Creflo Dollar - Victory Over Sinful Behavior - Part 1
This morning I want to talk to you about victory over sinful behavior. We talked about some things last week, it was pretty radical, but now we do wanna focus in on the action piece and show you why and how to gain victory over it. Let's begin this morning in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17 and then Galatians chapter 2 and 20 and establish some things here. Galatians 5 and 17. He says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ," so something happens when you get born again and you get in Christ, "he is a new creature". So, when you get born again, the old man passes away and you are gifted with the new creation that now lives in you. "He is a new creature: the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new".
What passed away, what died, when you got born again? Your old nature, the sin nature, passed. That nature that allowed you to do all kinds of ungodly crazy things, it left. You now have a new nature and, behold, with this new nature, that new nature is perfect, flawless, cannot sin, just like God. And it's trying to get us to understand how to allow him the freedom to impact a soul that has been infected by that old man, thus impacting a body that follows the impulses of that old man. So you see, you can buy a brand new computer and keep the same software and you're gonna get the same output. So, likewise, you got a brand new creation but you can't keep the same software or you gonna keep getting the same impulses and outputs. Does everybody understand that?
All right, now go to Galatians chapter 2 and 20. Galatians 2 and 20. And here's what he says. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I," I'm not living anymore, but it's Christ that's living in me. So, that new creation is literally God in you, God in flesh, glory to God. Again, he is living in you, "And the life which I now live in the flesh," he says, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and he gave himself for me". And then in 2 Peter chapter 1 and 4, 2 Peter chapter 1 and 4. Oh boy. He says, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises," colon. Now, watch him finish this. "That by these you might be partakers of the divine nature," underline "partakers of the divine nature".
What is he talking about? You are now going to partake of the new creation that's on the inside of you. The new creature on the inside of you, he says, he wants you to be a partaker of the new creation and he calls it the divine nature, the God nature. The nature you have after you get born again is the God nature and he wants you to be a partaker of it. And then he tells us how. He says, "through the precious promises," and I never got that. Basically, what he was saying was, "If you're gonna be a partaker of this divine nature, the precious promises of God are gonna have to do something with that software," so you can be a partaker of the divine nature. You have a divine nature that you're supposed to be being a partaker of, and then he says, "You can escape the corruption that is in the world through the intense lust".
Now follow me carefully. Fish swim because it's their nature. Birds fly because it's their nature. I mean, if we tried to fly, I mean, just think about it. If we climbed on top of this roof and if we tried to fly, we would quickly find out that's not our nature. Are you following me? Alright, now watch this. People who are not born again, people who are not saved, sinners, they're called, they sin because it's their nature. Before you got born again, what you did and how you behaved, you did it because that was your nature. How many of you know you can't turn a mule into a racehorse? Why? Because they have two different natures. And in the same way that sinners sin because it's their nature, righteous people live righteously because that is our new nature as new creations.
So, we have the nature, the new nature of God, to live righteously and it can be done because it is our nature to do right, and when we don't, you somehow experience the impulses of that new creation on the inside of you. You're a born again Christian, you just cuss somebody out, now you feeling some kind of way, why? You didn't used to feel that kind of way when you was cussing somebody out. You cussed them out, said, "I'd do it again if they showed up," but now you got a new nature that's sending these impulses that say, "I don't feel right about that". So, now you experience guilt because there's a contradiction that's living inside of you now. Your behavior from your own nature is contradicting your new creation.
So, you might do it, but you're not gonna ever be able to do it again without having to sense that contradiction. Somebody say, "Praise the Lord". And I go back and forth with this, but that is an interesting way to confirm that you got a new nature in you. You have a new nature in you that is not going to agree with the contradiction, praise God. A new nature. Now listen to me carefully as we continue to work on this, to break this down. Yeah, let me say this. The grace of God is not the license to sin. And the reason why the grace of God is not the license to sin is because of the new nature. The new nature is trying to get you to live right. You're the righteousness of God. Now, this is for all the people who wanna take, "You're the righteousness of God by grace, but you can still sin because God done already forgiven you".
See, that's not gonna work because even if you know you're the righteousness of God and if you go and still sin, and you'll still do some things in this body, but you're gonna have to deal with the new nature that's trying to conquer all of that old stuff you got. Look at 1 John chapter... no, before we go, let us go to Colossians chapter 3 and verse 10. We are now recreated in the image of God. Now, let me tell you a truth and you can't forget it. It's easy to wipe it out of your thinking, but what you see right now is the house that Creflo Dollar lives in, all right, and what I see right now is the houses that you guys abide in.
So, you are not your house, your house is your earth suit, your house is your dwelling place. You are a spirit being and that spirit being has now been impacted by the new creation where you and God now abide in the same place and your spirit is already been made perfect because God came in, you're already perfect, you're one third perfect. So, the only part of you that can go to heaven is ready. You're heaven ready right now. Say out loud, "I'm heaven ready". So, you are a spirit being, you have a soul, that's your mind, your will, your emotions, your thinking, your feeling, your choosing. You have a soul. Say out loud, "I have a soul".
So you see where we got confused in church. We're using spirit and soul interchangeably as if they were one. There is a distinction between your spirit and your soul. Your spirit is who you are, your soul is what you have, your body is where you live. Y'all, come on, Jesus might come back and we'll be, we ready. I need you to know you heaven ready, so all that junk the devil try to tell you, you need to let him know, "Bruh, are you talking to my house or are you talking to me? Because if you're talking to me, I'm heaven ready". And the only capacity for the devil to get a hold of you is through your soul because it has a bit of advantage because when your old nature was there, it created the software in your soul, and the impulses of your soul minister to your body to carry it out. But when you got born again, you still had the same software.
So, if you don't deal with the software, you're not gonna be able to change the impulses of your life or your body. Do you understand what I'm saying? So, whatever you're doing in behavior is a result of the software that hadn't been changed yet. Y'all don't hear what I'm saying. But the software can no longer impact the real you because the real you is flawless, perfect, sinless in God, in Christ, sealed with the Holy Ghost, and whenever you walk out your house, you walk to heaven because you heaven ready. Are y'all following me now? All right, now. If you got that piece, you're gonna be able to handle this. If you didn't get that piece, you're getting ready to get lost.
1 John 3...Colossians 10...excuse me, yeah, Colossians 3:10. All right. "And have put on the new man," and have put on the new man, "which is renewed in the knowledge after the image of him that created him". So, the new creation you have, your new creation in God, right there, one and one. You have put that on. The old is gone, you've put on the new one. All right, now watch this. Go to 1 John 3:8 and 9. I'm gonna read to you a scripture that used to bother me. In fact, it used to scare me. In fact, it used to bother a lot of people. Maybe you've never read it before, but you'll see immediately why. 1 John chapter 3 and 8. And it caused a lot of confusion in the body of Christ because of lacking the understanding of what I just took you through.
All right. So, last week we talked about the sin man, the noun, we'll talk more about it today. But today we're spending more time on the sinning behavior. And he says, "He that committeth sin," that's verb. "He that committed sin is of the devil". All right, now stop. Now you see what the problem is because now I'm saved and I committed a sin. And according to this, you are of the devil. I'm like, "Oh Lord, you just said I was of you and now what I did now makes me of the devil". Watch now. "For the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil". Verse 9, "Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin".
You see the problem here? You over here and did something, and then he says, "If you're really born of God, you don't commit sin". But you're committing it, but you're not supposed to commit it because you're born of God. Well, maybe I'm not born of God, which means maybe I am of the devil. Right? You see where that can come from, right? "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin," he cannot sin. And now you're looking at you like, "Yes, I can". But he said, "He cannot sin, because he's born of God". And so, this has been taught to tell you, you cannot sin. Can you imagine the conviction and the condemnation and all that stuff comes because you didn't know how to read this.
So, let's break it down. The first question is, what is born of God? It's our new creation, it is our spirit that is born of God. When you got born again, your soul didn't get born again, your body didn't get born again, your spirit man got born again. So, we are talking about the new creation, you. We're talking about your spirit. What is born again? It is my spirit, it is the new creation. So, this means that our spirit cannot sin because his seed is in us. It is our spirit that got born again, his seed is in our spirit, he's in our spirit, and your spirit man cannot sin. It is perfect, it is flawless, it is Jesus-possessed, it is heaven ready. It cannot sin. You, who are born again are walking around one-third perfect.
The real you is your what? Spirit, soul, or body? The real you is your spirit. Your spirit never desires to sin and will never sin. This is who we really are but we treat that like, "Oh, well, that's just a fantasy. That ain't the truth". And you don't even know how true that is until you die. Because when you die, the only thing, you gonna move, here it is. You're gonna move out of the house, you are now going to become aware of the real you, death is gonna be so awesome because you won't even know it really happened. You're going, when you move, you're gonna step out the house and maybe he'll let you look back and see that's my body, but you're gonna literally, you're gonna literally, move from one dimension to another dimension and you're gonna slip out of your physical dimension house into a spiritual house with your real you and everything now is more real than what you thought was real when you were in your physical body.
That's why you are not ever be scared of death. And that's what the devil will put on you. Like, "Ah, wait a minute. Whether here or there", Paul said it like this. He said, "To tell the truth, I don't know, at this point, whether it's gonna be more beneficial for me to stay here with y'all or go over here where I know about it," and then you start looking at the world and say, "Oh Jesus, I need to stay here". All right, now watch this. All right, so the real you, this is so amazing, the real you resembles your earth suit. It's kinda like the pattern for your earth suit came from the real you. I know you can't see it right now, but I gotta say it. The pattern of this came from your real outfit.
When we see one another in heaven, we're gonna see one another at the best possible state of appearance that we have ever seen one another, maybe in your twenties, but you gonna look at one another like, "Francine, that's you"? You gonna say, "Girl, don't I look good"? And that's the pattern, I have evidence that's just popped in my mind. The physical tabernacle is an exact duplicate of the heavenly tabernacle. The heavenly tabernacle doesn't look like the physical tabernacle. The physical tabernacle took its pattern from the heavenly tabernacle, just like your physical body got its pattern from your spiritual body. Hallelujah.
We gotta be careful, boy, you can be and God wraps it up in here. You get to listen to this stuff, we go... Somebody say, "What happened"? That'd be so cool, if God gave us two seconds to just... Whoa, whoa. Do it again. Hey! Tear this church up. Everybody be on...Ah! Now, since we are still in our bodies and in this world we might still sin. There's really no might to it because 1 John 1 and 8, not that, see, here's the thing about it. You think you're gonna still sin the same sins. You got new creation in you. You are transforming. You're transforming out of certain things in your life into certain things you hadn't been in. So, when I say we still sin, I don't think you're still sinning like you used to sin.
All right, how you used to sin was based on the nature that you had to sin, but since you've been born again, the sin has diminished in how it looks with somebody who perfect. Because, the new creation is working on your desires, that's his way in. "I'm working on taking away the old want-to's, giving you some new want to's," and some of you can take a little look back and you can't even figure out, why is it that I don't want the thing I used to be addicted to? Why is it that I don't wanna even say the stuff I've always used to saying? Because you got the new creation releasing impulses and impacting your desire, the Bible says, to do what pleases God. The new creation wants you to do what pleases God. See, I gotta be careful because I got a generation that's looking for an excuse to wanna be saved and fleshy at the same time.