What a Foretaste of Deliverance

“Why am I still sinning?”, I ask myself this question almost every day.

I don’t know about you, but I wish that all corruption in my heart is perfectly subdued now and give a grandeur testimony that “the LORD has removed my desire for that, and I stopped doing it”, but that is not how it works, is it?

If it works like that, I would be all puffed up and see my own righteousness as a way to save myself. Being exposed to my sins every single day only reminds of the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to me. I grow to hate my sinful self so much, and that alone is a sign of victory of Christ and a sign of sanctification of the Holy Spirit.

In the process of sanctification, “we are being increasingly freed from sin’s power. The kind of freedom that we typically hope for is a freedom from sin’s presence, but we don’t get that until later when we go to be with the Lord.” Sanctification is a painfully slow process yet a certainly God-glorifying one. As we fight sin, we learn to depend on Jesus who alone is our Righteousness. (What Freedom from Sin Looks Like in This Life, Jen Wilkins)

I find how Richard Sibbes categorizes this kind of victory in his book, “The Bruised Reed” very comforting. He says that there are three degrees of victory:

(1) when we resist though we are foiled,

(2) when grace gets the better, though with conflict; and

(3) when all corruption is perfectly subdued.

When we only see smokes coming out from our wicks, we can remind ourselves of the LORD’s promise that He will not quench it (Matt 12:20 and Isaiah 42:3).

There are many more places in the Bible that the LORD has provided to remind us of the promise of the decreed deliverance that has already but not yet come:

*whom the Son sets free will be free indeed (John 8:36)

*if we resist the devil, he will flee from us (James 4:7); the devil may flee now, tomorrow, next year or when we see our Lord Jesus face-to-face, he will certainly flee.

*the Holy Spirit who is in us is “greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

Struggling daily with our sins, we can sing with joy victoriously:

“What a foretaste of deliverance How unwavering our hope Christ in power resurrected As we will be when he comes”

(Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery written by Matt Boswell, Matt Papa, and Michael Bleecker)