Victory over Sin through Grace

Author: Creflo Dollar

Summary

When we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we also receive a new spiritual nature. God takes away the sin nature that once controlled us and puts His nature inside of us. As a result, sin can no longer control us because the Holy Spirit lives in us. It is through God’s grace that we have victory over sin; however, we must choose to cooperate with His grace, or allow ourselves to remain in bondage to sin and our shortcomings. When we understand His ways, His nature, and His grace, we are empowered to win in life.

The grace of God not only allows us to be forgiven of our sins, it also helps us overcome sin when we resist it (Titus 2:11, 12, AMP).

God wants us to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. His grace helps us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust.

He will not require us to do something without supporting our decision to do it.
We need His grace to serve Him acceptably (Hebrews 12:28).

God predestinated us to have His inward nature and character (Romans 8:29, AMP).

Before we were born, God had already decided to allow us to share inwardly His divine nature and character.

Therefore, sin’s dominion over us has ultimately been destroyed.
Through the empowerment of His grace, sin has lost its power forever (Romans 6:1-16, AMP, The Message Bible).
Being free moral agents, we can decide whether we will allow sin (or our old sin nature) to govern our lives.

Before we were born again, we had the nature of Satan, which is the sin nature (Ephesians 2:1-7, AMP).

That sin nature controlled us, and our sinful lifestyle was the result of its domination.

Once we became Christians, God took away our old sin nature and gave us His nature (John 1:16; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

Our spirits were made new; however, our minds and bodies remained unchanged.
We must train our minds and bodies to line up with our new nature that is like God.
We can escape the corruption in this world through the precious promises of God (or the Word of God) (2 Peter 1:3, 4).
Without the promises of God, we would not have access to the power within.
We became born-again because of the Word of God, which is also called incorruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23).
The Word of God works like a seed, because a seed contains within it the nature of its parent.
Likewise, the Word of God contains within it the power of God.

Many Christians are being held captive by their own ignorance. They suffer defeats in life because they do not truly know God and the power of His grace (Isaiah 5:13, AMP; Hosea 4:6).

These Christians do not know they have a choice. They can be free of the bondage that comes from sin, or remain in it.

With the knowledge of grace, we can resist the urge to sin. As a result, God’s grace supports and empowers our decision.
This helps us to remain free, even when we are tempted to do wrong.