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Put to Death

Put to Death

Words of Faith 11-5-19

Dr. Jeffrey D. Hoy © 2019

Jeff.Hoy@faithfellowshipweb.com

Faith Fellowship Church - Melbourne, FL

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Colossians 3

[5] Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. [6] Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

 

     Paul called believers to deal violently with the sin nature—put to death the sins that enslave the body and its members.  In this sense, a believer is to take the various parts of his body and put them to death, in so far as sin is concerned. 

     How do we do this?  It is an act of the mind and spirit. We consider the body to be hidden in the death of Christ.  We make a spiritual decision to act as though the body is dead with Christ remembering that a dead man cannot sin. Therefore, the believer is dead to sin.

      A person who wants to live for God looks at his body and at sin in this way. The only way we can possibly conquer sin is to treat our body as dead to sin or to consider sin as dead to the body. We must live as though the body has no part in sin, and sin has no part in his body. But remember, this life is possible only in Christ.

      Christ alone, through the Holy Spirit, can work within the human heart and give it the energy and power to conquer sin permanently and eternally. Some people can discipline themselves to overcome some sin, but not all sin.  And we cannot discipline ourselves permanently and not for eternity. This can be done only through Christ. There is an enormous difference between human discipline and godly control, and that difference is Jesus Christ.

       What sins are to be put to death? Paul was precise, for there are some very specific sins which tend to enslave the human body. The sins that enslave the human body include sexual immorality. The word used is porneia, meaning fornication or any sort of sexual immorality.  Impurity means uncleanness of any kind. 

      Lust is really any inordinate affection—passion, craving, strong desire, intense arousal, or driving lust.  Evil desires refer to a yearning and aching for all kinds of evil.  Greed is best understood as covetousness-- craving, grasping, grabbing, or desiring to have something that is out of reach or not needed.

       All these are to be put to death.  Why?  Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.  There certainly are other reasons to put these sins to death, such as the way sin enslaves and the fact that our real need to commune with the Lord is thwarted by sin. But the anger of the Lord is also coming, probably sooner than we think. 

      How are you doing in the sin department?  Are you actively putting to death your sinful nature?  Are you dealing violently with that which threatens to do violence in our homes and families?  Don’t dilly-dally around.  Now is the time.

 

      Father God, cause my body to be dead to the sinful nature.  Crucify my sin nature and its desires.  Fill me with new life that is in Your spirit.  In Jesus’ Name.

 

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The Words of Faith devotion is published five days a week by E-mail, and our website, and our church app, excluding Federal holidays. Please feel free to forward this devotion to a friend who might be blessed by this devotion. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is quoted from the New International Version (R) of The Holy Bible. Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Words of Faith (c) 1997, 2010 Jeffrey D. Hoy. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to forward this copyrighted material or use portions of it with appropriate notation of the source for non-profit purposes.  

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