Seven Strategies to Strangle Sin 

-by Nate Archer

Killing My Old Man

It is safe to say that God is usually against murdering one’s parents.  That isn’t what we’re talking about here.  There was an old Christian song called “Killing My Old Man” which at first sounds morbidly like it is about a guy who wants to blow away his abusive dad.  But in reality it is about putting our to death our sin nature.  The old King James Version sometimes used the phrase “old man” for the old sinful part that remains in a person even after they are made new by Christ at salvation.  

“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self [old man] with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”  -Colossians 3:5-10

Why Resort to Murder?

Of course, if you don’t really care about putting your sin nature to death, there isn’t much point reading this.  Thinks about the reasons why you should fight sin.  Here are a few:

-Because of the glory of God.  God is glorified when we choose Him over the pleasures of sin.  God is dishonored when we declare with our decisions that sin is better than He is.

-Because of gratitude for what Christ did for you.  Christ bore our sins and died an unspeakably terrible death on the cross.  How can we return that love by spitting in His face?

-Because sin always leads to problems and pain.  Sin has consequences.  Yes, sin has pleasures, but these pleasures do not last, and they hide daggers.  The fish loves the worm, but the worm hides the hook.

-Because sin wrecks things.

-Because the ways of our Creator are best.  Go figure that the God who created us would know the way that works best.  I am not saying that following Christ will remove all problems from your life.  But at the same time, life comes with a warning sticker that saying “use only as directed.”  If you use a DVD as a frisbee, sooner or later it won’t work as intended.   

-Because it will help your relationship with God.  People constantly want new secret tips to feel closer to God.  Here is an old obscure one that is out of fashion today… stop sinning!  I’m not saying that we can completely rid ourselves of all sin, at least not in this life.  But on the other hand, when we deliberately choose to sin, we fall out of the pleasure of God.  This doesn’t mean to God disowns His children, but it does mean that it puts our relationship with Him on the rocks until we get right.  When we choose sin, we choose to live in the shadows instead of living in the light of His love.  If you want to feel God’s love, turn from that sin and choose to walk in the light.  (See 1 John 1:5-10)

-Because God, in love, disciplines His children when they sin.  Hebrews 12:7-11 tells us that God isn’t one of those bad parents who is scarred and unwilling to punish His kids.  He loves us too much for that.  He knows what is best for us and loves us enough to do whatever it takes to get us back on track. 

-Seeking God rather than sin leads to greater pleasure.  God’s goal isn’t to strip all pleasure from your life.  He wants to give you greater pleasure.  God wants you to have the greater joy that comes from Him, not the counterfeit satisfaction of sin.

Saddam Hussein and Your Spiritual Life

Sometimes the Bible seems to talk as though sin is already defeated in our lives.  Colossians 3:5 tells us to put the earthly nature to death.  Sometimes it talks about the need to put it to death.  Romans 6:6 says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”  These seem to be contradictions, but they are a reality because we live in the strange overlap between the decisive victory of the cross and the final victory yet to come.  In one sense, believers are freed from sin at the moment the cross is applied to their life through faith, but in another sense we still await our future freedom.

Some people mock President Bush for landing on an aircraft carrier which displayed a large banner declaring “mission accomplished.”  They point to the continued terrorism in Iraq as evidence that the mission is not accomplished.  Yet who could realistically deny the fact that the nation of Iraq has been irreversibly changed because of U.S. intervention?  Statures of the former dictator have been pulled down.  Yes there is still hard work to do, but the regime of an evil dictator has been overthrown. 

Iraq is a good analogy for the spiritual situation that believers find themselves in.  It is important for believers to understand this.  The better we understand the situation we are in, the better we can fight to finish the mission. 

Here are some of the ways the liberation of Iraq compares to the liberation of a Christian from sin.

o        First, like Iraq, believers have been set free by a liberating force, not themselves.  No Christian has achieved freedom from sin because of out own internal willpower.  We have been saved because of the good invasion of Christ in our lives.

o        The old ruler has been defeated and cast out of power.  For Iraq, this was Saddam Hussein.  For believers, Satan’s rule in their lives is ended. 

o        A new, better ruler is in place.  Iraq is setting up a new government.  For believers, Christ takes His rightful place as Lord of our lives and begins setting up His “government” in our lives.

o        A new better ruler is in place.  

o        Still, terrorists are entrenched and will fight viciously and will fight dirty.  The main army has been defeated, but loyalists and others remain hidden, striking whenever they can.  Although we are a new creation in Christ, the remains of our old nature continue to attack. 

o        Before, we only had the ability to choose to serve the evil dictator.  Now we have the ability to choose freedom.  We now have the moral ability to choose either good or evil. 

o        Although the main victory has been accomplished, the fight will be ugly, hard, and long.

o        Despite all of this, progress is possible, and the final victory will come!

Sometimes the Bible talks about salvation as something past.  Sometimes it is something present, and sometimes it is future.  Those who have placed their trust in Christ alone as their Savior have been saved from the penalty of sin, are being saved from the power of sin, and one day will be saved from the presence of sin. 

The war will be long and hard.  Now that we know the situation, we need some strategic advice from God’s Word to help us in the fight.  None of these strategies is enough on its own to win the fight.  Don’t try one then decide that it didn’t work and move on to the next.  They are meant to be used together.  The better we apply them, the better our chances are.  In addition, there are more strategies out there than these seven.  In one sense, the whole Christian life and everything we learn from Scripture is part of the war plan.  Don’t neglect the basics of the Christ-centered life:

àLet God speak to you through His Word

àTalk personally with God through prayer

àConnecting with other Christians who will push, teach, and encourage you

àExperience the thrill of taking the message of Christ to those who need to be saved

"I think its gone far enough

I can't take it anymore

I've got to even up the score

Before he sweeps me off the floor

I've really got to find a way

Of taking care of him for good

I know he'd kill me if he could

So I'll nail him to the wood"

"Killing my old man

You may not understand
He's a terrible man

So bad, so bad

Got to make a stand 

And kill the old man"

"I think I'd better do it now

Get my hammer and a nail

Pray to God I that I won't fail

Lest he'll keep me in the jail

And I don't wanna stay in jail!

"Killing my old man

You may not understand
He's a terrible man

So bad, so bad

Got to make a stand 

And kill the old man"

Every time that I think he's gone and I've finally won

He just keeps coming back, puts me on the run"

"Killing my old man

You may not understand
He's a terrible man

So bad, so bad

Got to make a stand 

And kill the old man"

-Killing My Old Man
 -Petra

SEVEN STRATEGIES TO STRANGLE SIN

Strategy One: Realize that the War on Sin is BASED ON GRACE.

Don’t try to beat sin so that you can go to heaven.  That won’t work.  First of all, you will never be able to eliminate all sin from your life.  But more importantly, you need to grasp the fact that no one is saved by being good.  Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works so that no one can boast.” 

The Christian experience can be summed up in three words: guilt, grace, and gratitiude… in that order!  We are guilty because of our rebellion against God.  But God loved us enough to die in our place on the cross, taking the penalty for our sin, forgiving anyone who will turn to Him and trust the Lord Jesus Christ alone as their sin-bearer.  This means that we are saved by grace—that is, by His free gift—not by anything good we have done, or even by our zeal to turn over a new leaf.  And once someone is saved, they are a saved forever.  God will not disown us after He adopts us (Ephesians 1:5; John 10:28-29).  This means that a believers’ motivation to live for God isn’t the fear of hell, but instead gratitude for what Jesus did for us.  Because He died for us, we want to live for Him.

In Romans 12:1, Paul writes, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”  We are told to live for God “in view of God’s mercy.”  Paul had just spent eleven chapters explaining the message of salvation.  “Therefore” means “because of this.”  Because of God’s gift of salvation through Christ, with that in mind, we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God.  And as the passage continues, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  (Romans 12:2a) 

Further, after we are saved God gives us “more grace” so that we can live for Him (James 4:6).  He also gives all believers the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower us.  (Romans 8:12-17; Galatians 3:3)  Don’t think that it is only the start of the Christian life that is by grace—all of the Christian life is by God’s grace!  But too often we try to live for God on our own power instead.  Rather, we should follow the example of Augustine who long ago prayed, “Lord, command what You will, but grant what You command.”  Ask God and depend on Him to give you everything that you need to live life for Him.  This doesn’t mean that we can sit back and do nothing, but it does mean that the fight is based on God’s grace and power, not our own.

Strategy Two: Realize that the Way to Stop Sin is THROUGH THE HEART.

Sin flows from the heart.  So do right choices.  If we try to change our behavior without trying to change our hearts, we are trying to clean the water in our buckets rather than taking the dead cow out of the well.  As David Tripp teaches, changing behavior without changing the heart is like nailing apples onto a dead tree. 

Jesus taught all of this first.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will be clean also.” –Jesus, Matthew 23:25-26

"For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.  All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” –Jesus, Mark 7:21-23

Heart work is hard work.  But it is the only was for true and lasting change.  Anything else is superficial and temporary.  Anything else is mere hypocrisy that does not honor or please God. 

Here are three ways to engage in this heart work:

1. Ask God to incline your heart toward Him.  David prayed this in Psalm 119:36, “Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!”  Ultimately, heart change is a miracle.  Keep passionately asking for God to do this!

2. Stop doing things that incline your heart toward evil.  The world is filled with things designed to push your buttons to cause you to love wrong.  Don’t be a fool and think that you can constantly stand in their path and be unaffected.  Other people can pull us in the wrong direction.  (1 Corinthians 15:33)  Negative influences also come at us through satellites, airwaves, round plastic disks, and phone lines.  Remember what Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” 

3. Put yourself in the path of things that help incline your heart toward God!  Avoiding the negative influences isn’t enough.  The more you can fill your lives with positive influences, the more you give God to work with.  Read the Bible and think about it.  Read other solid Christian books, and listen to Biblical preaching, not just one Sundays.  (Go to BiblicalPreaching.info and download free messages by Kent Hughes and John Piper.  Don’t just fill your mind with God’s Word on Sundays.)  Also let other growing Christians work in your life to change your heart.  (Hebrews 10:24-25)  The Spirit of God is the One who causes heart change, but these are some of the tools He uses.

"Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies!"  (Psalm 141:4 ESV)

Strategy Three: Realize the AWFULNESS OF SIN. 

If we saw sin the same way that God sees it, we wouldn’t do it.  We sin because our hearts see sin as something good instead of bad.  We need to see sin as terrible.  We need to see sin as sin.   

In The Pursuit of Holiness Jerry Bridges writes: 

“We often say, ‘God hates the sin but loves the sinner.’  This is blessedly true, but too often we quickly rush over the first half of this statement to get to the second.  We cannot escape the fact that God hates sin.  We may trifle with our sins or excuse them, but God hates them. 

“Therefore every time we sin, we are doing something God hates.  He hates our lustful thoughts, our pride and jealousy, our outbursts of temper, and our rationalizations that the end justifies the means.  We need to be gripped by the fact that God hates all these things.  We become so accustomed to our sins we sometimes lapse into a state of peaceful coexistence with them, but God never ceases to hate them.”    

This means that we need to see specific sin in our lives as sin.  We have to stop justifying sin or redefining it as something else.  People call some sins “mistakes.”  People call some sins “genetic.”  People call some sins “outdated.”  But if God calls it sin, we need to call it sin. 

We also need to realize just how much God hates sin.  Actually, that’s impossible.  There is no way you could grasp how much God hates sin.  Because God is perfectly just, He knows perfectly what is right and wrong.  Because God is infinitely knowledgeable He knows the complete effects of the destructiveness of sin.   

God hates sin.  That’s why the cross was so bad for Jesus.  The next time you are tempted to sin, think about the price that Jesus had to pay for that sin. 

Stop cropping the picture.  Did you ever notice how sometimes an advertisement will crop a picture in such a way to make the product look a lot better than it is?  If you own a hotel next to a dump, you will make sure that the picture in your ad doesn’t show the dump.  Satan uses the same strategy to make sins look better to us.  We see the fun and excitement of sin, but not the dark side.  If you crop the picture, going off to college and having some hookups sounds like a great life.  But you have to crop out a few things...  Crop out the feeling of being used.  Crop out your new reputation.  Crop out the shame.  Crop out the venereal warts.  Crop out pregnancy.  Crop out guilt and depression.  Crop out the loss of something valuable to you that you can never get back.  Crop out having to tell your future spouse one day.  With a lot of help from a scissors, the picture of sin can look really good. 

If this is a sin that you have struggled with already, take time to think about how it has bit you in the butt before.  Don’t crop the picture.  When you look at the wide angle, sin looses its glamour. 

Strategy Four: Take RADICAL STEPS to fight sin. 

Here is something that Jesus said. 

If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal life.  And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.  It is better to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.  (Jesus, Matthew 18:7-9) 

You need to be willing to gouge out your eyes.  You need to burn your bridges to keep yourself from going back to sin.  Stop trusting yourself so much.   

Now, it is true that it is better to lose and eye than go to hell.  It might mean breaking up with someone.  It might mean quitting a job.  It might mean smashing your computer.  Now, there is a good chance your parents might get rather upset if you smash the family computer, so maybe some other options are better like moving it out of the bedroom, or getting a password put on it.  Remember, Jesus’ main point is that you need to be willing to take crazy radical steps to fight sin.   

Accountability is huge.  You need Christian friends and mentors who you are accountable to.  For example, most guys struggle with what they view on the internet.  I highly recommend going to x3watch.com and downloading their free program to your computer.  Once you install this program, any questionable website you access will be emailed to the accountability partners you pick.  They are also informed if you uninstall the program.  This could be a huge help to you.  My brother-in-law asked me to be an accountability partner with him.  I put the program on my laptop and now every few weeks my brother and my brother-in-law get an email about my web usage.  I am sure that there are some of you that are thinking you would hate doing this.  Well, of course.  Jesus didn’t say “gouge out your eye” because cutting off access to sin is fun and easy. 

But here is a warning: Remember to follow this strategy and strategy two at the same time.  If you just work on your heart but don’t try to eliminate temptation, you are arrogant and stupid.  But if you just burn your bridges without working on your heart, you will just rebuild the bridge sooner or later.  If you don’t work on changing the desires of your heart, you will find a way to hack past the accountability program.  Something like x3watch, Covenant Eyes, or an accountability partner can be a big heart, but it won’t do the job on its own.   

Work on your heart, but don’t trust it. 

Strategy Five: Have the Right Attitude About “Victory” 

Some of these strategies are basic.  This one is a little more “advanced” and subtle.  Yet, for those who have struggles against sin for a long time, this might be a massive insight.  It is about our motive for fighting sin. 

Jerry Bridges explains this in The Pursuit of Holiness: 

“Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered.  We are more concerned about our own ‘victory’ over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God.  We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God...”

“God wants us to walk in obedience—not victory.  Obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented toward self.  This may seem to be mere splitting hairs over semantics [mere words], but there is a subtle, self-centered attitude at the root of many of our difficulties with sin.  Until we face this attitude and deal with it we will not consistently walk in holiness.” 

“This is not to say that God doesn’t want us to experience victory, but rather to emphasize that victory is a byproduct of obedience.  As we concentrate on living an obedient, holy life, we will certainly experience the joy of victory over sin.”  

Why do you want to defeat sin?  Is it because you want to feel awesome about your mighty willpower? 

If you are mainly concerned about your own victory, then it won’t matter as much if you sin tonight.  You are just letting yourself down, and you’ve gotten good at excusing yourself.  However, when we realize that sin is not just a personal failure, but personal rebellion against our King, then sinning tonight takes on a much different light. 

Later in the book, Jerry Bridges gives some more insight.  Sometimes we think of sinning as “defeat” so that we can fool ourselves into thinking it really isn’t our fault. 

“It is time for us Christians to face up to our responsibility for holiness.  Too often we say we are ‘defeated’ by this or that sin.  No, we are not defeated, we are simply disobedient!  It might be well if we stopped using the terms ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ to describe the process of holiness.  Rather, we should use the terms ‘obedience’ and ‘disobedience.’  When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility.  I am saying something outside of me has defeated me.  But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me.  We may, in fact, be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.  We have chosen to entertain lustful thoughts, or to harbor resentment, or to shade the truth a little.” 

“We need to brace ourselves up, and to realize that we are responsible for our thoughts, attitudes, and actions.  We need to reckon on the fact that we died to sin’s reign, that it no longer has any dominion over us, that God has united us with the risen Christ in all His power, and has given us the Holy Spirit to work in us.  Only as we accept our responsibility and appropriate God’s provisions will we make any progress in our pursuit of holiness.”

It’s not just defeat, but disobedience.  It’s not like God hasn’t given Christians what we need to choose against sin.  And with that in mind, we turn to our next strategy. 

Strategy Six: Focus on Your NEW IDENTITY IN CHRIST. 

“If I’m just a sinner, I might as well just sin.” 

The attitude we have about our identity makes an incredible difference in our fight against sin.  Do you see yourself as a sinner?  Do you see yourself primarily as a sinner?   

On one hand, we need to remember that we are sinners in need of God’s grace every day.  And as Jerry Bridges tells us, we need to “preach the gospel to ourselves” everyday.  This means that everyday we need to remember that we are sinners who are saved by the grace of God.  We need to remember that we are sinners so that we don’t become overconfident against sin, but more importantly so that we will constantly grow in gratitude for the cross and dependence on God’s grace for the Christian life. 

However, we need to remember that we are a “new creation” in Christ.  2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”  We are not yet completely new, but we are genuinely new.  We are not just sinners anymore.  In fact, that is no longer our primary identity.

Look at the start of the New Testament letters written to Christians.  They don’t start by calling the believers “sinners.”  They start by calling them “saints” or “holy ones.”  According to the Bible, everyone who has trusted in Christ alone as their Savior is a saint, a holy one, in the eyes of God.  We are saints because we have Christ’s righteousness credited to our account.  We are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.  Paul even addresses the Christians in Corinth as “those sanctified” (1 Cor. 1:2).  Corinth was one of the most immoral and messed up of all the early churches, yet Paul focuses on their identity as people made holy by Christ.   

Paul and the other Biblical writers don’t ignore sin, but when they tell Christians to clean up their act, their focus isn’t on calling them “sinners” to rub it in their face.  They point out sins because Christians are supposed to live like ex-sinners.  Sinning doesn’t fit our new purified identity. 

The point is that Christians need to live in accordance with who they are now.  You can see this in what Paul says in Ephesians 5:3-4, “But among you there must not even by a hint of sexual immorality, or any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.  Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.”  As a Christian you are now a saint… so stop sinning! 

SAINTS… stop sinning!  Focus on your new identity in Christ.  Live like who you are now in Christ. 

Strategy Seven: Fight Sin with the Firepower of Greater Joy 

Attempts to overcome sin by mere denial will end in failure.  Instead, we need to wield the weapon of pleasure that Satan has tried to hijack.  All of Satan’s pleasures are twisted and perverted counterfeits.  Only God can give true pleasure.  If you want to win the fight against sin, you need to believe that there is greater happiness in God than in anything sin has to offer.  

Sin looks good.  This takes a lot of trust in God.  We need to believe Him when He says, “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  (John 10:10) 

John Piper calls this “Christian Hedonism.”  It means that we are supposed to live for our pleasure and joy, but in the best way.  Following Jesus and making Him our treasure leads to more happiness and fulfillment than sin can ever offer.  As he says, we need deny ourselves tin, so that we can have gold.  We need to deny ourselves sewage so that we can have the pure refreshing water that only God can offer.  Ultimately, saying no to sin is not a sacrifice… it is a way to greater fulfillment as we seek a greater treasure. 

As C.S. Lewis said, our problem is really that we are too easily satisfied.  We are satisfied by the hollow pleasures of this world.   

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy in offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased." 

Jim Elliot died while trying to take the message of Christ to savages.  Before he was speared to death, he wrote in his journal, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”   

Why trade in lasting happiness for something cheap and shallow?

You need to have faith and trust in God that when He asks you to follow Him, He is not cheating you out of happiness… He is offering you far greater.

GUILT

GRACE

GRATITUDE

If you want to read more on this, read the grace-based Christian life, read the great book Transforming Grace by Jerry Bridges.

Gospel-Driven Sanctification, an article by Jerry Bridges

Another book I recommend on this topic is The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges.

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