God “remembers our sins no more,” means that He does not count them against us. Now of course He sees it when we sin, and He doesn’t want us to sin but wants to help us overcome sin. The truth is we don’t really need the Holy Spirit to point out our sin because we already know when we sin. We know it by our reborn spirit. Of course we also know when we sin by our conscience, by the law, by the Word of God, by the devil condemning us, by other people pointing out our faults and even other things. But our best moral guide is our reborn spirit that is alive to God and has His perfect nature within. God has written His law on our hearts which is not a new standard of law to live up to but it’s His actual nature He has put inside of us.
No one needs to say to God “You should not lie, or steal or commit adultery, etc.” Why? Because it’s not in His nature to do so. His nature is against those things. And we have His nature. No one really needs to say to us “You shouldn’t lie, or steal or commit adultery etc” Why? Because it’s not in our new nature to do those things. Our new nature is against those things and doesn’t want to do them. Yes, our body and our mind get tempted but our spirit is perfect and doesn’t want to do those things and knows those things are wrong. If we give into temptation with a body or our mind (think, speak or do sinful things), then our own spirit feels uncomfortable with that sin. It doesn’t want to do it. Your own spirit is grieved when you sin. That is why we feel bad after sin. It’s not necessarily conviction of the Holy Spirit or condemnation of the devil. Actually it’s our spirit that doesn’t want to sin and is fighting against sin.
Now, yes, we can mistake that for conviction of the Holy Spirit or for condemnation of the devil. Of course, if you don’t know the truth of grace, then you will carry condemnation. And if you believe it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict you of your sin, then you will invite the devil’s condemnation in thinking it’s there to help you. The truth is, the Holy Spirit doesn’t make us feel guilty about our sin because God does not condemn us for our sin. (You may be offended at this point and tempted to tune out, but please just keep reading). Of course God does not want us to sin, but the way to overcome sin is not condemnation, guilt, shame, sin consciousness or law consciousness. The way to overcome sin is faith, truth, intimacy with God and finding a life of fulfillment and purpose in Christ. This is a much more powerful way of overcoming sin, and it’s God’s way.
The other way is not God’s way. It’s the devil’s way of keeping us in the pattern of sin, and it’s religion’s way of keeping us in religion and keeping us out of relationship with God. Now when it comes to the Holy Spirit’s part in helping us overcome sin, this is what I believe. I believe the Holy Spirit will comfort us if we sin, but He won’t let us get comfortable in sin. He knows that sin is destructive and distracting in our lives. He loves us too much to let sin destroy us. Now if we shut Him out, then He can’t help us. But if we let Him in and walk in relationship with Him then he will challenge certain sins in our life and provoke us in a good way to overcome those sins and keep saying no to them.
But here’s the thing – saying “no” to sin is totally our part. The Holy Spirit cannot do that for us. No one can do that for us. It is our responsibility to say no to sin. No one can force us to sin, and no one can overcome sin for us. It is completely in our control. God’s grace and presence can and does help us and empower us to say no, but ultimately it is us that have to say no and not give into sin. It seems so obvious when you say that but many Christians are hoping for a magic wand that does it all for them. But this will NEVER happen. That is why Romans 6:12-14 says,
“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
This puts the responsibility on us to say no to sin. But it also reveals that we now have the ability and spiritual dominion to be able to say no to sin (also see Romans 6:1-11). We no longer have any excuses because we have died to the power and control of sin in our lives (the sinful nature), and we have come alive to God in our spirit with a new nature, God’s nature, and now we absolutely have the power to say no. There is not a believer on the planet who needs to be a slave to sin anymore. Every believer can walk in victory. We are no longer helpless victims that are under the control of our sinful nature and the devil.
Now we have died to sin, died to the sinful nature, died to the law, died to the world and satan and have come alive to God. Of course we still live in the world and temptation will be around till the day we die or Christ returns, and so we can still be tempted in our body and mind (not our spirit). But here’s the thing, every time we sin, it’s because we decided to give into temptation. We didn’t accidentally sin. Nobody made us sin. Sin was not more powerful than us. NO, we decided to sin, and we allowed ourselves to give in to temptation. Even though we could have said no. Even though we had the power to say no. We knew it was wrong. We knew we shouldn’t have. But we just did it anyway. We were probably wrestling with our own spirit that really didn’t want to sin. We could most likely hear the alarm bells of the Holy Spirit going off in the background. But we ignored those things and did it anyway. Maybe it was a moment of weakness. Maybe it’s something we are so used to doing that it doesn’t seem that bad anymore. Maybe we’ve made excuses for it or excused it as not being a sin, or not a very bad sin. The reality is, in our spirit we know it’s wrong and hurts us. We can try and suppress that inward knowing. We can fill our head with louder noise than that inward voice, but when everything is still and silent, we know what sin is because our reborn spirit has the nature of God in it. We can try and ignore it and live by the natural part of us which is our body and mind (feelings and thoughts) and will most likely just end up living in compromise and sin, but we will always feel an inward uncomfortableness about this, that we can never get rid of, if we are truly born again.
The truth is we were designed to walk in the Spirit and in victory over sin. We were designed to live a powerful life for God. A life that is fulfilling and satisfying. A life that is close to God in intimacy through prayer, worship, revelation and truth. The reality is that our best chance at walking in victory over sin and living a fulfilled life in Christ is to walk from our reborn spirit, in fellowship with the Holy Spirit and in the truth of the Spirit Covenant (the New Covenant of grace through Jesus Christ). If you think about it, it actually requires the same amount of effort to live this way as it does to living in sin. Yet the reward of living in the Spirit compared to the destructive and distracting consequences of living in sin makes the choice so obvious. What an odd thing that so many choose to walk in sin when they could just as easily be walking in the Spirit. It’s never too late to change direction.
