John Wesley has a word in season here also: “And if any of you should at any time fall from what you now are, if you should again feel pride or unbelief, or any temper from which you are now delivered, do not deny it, do not hide it, do not disguise it at all, at the peril of your soul. At all events, go to one in whom you can confide, and speak just what you feel. God will enable him to speak a word in season which shall be health to your soul. And surely the Lord will again lift up your head and cause the bones that have been broken to rejoice.”
The Bible treatment of the conquest of sin is subject to none of these distressing difficulties. It guards from dangerous errors on every side, and at the same time leaves no loopholes for tolerating sin as do the current views held by nearly all Christians.
What Terms Does the Bible Use?
God says, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin” (Rom. 6:11). There are two ways the devil would like us to interpret this. One is by his old lie regarding “death.” He wants us to believe that the capacity for sinning is taken away so that we shall not acknowledge sin to be sin, and shall call the works of the devil the fruit of the Spirit. But death is not annihilation, but separation. It is not that some “thing” within us has been put out of existence. All that we were as lost sinners, in our unregenerate state—the “old man”—was crucified with Christ and is buried, and a Christian is to reckon that fact true. But he is to remember that there is ever the possibility of turning our members over as instruments of sin. And whenever sin enters, when anything in thought, word or deed that is contrary to the Spirit of Christ has a place in the life, it means that self is on the throne and we are alive to sin.
But Satan’s other interpretation of this verse is his favorite one, for by it he deludes most Christians. It is only when this fails that he tries the other and drives the Christian beyond the Word of God. You are to reckon yourselves dead unto sin, Satan tells us, but of course you know very well that it is never actually true that you are dead unto sin. You will keep on sinning. When you die then will come complete deliverance, but not before. In other words, God is a liar. All Satan’s wiles in the last analysis are found to be variations of this original statement of his to our first parents.
God never tells us to reckon on a lie. It is eternally true that in our position before God we are dead to sin, because we have been crucified with Christ and raised together with him. This position of ours becomes a blessed reality in actual experience as we reckon by faith, and only so long as we reckon by faith. Let Satan not rob us of our heritage by telling us it is only “positionally” that we are dead to sin. God is not thus mocking us when he tells us to “reckon” on this truth of crucifixion with Christ.
When We Reckon Self Dead to Sin
This reckoning gives us no holiness of our own. It gives no cause for boasting in our own record. It gives no uneasiness as to whether we have had this or that feeling as a witness of the Spirit.
It will be seen from these Scriptures which have been considered that every true Christian has a measure of victory in Christ. As Dr. Scofield has pointed out, the experience of Christians and Christian experience may be two entirely different things; for Christian experience is wholly the product of the Holy Spirit. Whatever measure of true Christian life is expressed, therefore, is the work of the Holy Spirit, and to that extent is victory by faith, even though the Christian is ignorant of the truth of the faith walk.
The Victorious Life, which is just another term for the normal “Christian Life,” is simply walking moment by moment in complete faith in His perfect work.