But, with that said, I do want to offer you the only answer to killing sin that has served me in these last several years, and that answer is a question. Do you, moment by moment, in the midst of the sin that you are about to commit, avail yourself of the power you have been given to ask Jesus—right then and there—to show you the way out? One of my mentors, Jeff Dunbar, brought that weapon to mind for me freshly in the course of thinking through this.

That’s the difference I think between managing and killing sin. When we manage it, we wait until after what is done has been done. Then we pray, we cry, we repent…but it’s done. What I have rarely heard in a decade of ministry, from myself or anyone else for that matter, is that when I prayed to Jesus, in that very moment of sin or when I was about to sin, I still sinned. Because generally, if your heart and mind are turned to Him, the very urge for the false savior that this sin is posing as begins to fade away. I hope this is bringing clarity and not further confusion.

You see, if you have been raised with Christ (which I believe you have or you wouldn’t be concerned with killing your sin), then He is truly the power that dwells in you. And if He is that power, then you must call on Him in the very moment that you feel powerless against the sin that is crouching at your door, not after it has already won the fight. From what I see in scripture, and what I’ve learned about people over these years, that is the only way we can truly kill sin: to attack it, minute by minute, moment by moment, with the power of Jesus, by calling on Him in every moment to not only show us how to kill it, but in that very moment, to give us the strength to do so.

I was asked after the sermon a few weeks ago from Colossians 3:5-10, “How Do I Kill My Sin?” The inquirer said, “You gave me the ‘what’ and the ‘why,’ but how pastor, do I begin to put it to death, rather than simply manage it?”

To answer this question, I’ll start with why I didn’t give a “how.” The danger in telling people what to do after they are confronted with the gospel and all of its implications on their lives is that we—all of us—have a tendency to take those things and make them into law. Then they turn into a means to modify our behavior, but never really deal with what is at the heart of why we are sinning. The reason we sin is because some part of us has ceased to trust Jesus, not only as Savior, but also as Lord. But, if I say at the end of a message, “Now here is how you kill sin,” it doesn’t build our trust in Him, it just gives us a way to not do something that displeases Him.

This is the lynch pin, because He chose us before the foundation of the world, and in love, He predestined us for adoption. So we are predestined, chosen, and adopted.

Before time itself existed, before the Evil one turned in pride from God to his own works, before this world was even created, before Adam and Eve were ever created, before the unveiling of creation itself…God chose His children.  Now, I want to slow down, and pause, so that you absorb the great, cosmic, joy laden words of Paul here…so that you can soak in what is being communicated here. As far back as imagination will allow, further, deeper into time, before the dawn of time, it was there that God chooses us.   Are you feeling the very tangible weight of such a statement? Do you understand all of the implications of this; that the Father chose us before He even created us? What a glorious realization!

What a wonderful, good, loving, merciful, gracious Father! We don’t have to earn, or merit, or work for His choosing, but He is simply pleased to choose us in Him. God’s choosing to save, choosing to die in the Person of Jesus, choosing His children from among humanity was not an arbitrary or whimsical decision. He planned for Jesus to die before Adam ever rejected Him. This is huge! This is the tension between His great transcendence and His accessibility, as He flexes His eternal authority and unstoppable love in the dimensions of time! This marks the security of our adoption, and though we are difficult children, He will never give us back.

During one of my pastorate before moving to Atlanta to plant Renovation I met a family in our church who had two adopted son’s, and two biological daughters. Their son’s were from New Orleans, and when they found out that I grew up in Baton Rouge, and had family in New Orleans, they were very excited to introduce me to their son’s. These two boy’s suffered horror’s as children that no person, let alone a child should ever have to experience. They suffered through sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and forced incestuous behavior with each other. Needless to say they were extremely broken…which made them extremely difficult children.

Growing up with their adopted parents the boy’s had done everything you could imagine, in fact when I met them the youngest had just finished a short stint in a juvenile detention center for drug and battery charges. At one point things got so bad that the father removed the family’s two daughters from their own home to a grandparents, because they feared what the boy’s might do to the two girls, but didn’t want to give up on the boy’s.

Rather than sending the boy’s away, or giving them back to the state, their father gave up his and his wifes biological children for a time, so that they, through the power of the gospel, could rescue these boy’s. They never gave up, they never gave them back, though these were difficult, no, more than difficult children to parent. They made extraordinary sacrifices to keep these children, to show them gospel love…and grace…and mercy. They pursued, and kept these boy’s despite the many complications it came with!

The truth is, that all of us who are in christ, are “difficult children”.  We are resistant often, “prone to wander…prone to leave the God we love”—-And yet, God will not give us back.  He will not give up on us.  His commitment to us is unbreakable.  An imperfect God…and imperfect Father would give us back.  A God with weak commitments would be done with us….but not “The God” of the bible…the God who exists (in reality),creates, and saves.

Some of you have experienced a father’s failed commitments to you, time and time again…and yet, our paternal God demonstrates his unshakeable commitment to us. That he would break into time, to keep his promises to us in Christ. God orphaned His Son Jesus on the cross, to make us orphans no longer. This is the power of His “other-worldly” love, and the wonder of His mercy and grace in securing our adoption.

So some of you are thinking, what do I do with this truth? I implore you to consider not what to do, but who to be. God wants His children to be all of these things described. Secure in Him. Secure in His promises. And consumed by His love. Once you figure out who you are in Jesus, what to do flows out of that identity…and in Jesus you are the child of the living God.

In 1 John chapter 3 verse 1, the apostle John writes,

“see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.“

This phrase, what kind of love, literally translates “unearthly, foreign, other-worldly.” This love the Father gives us is so unparalleled, and John so astonished that he wonders aloud “where did this come from?”

So how great a Father is God? How wonderful the nature, character, and goodness of the Father of Lights? How otherworldly this love? Not only did He willingly give Jesus as a sacrifice to rescue us from sin, hell, and death; and not only did He sacrifice Jesus as a wrath-consuming propitiation, turning His wrath to favor and saving us; not only did He place Jesus as an Advocate between Him and us, pleading our case before the righteous Judge, God went far beyond that. Far beyond kindness and clemency to His rebellious creation and invited us into His family.

Please don’t take this lightly, because God could have not saved us at all. He could have left us in our rebellion, and brokenness. Even still He could have saved us, pardoned us from sin, given us an Advocate in Jesus, and then cast us aside, out of His presence, recued from hell, but distant from Him. He could have denied access to Him, maintained an element of disconnected rule, rather than intimate love, and even of that we are not deserving; but God, rich in mercy and full of grace, went far beyond even that, far beyond simply saving.

I like how John Piper puts it, he says, “Nothing in us, or in the nature of the world required that God would go beyond all redeeming, forgiving, rescuing, healing love to this extreme—namely, to an adopting love; a love that will not settle for a truce, or a formal gratitude…but will press all the way in to make you a child of God.”

In Ephesians 1:3-5 the apostle Paul writes “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world…and in love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will…”

Reading this we know those who are followers of Jesus are blessed by God the Father with His salvific blessing in Christ and the inheritance we receive in Him by the power of the Spirit…but why? Why would God give so wonderfully of Himself?