I have often talked about the old nature and how it reigned in our lives before salvation. For us to experience victory we must know that we have died to its power as we were identified with Christ in his death. While positionally we are dead to the old nature, experientially we must draw upon that reality and claimed no rights for ourselves. The quote below is from Oswald Chambers’ devotional, My Utmost For His Highest. Chambers beautifully describes what must happen in our of our lives in order to claim victory over the old nature.
-Pastor Byron
The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ…”He did not say, “I have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ,” or. “I will really make an effort to follow Him”—but—“I have been identified with Him in His death.” Once I reach this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
“…it is no longer I who live….” My individuality remains, but my primary motivation for living and the nature that rules me are radically changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic right to myself has been destroyed.
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