You claim Jesus is the Lord of your life, but have you died to sin? Both cannot be true in one’s life. We cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). If we are a slave to sin, we cannot be a servant of God (John 8:34; Romans 6:16). In the same manner, if we are a slave of Christ, sin no longer has any claim on our lives (Romans 6:17-18). There is tremendous freedom in that realization. The chains of sin will drag us to an eternal death, but the blood of Christ penetrates those shackles and causes them to fall away (Colossians 2:13-14).
We no longer have to carry the weight of our sins (Psalm 103:12; 1 Peter 2:24). As free men and women, why would we ever choose to hunt down those chains, reassemble them and clamp them back on? We need not do that, and if our commitment to Christ is genuine, we never will.
This doesn’t mean you will never sin again, but sin will cease to be a habit for us (1 John 3:6-9). It will no longer be the pursuit of our lives or the go to response when things go wrong and the pressure is on. We are a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). The blood of Jesus drowns our old habits and desires (Galatians 5:24). We can be free from the stranglehold of sin, but not as long as we are allowing it to live within us (Romans 8:12-13). So, I ask you again, “Have you died to sin?”
I do not find anywhere in scripture how we can love Christ and continue to live as we always have. When you find the greatest treasure, you sell everything else to get it (Matthew 13:44-46). You don’t cling to your rags when someone offers you an armload of riches (Philippians 3:8). But that’s what so many do. They know all about Christ, they even believe in Him, but that’s not enough (James 2:19). Jesus must be Lord over every part of your life or you do not understand what it means to know Him.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes he has been crucified with Christ and he no longer lives (Galatians 2:19-20). He’s dead to sin and his old way of life, but alive in Christ. In Romans, Paul doubles down and says if Christ is in you, then your body is dead; the only life you have is in God’s Holy Spirit (Romans 8:10). Our old self has been crucified so that sin no longer has any dominion over us (Romans 6:6-7). We are free (John 8:36).
Have you died? Are you still toying with sin and keeping it around as a sort of pet? There is no such thing as a half-way or part-time Christian. You are either all in or not in at all. Every day, we must determine that we will not sin against God (Psalm 119:11; Colossians 3:5; 2 Corinthians 7:1). We must decide that no matter what, we will not grieve the holiness of our Savior and King (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Peter 1:13-16). Until we see how offensive sin is to God, until it is the most repulsive thing we can imagine, there is no way Jesus can be our Lord (Habakkuk 1:13; Proverbs 6:16-19; Revelation 21:8). To love God is to hate sin (Proverbs 8:13; Psalm 97:10). To live for Christ is to die to self (Luke 9:23-24; Philippians 1:21). Have you died? Until you do, you will never know what it means to truly live (John 11:25-26; Romans 6:11).