Because of the Truth, I'm Responsible to

Because of these truths, I am responsible to:

1. Reckon (count, act as though) yourself to be dead to sin and alive to God. (Romans 6:11)

2. Do not allow sin to reign because its reign has been terminated. (Romans 6:12)

3. Do not present the members of your body to sin as weapons of unrighteousness, but to God as weapons of righteousness. (Romans 6:13)

4. Serve God in the newness of the Spirit and not in the old way of the letter of the law. (Romans 7:6)
...because the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:6)

5. Walk according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:4)

6. Set your mind on the things of the Spirit, things above. (Romans 8:5, Colossians 3:2)

7. Put to death your members (the deeds of the body) on the earth. (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5, 8)

8. Resist the devil and he will flee. (James 4:7 1 Peter 5:9)

9. Take the way of escape. (1 Cor 10:13)

10. Put off the old man (see #5 in the first section). (Ephesians 4:22)

11. Put on the new man. (Colossians 3:10; Eph 4:24)
See Ephesians 4:25- 5:21 and Colossians 3:5-24 for what to put off and put on.
Galatians 5:19-26 for the deeds of the flesh vs. the fruit of the Spirit

Flesh adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, wrath, selfish ambition, dissension, heresy, envy, murder, drunkenness, revelry, passion, covetousness, malice,blasphemy, filthy language, lying, stealing, corrupt speech, bitterness, clamor, foolish talking, coarse jesting, pride, boaster, strife, whisperers, backbiting, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, disobedience to parents, violence

Spirit love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, tender mercies, humility, meekness, forbearance, forgiveness, thankfulness, truthfulness, work, edifying speech, grace, righteousness, redeeming time, spirit-filled, speaking/singing/teaching one another with various songs, submitting appropriately, obey and honor parents, prefer and honor others, selflessness, compassion

12. Lay aside every weight and the sin that easily trips me up. (Hebrews 12:1)

13. Be renewed in your minds. (Ephesians 4:23; Romans 2:2)
...by spending time memorizing and meditating on the Scriptures. (Psalm 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8)

14. Exercise and practice your powers of discernment. (Hebrews 5:14)
Train yourself in godliness. (1 Timothy 4:7)
Because breaking bad sinful habits requires the practice of new habits.

Truth to Know and Believe

 In summary from our study of victory in Christ here are --

Truths to Know and Believe:

1. While I was still a sinner Christ died in my place. (Romans 5:8)

2. Just as Adam's sin made me a sinner, Jesus' life and sacrifice made me righteous. (Romans 5:16, 19)

3. I died to sin when I died with Christ. (Romans 6:1-3)

4. I am crucified with Christ. (Galatians 2:20)

5. My old man was crucified with Him. (Romans 6:6)

6. The body of sin has been rendered inoperative. (Romans 6:6)

7. I've been freed from sin and its reign. (Romans 6:7)

8. Sin will not have dominion over me. (Romans 6:14)

9. I am not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:15)

10. I've been forgiven of all trespasses and the handwriting of ordinances that was against me has been taken out of the way and nailed to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)

11. I am a slave of whoever I obey – either sin leading to death, or obedience leading to righteousness, to holiness to eternal life. (Romans 6:16-23)

12. I have become dead to the law through the body of Christ. (Romans 7:4)

13. I am free to bear fruit to God and to serve in the newness of the Spirit. (Romans 7:4,6)

14. The law is holy, just and good. (Romans 7: 12)

15. The law is spiritual but I am fleshly. (Romans 7:14)

16. When I would do good, evil is present in me, that is in my flesh. (Romans 7:18, 21)

17. I am now not under any condemnation because I am in Christ. (Romans 8:1)

18. I am free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2)

19. The sin in me was condemned in the atonement of Christ. (Romans 8:3)

20. The righteous requirement of the law will be fulfilled in me as I walk according to the
Spirit. (Romans 8:4)

21. If I live according to the flesh, I'm embracing death, I'm an enemy of God, and I cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8)

22. I have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24)

23. As a Christian, my body is dead because of sin, but my spirit is alive because of righteousness, and the Holy Spirit will also give life to my mortal body some day. (Romans 8:10, 11)

24. I am not a debtor to the flesh to follow it. I don't owe it anything! (Romans 8:12)

25. If I live according to the flesh, I will die, but if I put to death the deeds of the body by the power of the Spirit, I will live. (Romans 8:13)

26. The Spirit will be victorious over the flesh. (Galatians 5:17)

27. The one in me is greater than the one in the world. (1 John 4:4)

28. God will not allow me to be tempted or tested above what I am able. (1 Cor 10:13)

29. God will finish what he started and conform us to the image of Christ. This is a certainty. (Phil 1:6; Romans 8:29)

30. Under the New Covenant I've been given a new heart, new spirit, God's Spirit and motivation to do right. (Ezekiel 36:26)

31. God will discipline me as a loving Father so that I will share in His holiness. Without that holiness I won't see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:10, 14)

32. Having been sanctified and perfected, my conscience has been cleansed once for all. (Hebrews 9:9; 9:14; 10:2; 10:22; read all of chapter 10 carefully)

Final Victory

Last time we saw that the Bible describes sin as dwelling in our bodies. Our living spirit along with he power of the Holy Spirit are to put to death the deeds of the body and to set our minds on spiritual things. This is the method for gaining victory.

In this last post on this subject I want us to look at the promise of ultimate victory. In Romans 8:9-11, Paul writes these words, “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

What he is saying here is that even though the body is dead and dying, the Spirit of God who lives in us will ultimately give life to our mortal body as well. The place where sin has found a refuge will be replaced by a new body where righteousness rather than sin will dwell. In the mean time, we groan, eagerly waiting for our adoption, the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23).

It's interesting to see that the Bible calls our current physical body a “soulish” body (1 Corinthians 15:44). The word translated “natural” in most translations is the word pseuche which as we have seen before is the word for soul. So Adam was made a living soul and he possessed a soulish body. But there is also going to be a spiritual body. Christ was a life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). He tells us that both a soulish body and a spiritual body exist but the soulish comes first and then the spiritual. When our soulish body has been replaced by a spiritual body, then our redemption will be complete. Sin wil no longer have a foothold.

1 Corinthians 15:54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Put to Death the Deeds of the Body

The answer to defeating sin and living a life that is pleasing to God is to use the power of the Holy Spirit within us as believers to put to death the deeds of the body. This is what Paul has told us in Romans 8:13. The motivation is internal and the life is internal. He describes this method as the newness of the Spirit as opposed to the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6). Instead of an external law that has to be obeyed by shear natural human effort, we now have the resources within and the law written within as the resource we need to be victorious.

But why does he speak of putting to death the deeds of the body? How is the body the problem? As I mentioned in a previous post, we are composed of body, soul and spirit. A Christian has a renewed spirit. The soul has been damaged by sin and so the mind, will and emotions are not what they were originally created to be. The body is weak and subject to sickness and death.

I don't want to get too complicated, but let's see if this is understandable. We know that there is more to us than our physical nature. In other words, we have a brain to think and experience emotions. Emotions also involve our hormonal system. These are all intertwined with each other. But the Bible teaches that when we die, we will still have thinking capability and we will still be able to love God and praise him, so it must be the case that part of these functions now as we are in the body are immaterial and part of these functions are due to physical processes. I believe that in the physical side of our being we have developed sinful habits and sinful methods for dealing with life. These become ingrained in our physical nature. This is where sin continues to reside.

In Romans 7 Paul writes these things: “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death (verse 5).

If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good (verses 16-21).

So you see, he is attributing the problem to sin that is in his members or in his body. The Bible doesn't portray the body itself as sinful or evil the way a gnostic would, but it describes the body and I believe the physical parts of the soul as the seat where sin has taken up residence in a Christian. And this is where it needs to be attacked. Therefore we are told to put to death the deeds of the body. We are told not to yield the members of our body as servants to sin and unrighteousness. We have the inner capability to do this because of our living spirit and the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

Mind of the Spirit vs. Mind of the Flesh

In Romans 8:5 Paul told us that walking according to the Spirit means setting ones mind on the things of the Spirit, whereas setting ones mind on the things of the flesh means setting ones mind on the things of the flesh. Last time I gave you a list of examples for each category. Verse 4 has told us that the righteousness of the law will be fulfilled in us if we walk according to the Spirit and set our minds on the things of the Spirit.

Now in verse 6, Paul makes a stunning statement. He says that to be fleshly minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. The fleshly mind is at enmity with God and cannot please God. In verse 13 he says, “If you live according to the flesh you will die.” That means if my normal mode of life is to have a mind set on the kind of things in the flesh list I shared with you last time, I will die. He had written back in chapter 6 that if I yield the parts of my body to sin and disobedience, the result of that will be further disobedience will ultimately result in eternal death (Romans 6:16-23). He wrote the Galatian Christians and told them that they would reap what they sow and then he gave them two examples. He said that they could either sow to the flesh or they could sow to the spirit. If they sowed to the flesh, they would reap corruption (Galatians 6:7-8).

So this is a pretty strong warning to me. Yielding myself to the things of the flesh, to the kind of things I listed for you earlier, puts me on the road that leads ultimately to my eternal ruin. I for one do not want to be on that road! So it behooves me to be setting my mind on the things of the Spirit which results in life.

He says in Romans 8:13 that if we through the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body, we will live. That is the answer right there. Christians have within them the Spirit of God as well as their own revived spirit and so we are to use the power of the Spirit within us to put to death the deeds of the body and in so doing, we will live.

Hymn of the Week - Crown Him With Many Crowns

1. Crown him with many crowns, 
 the Lamb upon his throne, 
 Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns 
 all music but its own. 
 Awake, my soul, and sing 
 of him who died for thee, 
 and hail him as thy matchless King 
 through all eternity. 

2. Crown him the Lord of life, 
 who triumphed o'er the grave, 
 and rose victorious in the strife 
 for those he came to save. 
 His glories now we sing, 
 who died, and rose on high, 
 who died, eternal life to bring, 
 and lives that death may die. 

3. Crown him the Lord of peace, 
 whose power a scepter sways 
 from pole to pole, that wars may cease, 
 and all be prayer and praise. 
 His reign shall know no end, 
 and round his pierced feet 
 fair flowers of paradise extend 
 their fragrance ever sweet. 

4. Crown him the Lord of love; 
 behold his hands and side, 
 those wounds, yet visible above, 
 in beauty glorified. 
 All hail, Redeemer, hail! 
 For thou hast died for me; 
 thy praise and glory shall not fail 
 throughout eternity. 

Resources Available to Combat Sin

A Christian has the internal resources to live a life pleasing to God. He has a new heart, a new spirit, God's spirit and internal motivation to be obedient. The question becomes, will we use the resources we have to live a life that is pleasing to God and that honors and glorifies him?

In Romans 8, we have several keys to help us understand how we are to use what we have been given to live victorious and obedient lives.

First we have the umbrella of protection that I've already discussed and that is that a Christian is under absolutely no condemnation or judgment from God. His sins have been completely forgiven and will never be brought up again. He does not fear the judgment because God has declared him completely righteous. This is not because he has been righteous, but because the very righteousness of God has been imputed to him and placed on his record.

Second, in verses 2 and 3 we are reminded that we have died to the law. The law no longer has jurisdiction because as we saw earlier, a Christian is seen by God to have died with Christ and to be raised with him and therefore there is no further penalty for sin. Sin requires death. I've died. Issue closed.

Romans 8:4 says, “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Here we begin to see how this works. The righteous requirement of the law will not be fulfilled because we try to be obedient to some external list of rules. The righteousness of the law will be fulfilled in us as we walk according to the spirit. As I said yesterday, a Christian has had his own spirit made alive plus he has God's spirit in him as well as a God-given motivation to do the right thing and so these factors work together to provide internal obedience to the law of God. But it takes place as we walk according to the Spirit. That is we walk in unison or in step with the Spirit of God who indwells us.

Paul goes on to explain in verse 5 that a person who is according to the Spirit is one who puts his mind on the things of the spirit. The one who is according to the flesh is someone whose mind is on the things of the flesh. What are these things? A list of the things of the Spirit might include these kinds of things: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, tender mercies, humility, meekness, forbearance, forgiveness, thankfulness, truthfulness, selflessness, and compassion. Things of the flesh would include things such as these: hatred, contentions, jealousies, wrath, selfish ambition, dissension, heresy, envy, murder, drunkenness, covetousness, malice, blasphemy, sexual sin, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, filthy language, lying, stealing, corrupt speech, bitterness, pride, boasting, strife, and gossip.

So what Paul is saying here is that there are two mind-sets a person can have. He can either have his mind set on the things of the Spirit or the things of the flesh. The question we need to ask ourselves is what is our mind-set? Generally speaking where is our mind. What kinds of things do we think about and what kind of responses come out of us when faced with a sudden obstacle?

Do these two choices of spiritual or fleshly-mindedness represent possible choices for a Christian to pursue or are these distinctions between Christians and non-Christians? That is the question we want to look at next time.

Victory Over Sin

The Bible says that we are essentially made of body, soul and spirit. When God made man, he made him from the dust of the ground. When he breathed into him the breath of life, man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:57). The word for soul here is the word psuche from which we get our word psychology. The word for spirit is pneuma from which we get our words pneumatic and pneumonia. So when God breathed into Adam, he was breathing his spirit into him. Adam became a living soul when the breath of God entered him.

The problem however was that Adam disobeyed God and his spirit died. God had told him that the day he ate of the tree that God had forbidden, he would die. And he did die spiritually. Everyone born since then has been born with a dead spirit (Ephesians 2:1). In addition, our bodies are dying and our soul consisting of mind, will and emotions has been severely damaged by the effects and habits of sin.

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that when a person comes to Christ in saving faith, God gives him the righteousness of Christ which grants that person a right standing before God. God sees him as though he had never sinned as far as the court of heaven is concerned. He need not fear on judgment day.

However, we still have the problem of how to live out a life that is pleasing and obedient to God in our normal day to day living. In the Old Testament God promised a New Covenant that he was making with his people. In that covenant several things were granted. God promised to remove the old hard stoney heart we are born with, replace it with a tender, pliable heart. He promised to give him a new spirit. He promised his own spirit would come into the person, and he promised that he himself would provide the internal motivation to do the right thing (Ezekiel 36:26-27; Jeremiah 31:33). This new covenant was announced by Jesus at the last supper and initiated when he died and rose again.

What does that mean for a believer in Jesus Christ? It means that he now has the inner resources to be obedient to God. He has a new heart, a new spirit, God's spirit and internal motivation to be obedient. The resources are there. The question becomes, will we use the resources we have to live a life that is pleasing to God and that honors and glorifies him?

More tomorrow.

We Need Righteousness - God Supplies It

What is the answer to the dilemma posed yesterday? Sin at its core is the desire to reign in place of God. How is this problem solved, especially for the Christian who desires to do right but finds, like the Apostle Paul, that sin is right there inside?

We basically have two issues that need to be solved. Since God's righteous standard is perfection, we've already failed. There's no use thinking about how to do better in the future since we've already blown it. The goal of perfection has already been forfeited. The second issue is that if we can find a solution to the first problem, how can we live an obedient life that is pleasing to God? How do I do this? How?

Paul begins Romans 8 with these words, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is God's answer to the first problem. We need a righteousness that is perfect and it needs to remove our guilt in Adam from us and it needs to cover us from the beginning of our lives to the end. What God has done is to provide us with his righteousness. His righteousness is perfect. Our problem is that we seek to establish our own righteousness rather than submitting to the righteousness of God (Romans 10:3). God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

If we flee to Christ and trust the provision he has made for our spiritual need, he gives us freely his own righteousness and takes upon himself our sin. That is what we mean when we say that Christ died for our sins. If we accept it, our sins are placed on him and because of that he had to die as a punishment for those sins, even though he had not committed them himself.

When that is true, we are in Christ and are under no condemnation whatsoever for any of the sins we have committed. And further, since we are in Christ, he has become our representative rather than Adam. Before we come to Christ, God sees Adam as having spoken for all of his offspring when he decided against God back in the garden of Eden. But as a believer, Adam ceases to be our representative and Christ becomes the representative for us. And how did he respond to God's commands? He responded perfectly obediently and thus God sees us as having responded obediently even from birth.

Next time we will look at the resources God has given us for living a victorious Christian life here and now.

Why Do We Sin?

If you've been following this blog at all you know that I have written a couple of series dealing with Romans 6-8 which basically gives us insights into sin and God's way of gaining victory over it. See part 1 here.) But that study has started me thinking about what causes us to sin or to want to sin.

The easy answer is that we are sinners or we have a sin nature. Romans 6:23 tells us that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Paul writes in Romans 7:21 “I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.” But what I'm trying to think through is what it is in our psychological nature that causes us to sin. What do we think we need or what are we trying to get out of it? Why do I argue with someone in an effort to win the point? Why do I complain so loudly when I feel that I have been taken advantage of? Why do I want a nicer car than my neighbor has?

James asks a similar, but not quite the same, question. In James 4 he writes, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.” In another place he writes, “Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”

So what I see from these passages is that we are born with lusts which are very strong desires. The Bible characterizes these as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). The lusts of the flesh are lusts that are normal body desires, such as to eat, or for sex, which are then magnified to strong level. Lust of the eyes involve things we see which causes us to have a desire for those things when we don't necessarily need them. They look good. They are attractive. Television commercials often leverage this strong desire to get us to buy their product. Pride of life is the desire to be someone. To use what we have either in possessions or skills to set ourselves up higher than others.

Going back then to the James passages, we wee that the wars and fights come about because of these strong desires. Why would someone lie? In order to make himself appear better, more significant or more skillful than he actually is. Why do we covet something someone else has? Because of the lust of the eyes and often also because of the pride of life. Why should that person have a nicer car than I have? We have a strong desire to be higher, better and more envied than others. Why do we complain about the weather? What am I saying when I do this?

But what is the root of all of this? I think Romans 1 gives us the answer. Paul's indictment there is that we do not give God the glory he deserves and are not thankful (verse 21), and we worship and serve the creature, namely ourselves, more than God (verse 25). You see, I think the core problem is that we want to be God. Giving glory to the God of heaven means I need to place myself under him and recognize his rightful rule over me. Being thankful means I am acknowledging that what I have comes from him and that I am dependent on him. We don't normally want to be dependent on anyone. Paul told the people of Athens that God is the one who gave them life and breath and all things and that he is the one who made them and determined when and where they would live on the earth (Acts 17:25-26). If those things are true, then we are dependent on God for everything and that means we are not the masters of our fate or the captain of our soul as William Henley so famously wrote. And the problem is.....WE DON'T LIKE THAT! We hold our fist in the air and demand sovereignty for ourselves. That is the problem.

As a Christian I'm confronted with the fact that this rebellion is in me. When I would do good, evil is present with me (Romans 7:21). When I see the righteous demands of God's law, I realize that there is no way in the world I am going to be able to meet the standard and so I say with Paul, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

We'll look at God's answer tomorrow.

Hymn of the Week - Things We Leave Behind by Michael Card

There sits Simon, so foolishly wise
Proudly he's tending his nets
Then Jesus calls and the boats drift away
And all that he owns he forgets

But more than the nets, he abandoned that day
He found that his pride was soon drifting away
And it's hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind

Matthew was mindful of taking the tax
And pressing the people to pay
Hearing the call, he responded in faith
And followed the light and the way

And leaving the people so puzzled he found
The greed in his heart was no longer around and
And it's hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind

Every heart needs to be set free
From possessions that hold it so tight
'Cause freedom's not found in the things that we own
It's the power to do what is right

With Jesus, our only possession
And giving becomes our delight
And we can't imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind

We show a love for the world in our lives
By worshiping goods we possess
Jesus has laid all our treasures aside
And love God above all the rest

'Cause when we say no, to the things of the world
We open our hearts to the love of the Lord and
It's hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind

And when we say no, to the things of the world
We open our hearts to the love of the Lord and
It's hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind
Oh, and it's hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind
Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/michael-card/things-we-leave-behind-lyrics/#7QR91t22kmy8iIMs.99

Our Sympathetic High Priest

For we do not have a high priest was unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15

We have a High Priest who is so great that there is none in the world like him. He is so far beyond us, and infinitely above us, that we are but dust and ashes. Yet, he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. It now appears for us in heaven — in our nature. Our Lord took our frail nature upon him and was exposed to want, poverty, hunger, cold, weariness, pain, death, grief, anguish, trouble, and fear. He knows all of our infirmities. None of them are so small that he does not take notice. We may feel our afflictions are more than we can number, but he counts them exactly. He does not only know them notionally, but experimentally. He has himself been exercised with them. He knows their weight and how they smart, for he has felt them. He knows by experience what it is to be in need, to have nothing upon which to ride, and nowhere to lay his head. He knows what it is to be in pain, and to be despised, abused, reproached and hated. He knows the sorrows of life and the pangs of death by his own experience. He knows what it is to be tempted to sin and troubled with horrid suggestions from Satan. He knows what it is to be deserted by his friends and to be forsaken of God. He became like us and all these things. And now, he is affected with our infirmities, and is touched with the feeling of them. He not only has suffered what others feel, but suffers with them in what they feel. Though Christ is no longer under these infirmities as he once was, he is touched in his soul by our sufferings. He desires to help and comfort us, and do what is best for us in such a condition, out of his wonderful love. He feels as we feel at the sufferings of a very dear friend. His compassion is as a parent for a beloved child.

From Voices From the Past, Puritan Devotional Readings Edited by Richard Rushing, Page 361

Hymn of the Week - Stand Up My Soul

Stand up, my soul, shake off thy fears,
And gird the Gospel armor on,
March to the gates of endless joy,
Where thy great Captain-Savior’s gone.

Hell and thy sins resist thy course,
But hell and sin are vanquished foes;
Thy Jesus nailed them to the cross,
And sung the triumph when He rose.

What though the prince of darkness rage,
And waste the fury of his spite,
Eternal chains confine him down
To fiery deeps and endless night.

What though thine inward lusts rebel,
’Tis but a struggling gasp for life;
The weapons of victorious grace
Shall slay thy sins, and end the strife.

Then let my soul march boldly on,
Press forward to the heav’nly gate;
There peace and joy eternal reign,
And glitt’ring robes for conquerors wait.

There shall I wear a starry crown,
And triumph in almighty grace,
While all the armies of the skies
Join in my glorious Leader’s praise.

- Isaac Watts