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19ff) which were in evidence when those in the church began to give their ears to the false doctrine of the Judaizers. The Christian may expect weakness, failure, and defeat in his struggle against sin if he faces it with anything but the pure doctrine of the gospel. Only the weapons of righteousness, only the armor of God, can suffice to truly equip the Christian in his fight.

I speak from experience. As a Christian who believes the gospel, I found myself over a very significant time in my life repeatedly overcome in a sin which, though I knew it to be wrong, persistently recurred in my life and eventually, in its public discovery, brought many harmful consequences, not only upon my own life, but also on those who I know and love. Through this and over the ensuing years, I have considered the fact of my being overcome in this sin and the motive with which I sought to end it, and concluded that I am no stranger to the influence of the false doctrine I hate and reject as a believer in Christ’s righteousness by faith.

So to say this subject is close to my heart would be an understatement, and though so much more could and probably should be said, I will seek below to express the motive of the Christian as he wages war against the enemy within: the principle of sinful rebellion he carries with him in this body of death. (Thank God for the hope of the resurrection!)

I will express this motive in terms which show the contrast between the “gospel” of self-righteousness and the gospel of Scripture, and express it in view of a life-situation, namely, the existence and expression of a recurring sinful practice, hidden in denial and secrecy:

I will express it in the voices of two preachers. The first preacher is a Pharisee who, though he speaks of grace and forgiveness, ultimately believes that self-righteousness is why a person “deserves” to be forgiven and to receive mercy from God. The second preacher is a minister of the gospel of Scripture.

Preacher #1: “You claim to be a believer and to know the gospel? Well I am here to tell you that if you think you are Christ’s and you allow unrepentant sin in your life, you should fear for your very soul. You should know that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of God. God does not trifle with sin and you should not trifle with it either. I am here to warn you that if you are secretively practicing and hiding some sin and you are persistently returning to it, you have reason to fear of whether you are even forgiven at all and whether you are a Christian in the true sense, and you should fear the terror of hell!”

In other words, Preacher #1 motivates “Christian” obedience by fear of judgment, by the terror of the law, which says, “whosoever does not continue to do everything that is written in the book of the law is under a curse”.

Preacher #2: “You claim to be a believer and know the gospel? Then knowing the gospel, you should know it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, and you should not be entangled again in a yoke of bondage. You need to understand that your life is not about you. It is not about your performance or your anything. It is about Christ and what He has done by fulfilling all righteousness and establishing that by which God is glorified as a Just God and your Savior, your Justifier. You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

“Are you discouraged and troubled because of a recurring and secret sinful practice in your life? Are you overcome with it, powerless, it seems, to do anything about it? Then the first thing you must do is this, Christian: You must hear and believe the gospel, that you are reconciled to God by the death of His Son and you are forgiven of this sin, yes the very sin which besets and bows you down under its power. I call upon you, Christian, to consider yourself to be dead to sin but alive to God by Jesus Christ, and to render the judgment concerning this sin which has already been rendered, to assign it the place it deserves, and to live as one alive from the dead.

“I call upon you, Christian, to forsake this sin in the power of the gospel, believing that you are forgiven of it and that you can not and will not be condemned on account of it. I call upon you to turn from it in gratitude you have been forgiven of it and not in fear that it will send you to hell.”

The terrors of the law will never motivate one act of Christian obedience. All the terrors of the law will do is produce the superficial, hypocritical “obedience” of a Pharisee.

The Christian obeys, not in fear that his lack of obedience will bring him to condemnation, but in confidence that he has been justified before God by the righteousness of Christ, and he has been forgiven. The Christian lives by faith, and the fruit of the Spirit is the result.

And this is the way we fight. We fight by the power of the gospel, and not by the terror of the law.