(By John MacArthur)
Today’s post is the second part in our series on how to kill sin in your life.
Yesterday, we considered the first of five steps necessary to killing sin in your life — namely, that you must recognize the presence of sin in your flesh. Today we will consider steps two through four.
2. Fix Your Heart on on God.
Second, in order to gain victory over sin, you must have a heart fixed on God. You must love Him more than you love your sin.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 57:7, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.” What did he mean by that? He was speaking of undivided devotion to God! He was referring to a wholeness in spiritual life where he was given wholly to God. This attitude must be true in your heart if you are to conquer sin. You must be wholly devoted to God in every area of life. You cannot tolerate sin in any one area, even if it seems like a relatively small area. You must eradicate sin everywhere.
You can’t starve it out and kill it in one spot, but then allow it to remain somewhere else. If sin lives anywhere it will crawl all over everywhere. It is the most noxious, fastest growing weed in existence. It will not confine itself to one flower bed. Left unchecked, even for a short time, it will soon take over everywhere.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 119:6, “Then shall I not be ashamed.” When? When will you not be ashamed? “When I have respect unto all thy commandments.” In other words, our lives are not going to be right or without shame until we give proper respect to every command of God. And that is to deal with every issue of sin in our lives. The only unashamed life is the life of one who is totally fixed on God; everything has been dealt with.
3. Meditate on the Word.
Third, the victorious Christian life is a life that dwells on the Word of God (cf. Psalm 1:2).
The way to kill sin in your life is to feed it Scripture. Scripture is a spiritual weed-killer. It will poison sin.
Whatever really controls your mind, controls your behavior; so keep out the garbage (of worldly thinking) and saturate the soil of your mind with a steady diet of God’s glorious truth. Sin can’t grow in a Spirit-controlled life. And the Spirit controls our thinking through the Word of Christ (Col. 3:16-17; cf. Eph. 5:18; Rom. 12:2). If you want to kill sin, you must give yourself to the Word. That means you have to read it, listen to it, learn it, study it, and think about it.
4. Commune with God in Prayer.
These are so very basic, but fourth, you must commune with God in prayer.
This circles back around to the first point that I gave you. True prayer gives the heart a sense of its own vile character and renews the hatred of sin. It agrees with God about what sin is, recognizing that any violation of God’s law is a direct affront to Him. John Owen said, “He who pleads with God for the remission of sin also pleads with his own heart to detest it.”
Somewhere along the line in your own prayer life you need to get honest. You need to begin to say to God, “I want You to reveal my sin, I want You to stir it up in me. I want You to show it to me. I want You to blow away the dust that is covering it. I want You to peel off the things that have been hiding it away in my life, so that it becomes manifest and visible to me. I want to see the reality of my sin. I want You to show it to me just the way it is.” That is a vital part of your communion with God.
When you pray to God it must be an honest confession. The true prayers of repentance go something like this, “God show me all the sins of my life, reveal all of them, uncover every little corner of my life. Bring it up and may it become as detestable to me as it is to You. May I never do that again, and may You give me the strength to see it go away.”
Prayer exposes secret sins. Prayer weakens prevailing sins. Prayer finds strength in fellowship with the Holy God to kill sin in our lives.
(To be concluded tomorrow)