Note to the Reader. This article is taken from the “Exchanged Life Discipler’s Handbook” published by New Beginnings Christian Counseling LLC. The article is an excerpt from Bill Gillham’s “Marriage Takes More Than Two.” Please note that I have corrected some typos and made sure that all the verses quoted were from the King James Bible.
Most Christians are trying to do their best to live the Christian life with God’s help.
The probable cause of this is that they have never been exposed to the Biblical method of living a consistent, agape lifestyle. Not knowing this leaves a Christian with a habit of trying to live it out of their own strength. In the Christian’s failure, they have been prepared by the Holy Spirit to find the answer for this dilemma, which is: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27)
Bill Gillham states in Marriage Takes More Than Two that there are but two ways a Christian can operate: He can walk “in the Spirit” or “after the flesh.” Heretofore, I’d always thought there were three ways. “In the Spirit meant teaching Sunday School and helping little old ladies to cross the street, and “after the flesh” meant lusting after women. These polarities comprised part of my time, but most of my life was lived in a large third area which I called “my way.” It involved my work-a-day world- eating, playing with my kids, watching ball games, etc. – all of which I considered neither sinful nor spiritual.
The problem with my approach to life was that the Bible said nothing about this third way. It spoke only of two ways, “in the Spirit” and “after the Flesh.” My third way, as I have described it, was after the flesh as well. In fact, I discovered to my horror that even what I thought was walking in the Spirit (teaching Sunday School) was walking after the flesh because my method was wrong. My entire life was being lived on “flesh power.”
Why did Jesus come into you instead of alongside, under, behind, or before you? Listen carefully: Jesus is the only one who could ever live the Christian life. He came into you in order to express the life of Christ through you. There it is, sweet and simple. That’s the new plan as old as the New Testament.
If both Anabel and I could understand how to do this, what kind of marriage would we be guaranteed? Why, we could take this show on the road and write a book about it! The trick is understanding how to let Christ live His life through you.
“Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” (Rom. 6:13)
There are those two ways again. I either present myself to God or to sin. Chapters 5-8 of Romans contain the word “sin” forty-one times. Here’s an amazing fact: Forty of those times it is a noun; only once is it a verb. Did you grasp that? It’s a noun in the verse above. But if, as you just read it, you interpreted “sin” as a verb (i.e., stealing hubcaps or the like), then you just missed one of the most powerful truths in the New Testament. There are dozens of verses in the New Testament where sin is a noun, not a verb (to be sinning), and if you interpret sin in those verses as verbs, you’ve taken the wrong exit off the freeway.
In his classic and highly recognized work, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, W.E. Vine states that in eleven of these forty instances sin is a “governing power or principle” which is personified” (p 1055). What does that mean? It means the word sin is a power which is “represented as a person.” Let’s see if we can clarify that.
In the verse I quoted, let’s represent this power called sin as a person. We’ll let sin be personified as a sergeant, and you are a private under his authority. Now, when a sergeant says “frog”, a private jumps. He has no choice because a private is under the authority of a sergeant. The only thing that could break “Sgt. Sin’s hold on you would be either the termination of his authority or the termination of your obligation to that authority, or perhaps both. Let’s take, for instance, death. Should Sgt. Sin die, that would free you from his authority; and if you died, you would certainly be out from under his dictatorial ways. Either way, someone would have to die in order for you to be set free.
“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, (Rom. 6:6)” (You died)
For he that is dead is freed from sin (the noun).” (Rom. 6:7) Your death freed you from sin’s ability to make you obey. You have now, in a sense, been reborn as a civilian free from the Sergeant’s authority.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin [the noun], but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 6:11) You are under a new system; thus, you must act dead to the Sergeant and alive to your freedom.
You died in Christ when He was crucified (Rom. 6:6). Then you were reborn as a new person in Christ at His resurrection (2 Cor. 5:17). This comes with the package when you get saved. As this new spirit-being, you are no longer under Sgt. Sin’s authority. You have a new Master, Jesus! Your death effected a permanent liberation from sin’s (the noun) tyrannical authority over you. You don’t have to pay any attention to Sgt. Sin now.
Picture the “Sarge” screaming in your ear to hit the deck and pick up cigarette butts with your teeth while doing fifty push-ups. Now picture the new you, born anew, (not the old private raised from the dead) grinning and saying, “Rain on you, Sarge! You have no authority over me. I am dead to you!”
This is exactly what our new relationship to the power of sin now looks like. It has no more reign over you.
Now, let’s give old Sergeant Sin a couple of aces in the hole. He doesn’t give up that easily. He knows that your brain was programmed from the years spent under his authority and that your brain is programmed with your old marine ways, even though you are now a new civilian, not under his control any longer. Your old ways are called Flesh in the Bible. (Phil 3: 3-9) If Sarge could somehow infiltrate your brain, and if he could be personified as the old private who used to submit so readily to his authority, then he could constantly “talk” to the new you as if you were still in the Marine Corps and under his control! He’d employ your old marine ways and use first-person singular pronouns to speak to you with your own accent. This way, you would be deceived into thinking you were reasoning things out in your own mind. Sergeant Sin would try in every situation, moment by moment, to speak to you as though you were still the old private in a way that intimidates you, tempts you, accuses you, badgers you, and deceives you into behaving like you were still a marine. He tries to get you so confused that you start to believe you have two personalities: a civilian one (good) and a marine one (evil). If Sgt. Sin was skilled enough, he might even be able to get you to believe that you never became a civilian at all.
Jesus stated concerning Satan’s kingdom, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” (Matthew 12:25b) Yet, we Christians have naively believed that each of us was recreated as a “house divided against itself.” Half civilian and half marine. I ask you, Christian, would God who has called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9) deliberately set you up for a “cannot stand” situation by creating you as a house divided against itself?
Dear Christian, you are not fighting a civil war. That Marine inside you is not you. It is the noun…sin…. masquerading as the old you; It’s Sgt. Sin impersonating the old man who was crucified with Christ. He is the “fly in the ointment,” and that is the reason it seems like the old man is still alive.
There is something tragically different between the twentieth-century practice of Christianity and that of the first-century Christians. Our intimate loved ones and even our high-profile heroes of the faith are falling like flies! God help us! If the heroes can’t make it, who can? By the grace of God, the ones who can make it are the ones who discover and appropriate the mystery…which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27)
They are those who discover they cannot live the Christian life, but that the One who lives within them can. The trick is discovering our true identity in Christ, why He indwells us, and how to let Him live through us to overcome Sgt. Sin.
Pastor Bryan Ross
Grace Life Bible Church
Grand Rapids, MI
June 13, 2025