Introduction: The Life of Faith Is Not an Independent Life
Blessed be our God and Father, for the mercy He has extended to us, and by whose mercy each one of us still stands. May the peace of the Lord be with you and with your household. It is a blessing that the Lord allows us this time to expose ourselves to the power of His Word and to the power of His Holy Spirit.
The apostle Peter asked a question that sums up everything it means to live by faith: “To whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). The life of faith is not a life independent of Jesus. It is the result of understanding that without Him we can do absolutely nothing, and that we cannot live a life apart from Him. It consists, precisely, in walking according to what the Lord has established in His Word and by the direction of His Holy Spirit.
We have devoted several weeks to the study of the old man, and it is one of the foundational themes of the life of faith. Why? Because many times, through ignorance of this subject, we have not realized that the enemy is not outside but inside each one of us. The old man is what has remained in us after we came to Christ Jesus.
An Enemy That Remains: The Lesson of Genesis 3
Chapter 3 of the book of Genesis gives us an important piece of information for understanding this subject and the life of faith. When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord, they were not expelled from the garden immediately. There was a period of time. After the disobedience, a dialogue takes place between the Lord God and Adam and Eve, and there God lays out what will happen to each of them in the future. He gives them clothing, and only then are they driven out, so that they would not reach out their hand and take also from the tree of life, having already disobeyed and taken from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Time passed.
What does this mean, and why do I bring it up? It helps us understand that many of us who have come to Christ Jesus have believed that changes are immediate and instantaneous, without our doing anything at all. To a certain degree we have misinterpreted the text that teaches us that salvation is not by works but by the Grace of God. But the fact that it is not by works does not mean that none of us has to work to validate the work of the cross. And one of the tasks each of us must carry out is precisely this: overcoming the old man.
Just as Adam and Eve lingered in the garden for a time—we do not know exactly how long, but it was a considerable time—so the man and the woman who come to the Lord continue to show signs of what they were. Adam and Eve had already fallen; a degradation in their bodies had already taken place, which is evident in chapter 3, and yet they still remained in the garden of Eden. Only afterward were they driven out. In the same way, the changes in our lives are neither instantaneous nor immediate: each of us has to validate the work of the cross in our own life, and one of the validations we are called to make is to undo the old man. That is what falls to us to do.
The Old Man: A Link to the Past and to the Powers of Darkness
In the previous teaching we began to study how to overcome the old man, because the Word showed us that the old man is a link to the past. He is a link to the kingdom of darkness; to be more specific, a link to Satan. I put it this way because sometimes, when we speak of the kingdom of darkness, we do not understand that it is Satan himself who is involved in all of this.
What does it mean that the old man is a link to the past? It means that he holds the record of every trauma we have lived through, even those we were not aware of as children and which, in many cases, none of us remembers. But the old man does remember: he holds a genetic memory and a spiritual memory, even of things that happened while we were in our mother’s womb. Here we see how deep this subject runs.
The old man is not merely the old way of living, nor merely habits, nor merely the things we used to do, which is generally how we have defined him. He goes much further. He holds a detailed record, both physical and spiritual, of everything that happened in the past, including sins that at the time we did not know were sins—things we did in ignorance or naivety and later discovered to be sin. The old man keeps all of that record, and that record is activated later on, precisely when we are seeking the presence of the Lord and when we are serving Him.
That is why there are people who fall, and why there are people who end up in criminal behavior—not because they want to. The apostle Paul says it plainly in chapter 7 of his epistle to the Romans: the very thing he does not want to do is what he ends up doing. How have we explained it so many times? “The devil made me do it, the devil pushed me, the devil tempted me.” But it is not the devil; it is the old man who still subsists in the life of the man of faith and of the woman of faith. That record, genetic and spiritual, is reactivated when we seek the Lord.
And see how strong the old man is: the Spirit of God, through the writings of the apostle Paul, gave us four instructions on how to work against him and how to destroy him. The purpose is not to reconcile with the old man; the purpose is to destroy him. In no man of faith and no woman of faith should the old man still remain. That is the work of each one of us.
The Four Instructions of the Spirit: What We Have Already Seen
In the previous teaching we studied the first two, which are considered basic, rudimentary—the ones that do not require as much effort. The first is in Ephesians, chapter 4: “Put off the old man” (Ephesians 4:22). This first way requires decision, conviction, firmness, and commitment to the Lord. No one who lacks firmness, commitment, and faithfulness to the Lord will truly be able to put off the old man.
The second is written by the apostle to the Romans: “Put to death the deeds of the flesh” (Romans 8:13). This way consists of killing, of destroying the old man, and it demands greater effort. Why? Because the old man represents, listen carefully, our tastes, our desires, our dreams, and even our aspirations; he represents what our life has been up to this moment, what we wanted to overcome, to surpass, and to mend. When the apostle says “put to death,” he is speaking of things that are stuck to our personality, to our character, even to our bones, to our very nature. It is not as easy as saying “put to death”: it requires commitment and conviction.
In some cases, putting off the old man may prove simple: I made the decision, I decided it, and I did it. And I was able to move on to the second level, which was not so easy, but we could say that I achieved it. However, there are actions and thoughts—obsessions, panics that paralyze a person—for which it is not enough to say “I have already put off this feeling” or “I have already put this feeling to death.” They require greater strength and greater energy to be destroyed. For those cases there are the other two ways, which carry greater power and greater energy.
The Third Way: Crucifying the Old Man
The third way that the Spirit of God establishes for dealing with the old man is found in chapter 6 of the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans, in verse 6:
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer serve sin” (Romans 6:6)
Notice how we have been coming to understand the processes established by the Spirit of God. Putting off the old man comes first; putting him to death requires greater effort; but for those situations that are not easy to put to death, the third way comes in: crucifying the old man. I am going to pause for a few minutes to explain this third way, so that we understand what it requires.
It Is Not Merely a Matter of Declaring It
If it were a matter of speaking it, it would be simple. But there are elements that involve the whole integrity of the person in order to crucify the old man. This is extremely important: it is not a matter of saying it. One of the greatest problems we men and women of faith have is that we believe everything consists in saying it: “I repent,” “I have already asked the Lord’s forgiveness,” “I have already put off the old man,” “I have already crucified the old man.” We have believed, mistakenly and sadly, that everything is a matter of saying it, and I have to tell you: no. If it were that simple, no man or woman of faith would have any trouble with the old man.
Why, then, does the old man persist? For a very simple reason: because he is not easy to destroy. The Spirit of God tells us that our old man was crucified together with Christ; he was crucified with Him in potential. But it falls to us to validate that Word. It is not that, because Christ Jesus did everything, I no longer have to do anything at all. If it were instantaneous and automatic, we would not have so many relapses and so many falls today. Each of us received a provision, but we have to activate and validate that provision in our own life.
Verse 6 also hands us a key of understanding for putting this third way into action. There are requirements in it that help us understand what it means to crucify, and that is the question I want to answer: what is it to crucify the old man? If it is not a matter of saying it, what does it consist of? We will discover that crucifying the old man is a combination of elements. Let us look at the first.
First Element: Faithfulness
The text says that our old man was crucified “together with Him.” We have all read the account of those two men who are called thieves, who were crucified together with Jesus. We know perfectly well that one of them, even while being crucified, was acting in the same way as the religious leaders—Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees—who were crucifying Jesus: he asked Him to save Himself and to save them. He was crucified, yet he kept acting the same. That is why it is not merely a matter of being crucified; above all, we have to understand that it is a matter of faithfulness.
This also shows us that, in many men and women of God, the greatest obstacle is that we have not been completely converted to the Lord. Faithfulness requires conversion. A person who has not been converted cannot be faithful to the Lord. Even if it weighs on us, even if it hurts or offends us, we have to understand it: we are not faithful to the Lord because we have not been converted. A person who has not understood what repentance means cannot, in reality, be faithful. Faithfulness is the result of having been converted; it is the result of having repented before the Lord.
Why is the old man still active? Because it still interests us and suits us to keep him alive. Let me give you a clear example. In the book of Acts, in chapter 5, we find the case of Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple. Listen carefully to what I am about to say: they had been baptized with the Holy Spirit, because that was the mark of the first believers, who were baptized with the Holy Spirit right away. Yet they owned a piece of property outside Jerusalem, and they went to sell it. But when they saw themselves with a large sum of money, they decided to give one part and keep back another. That is unfaithfulness, and it happens to a person who has not fully repented. I repent of ninety percent of this action, but the ten percent we do not repent of is what will go on giving life to the old man.
That is why Romans 6:6 makes us understand that crucifying the old man begins with true repentance. I have to repent of all my deeds. We have said in more than one of our teachings that we must name our deeds. It is not enough to say, “I repent of all the bad I was,” or “I repent of all the sin I committed.” We cannot do that, because with that “all” we are not really including everything; what we are doing is walking in ambiguity. We have to say: “I repent of fornication, I repent of adultery, I repent of lying, I repent of pride, I repent of vanity, I repent of perversity, I repent of having been unfaithful, I repent of…”—identifying each evil, each act, and each situation we have walked through. Otherwise there will be no faithfulness, because it is impossible to develop faithfulness to the Lord if we have not repented.
So crucifying the old man is an act of conversion, and it begins with repenting of each detail. It is not a matter of treating them as a testimony—“I was a murderer”—but of being ashamed of everything we did and everything we were. This is very important: it is the only way to develop faithfulness.
And this is not a religious act that I will finish in five minutes, and if I can do it in less, so much the better. It is an act in which I present myself before the Lord and say: “I am in Your presence, my Lord, to confess. Although You know everything, because You were there at every moment of my past, I come to confess and to repent of this, of this, of this…” In some cases it will be an endless list, but that is how faithfulness begins.
Second Element: Faith
Now we turn to verse 11 of the same chapter 6, where a second element is brought in:
“Likewise you also, consider yourselves indeed to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:11)
This second element is faith. But faith does not consist in repeating something to ourselves, as if trying to convince ourselves. Faith is not simply believing; faith is believing God and walking according to what God tells me. I want to make a brief parenthesis here, because many times we have confused personal judgment with faith. Faith is not personal judgment, and personal judgment is not faith. We do not walk by our own judgment, deciding first and then expecting God to fix what we have done. That is not faith. Faith is what the Lord tells me. But many of us do not wait for God to speak; we decide by our own judgment, by the experience we have, by the knowledge we have: “This isn’t so complicated, I think I can do it, I’m capable.” That is not faith. Faith is not personal judgment, or personal opinion, or experience. I may believe something and be totally convinced that it is good and necessary, and even so that is not faith. I have to walk according to what God has said, not according to my opinion or to what I believe.
That is why the Spirit of God, through the instruction of the apostle Paul, tells us to consider that we are indeed dead to sin. But it is not a matter of thinking it, repeating it, and convincing ourselves: “I am dead, I am dead, I am dead.” That is not faith; it is autosuggestion. Faith is according to what the Lord said in His Word, and I walk by His Word.
The greatest problem that many of us who confess ourselves children of God have had is that we have decided by our own judgment, our own opinion, our own thinking, our own view, even by our own need, but not by what the Lord has said. We have never waited for what the Lord has said about a particular matter; we have thrown ourselves in first and afterward asked the Lord to rescue us and set us free. Such was the case of the apostle Peter when he told the Lord that, if it was Him, to command him to come to Him walking on the water. What need was there? Nevertheless, the Lord said to him, “All right, come out walking.” And what happened? He sank. That is the experience of many men and women today: they walk not by faith but by opinions, by references, by personal beliefs. We have to correct this.
Third Element: Prayer and Humbling Ourselves on the Battlefield
Let us go now to the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, chapter 5, verses 16 and 24:
“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and do not fulfill the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16)
“And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24)
The old man is not overcome in theory; listen carefully. The old man is overcome in reality, on the battlefield. What do I mean? The old man is not overcome while he is asleep. He is overcome when he manifests himself in our life, in our body, when those desires spoken of in verse 24—the passions and the lusts—make themselves known. He is overcome when you feel the desire for fornication, for adultery, for lying, or the intention or manifestation of the acts of the past: masturbation and everything that has to do with sexuality. That is when he is overcome.
How? I turn to the epistle of James and then to First Peter:
“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:10)
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:6)
Remember this word: humble yourselves. What does it mean to humble oneself? Here again we discover that these instructions are not merely nominal. I do not mean simply saying, “I humble myself in Your presence, Lord; I humble my heart before You.” Sadly, many of us work with these things only at the level of conscience or reasoning. But do you know what it is to humble oneself? When you go to the Old Testament, you discover that humbling oneself has to do with prostrating oneself—not kneeling, but prostrating, that is, making the forehead touch the floor. That is humbling oneself. Many of us do not practice it that way; for us it is something nominal, a saying, an expression. We almost always say it while singing a song, sometimes with some different posture, to indicate that we are prostrating and humbling ourselves before Him. But humbling oneself has to do with prostrating oneself. Both James and the apostle Peter tell us, by the Spirit of God: humble yourselves under the mighty hand of the Lord.
Let us return to Galatians, chapter 5, verse 24: those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. The best time to crucify the old man is when he is manifesting himself, and the way to do it is by humbling ourselves. The time to overcome the flesh is when we come before the presence of the Lord. That is the third element.
So crucifying the old man begins with and contains faithfulness, which is a synonym for repentance and for a total, not partial, conversion; it contains faith; and it contains prayer, prostrating ourselves before the presence of the Lord. Many men and women of God have left prayer; we have abandoned prayer. But I am not speaking of religious prayer, where I have to pray twenty or thirty minutes and, after three, I no longer know what to say; nor of the prayer where I am going to pray for this person, for that other person, for this country, for the rulers, for whatever comes to mind. I am speaking of humbling myself before the presence of the Lord: “Lord, my old man—meaning fornication, meaning masturbation, meaning lying, meaning adultery, whatever is awakening—I confess it to the Lord. Lord, my flesh is rebelling against me, but I come before Your presence, prostrate, and I humble myself before You, O God, understanding that I have already crucified my old man together with You on the cross.”
That is how the old man is overcome. It is not merely an expression; if it were that simple, we would have no reason to study this subject. He is overcome in the battle, he is overcome in the manifestation. And if three hours later you feel the same thing, then three hours later you have to repeat the process, until we have overcome him completely, until we have crucified him completely.
This applies to every situation that has to do with the old man. In some cases they will be sexual situations; in others, ethical situations: lying, pride, vanity, arrogance, which are often seen as normal within the societies in which we live. And in other cases they will be economic situations: “Lord, I have lost my livelihood, I have no livelihood, my old man is overwhelming me.” I come before Your presence and humble myself before You, until we learn to wait and to trust in the Lord.
Fourth Element: Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance
There is one additional element that I must point out here. I turn to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, verse 24, a text well known to the great majority:
“Then Jesus said to His disciples: If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24)
Here is the cross. What is the cross for? Now we see it by the Spirit of God: it is not for crucifying Jesus; it is for crucifying myself. I carry my cross in order to crucify myself. And I have to tell you that the cross is not merely, as it is usually conceived, pain and suffering. When we go to the Word, we discover, by the Spirit of God, that the cross is the place where Jesus defeated Satan and where Jesus defeated death. “O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Where did Jesus win the victory? On the cross of Calvary. Therefore the cross is not the place of pain but the place of victory, the place where we defeat Satan and the kingdom of darkness. Many of us are soaked in religious knowledge that is good for nothing except reciting it.
I am referring, then, to a fourth element: spiritual warfare and deliverance. At the beginning of this teaching I said that the old man is a link to the kingdom of darkness. This means that many demons, unclean spirits, and fallen angels operate through a person’s old man. And I have to tell those who believe that a Christian cannot be possessed that there are many elements in the Holy Scriptures telling us that the demon can come in and go out at will, can remain, and can do whatever he wants through the body of that person.
That is why, many times, we cannot crucify the old man: because there is a demon sustaining him. Listen carefully, this is very important. Many times we cannot overcome the old man because a demon is intervening and holding him up. That is where spiritual warfare and deliverance come in. There are many people—men, women, even people in ministry—who do not believe in spiritual warfare or in deliverance. I have to tell you that this is the reason why many times men and women of God fail to grow spiritually or to rise above their life of passion and their disordered life: they have not been willing to submit to deliverance. It is as simple as that. Until the demon that sustains the old man is removed, the person will not be able to overcome his old man.
So, what is it to crucify the old man? It is a combination of faithfulness, which has to do with conversion, with repentance, and with having given ourselves one hundred percent to the Lord; of faith, which is not my judgment or my opinion but what the Lord has said about the matter, and which includes learning to wait on the Lord; of prayer, of humbling ourselves before Him; and of deliverance, because there is no other way. It is not as simple as a confession: “I crucify my old man.” It is not so, brothers; it is not so, sisters. Whoever thinks so is wasting time and deceiving himself.
The Fourth Way: Being Reformed by the Renewing of the Mind
We come now to the fourth way that the Spirit of God establishes for working against the old man. I turn to chapter 12 of the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans, verse 2:
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2)
Here we see, just as in the previous step, that there is a combination: faith plus the Word of God. Let us look at what “conformed” means. It is not what we have taken it to mean. Think of a mold into which a liquid is poured: the liquid spreads out, taking the shape of the mold where it was placed. That is being conformed. What the Spirit of God is telling us, in other words, is: do not take the shape of the world; do not let the world mold you or give you form. There are men of God, women of God, and ministers who have taken the shape of the world and not the shape of the Word.
And then the Spirit tells us: “be reformed.” What does that mean? It has to do with form: to be reformed is to take on another form. Which one? The renewing of our mind, a mind sustained by the Spirit of God—that is, by what the Word of God establishes. We have to take on the form that the Spirit of God gives us; this is the instruction He is giving us.
Let us notice something: this old man got past the first model, got past the second, and got past the third. We are at the last one. That this is the last way of dealing with the old man means that this old man is extremely strong, and that he has to do with patterns, with thoughts, with obsessions, with complexes, with rigid ways of thinking and ways of seeing things. How is he overcome? Do not follow the pattern of the old man; follow the form that the Spirit of God is giving you. He is overcome when we add faith plus the Word.
The Classic Model: Abraham
I want to present a case that we all know very well: that of Abraham. It is the classic model. God spoke to him and said, in chapter 12 of the book of Genesis:
“Get out of your country and from your kindred, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1)
Let us keep this word in mind, because that was all God told him: leave your country and your kindred. Abraham does leave, indeed, but he takes Lot with him. Later he realizes, as he reviews what God had said to him, that Lot was also kindred. I had understood that kindred meant father, mother, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, and grandmothers, but kindred also includes nephews, which was Lot’s case. It is then that Abraham says to him: if you go to the right, I will go to the left. The Word—what God said: “leave your country and your kindred, to the land that I will show you.” Abraham grounds himself in the Word. This model is grounded in faith in the Word.
And this is very important, because this model demands that we know the Holy Scriptures. A man or a woman who has not read the Holy Scriptures will not be able to confront his or her old man with this model, because this model demands knowing what God has said. “But that was in the Old Testament.” I ask you: did God change His mind? Is the Old Testament not the Word of God, and did that Word become invalid? We have not perfectly understood the work of the cross. That is the Word of God just as much as the New Testament is. I have to know the Word in order to move according to this model.
I continue with the case of Abraham. He fulfilled the Word that God told him, “leave your country and your kindred,” and he separated himself from Lot. So much so that when the events of Sodom and Gomorrah took place, Lot—whom Abraham had rescued years earlier from the kings who had carried him off captive—did not seek out Abraham when he left Sodom. Lot had understood perfectly Abraham’s resolve: you go that way and I go this way; we separate completely, according to what the Word of God says.
Afterward comes the birth of Ishmael, Abraham’s first son. But God tells Abraham that this son will not be his heir, but one who will come from his loins, from his own substance, one who will be begotten by him with Sarah, and not with another woman. So Abraham sends Hagar away together with Ishmael. Watch the process unfold, because this is very important.
Then comes Isaac. When Isaac is already a young boy, God tells Abraham to sacrifice him. And, in case it was not clear whom He was speaking of, He gives him four identifiers: your son, the one you love, your only son, Isaac. And here comes the trial by fire. God does not change His mind. This is one of the failings of contemporary Christians: we receive a word and, a moment later, we receive a second word that seems to contradict the first, and the great majority of us say: “Well, it’s simple, God changed His mind; it’s no longer that, now it’s this.”
Abraham understood: the Word. God does not change His mind. And see how important this model of walking by faith in the Word is. If God told me that the one who would be my heir was Isaac, if God told me that Isaac is the son of the promise, then, if today He asks me to sacrifice him, God is able to raise him from the dead. That is what Abraham thought. This is recounted in the epistle to the Hebrews; it is not an invention. Abraham concluded that God is able to raise Isaac. See the value of faith in the Word.
That is how the old man is overcome according to this model: faith in the Word. God has said it; I hold fast to the Word. God has not changed His mind. God is not establishing a change of direction, nor a conclusion to what had happened before; He is strengthening me to move forward on the road and in the process that He has established with me. “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent” (Numbers 23:19). How many times have we said this! But how many times have we believed what we said? God does not change; He is simply strengthening our lives so that we may overcome the old man, because there is an old man who refuses to leave.
That old man has to do with unbelief, with vanity, with pride, with seduction, with cunning, and with the presence and manifestation of fallen angels who sustain him. That is why God is strengthening you to be reformed by the renewing of your mind. This is the way to overcome the old man according to this last model presented in the Holy Scriptures, where the strength lies in the Word. That is why I said that a man or a woman who has not read the Word cannot overcome his or her old man: he or she needs the Word in order to establish it.
Establishing the Word: The Way He Is Overcome
I want to go to the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Colossians, chapter 2, verses 13 through 15:
“And you, being dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, canceling the record of decrees that stood against us, which was contrary to us, taking it out of the way and nailing it to the cross; and having stripped the principalities and powers, He made a public display of them, triumphing over them in the cross” (Colossians 2:13-15)
God has said it by His Holy Spirit: while I was dead in trespasses and sins, God gave me life. I am standing because God has given me life; I am standing by the Grace and the mercy of God. This is faith in the Word; this is establishing the Word. Do you know how the old man is overcome? By establishing the Word, with the putting off of the body of the sin of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ, through Christ Jesus. Christ is provision of life for me, provision of deliverance for me, provision of Grace for me. “Lord, I come before Your presence to take hold of the provision of Grace, the provision of life, and the provision of freedom. I come, Lord, to take hold of Your Word and to bring it to life in me.” That is how he is overcome.
The old man is not rebuked. I have said it in this teaching, but I want to say it again: it is demons, and only demons, that are rebuked; the old man is not. The old man is fought, he is overcome, he is circumcised, he is stripped off, he is nailed to the cross. The old man is overcome by taking on the form of the Spirit of God, going against what the world has established.
If there is lack, if there is sickness, if there is captivity, you do not get out of it by the traditional ways in which the world resolves its cases: you do not solve it with medication, you do not solve it with a pill; you solve it by establishing the Word of God. If God is provision of health for me, why do I have to be sick in this condition? Because your old man is reminding you of the genetics of the past, the genetics of your ancestors, everything you yourself sowed. But today I come to overcome him by the Word, quoting it and establishing it. It is the only way: escaping from the form that the world and the kingdom of darkness have established to govern even men and women of faith. Do you see? There are many men and women today who are subject to their old man and do not want to leave that place; they persist in it.
The Word of God for us today is: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). You will be free to the degree that you walk in that Word, to the degree that you establish that Word for yourself. Otherwise, the years will pass, and you will remain in the same condition and the same situation, always saying: “Lord, help me; Lord, deliver me; Lord, come to my aid; Lord, heal me.” How much time do you have?
Think of the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda. Jesus goes to him and asks: “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6). It was the right question. Perhaps one of us would have asked him why he was there, but Jesus went straight to the heart of the matter: do you want to be made well? The man answers: “Lord, I have no one to put me in”; the only way to be healed was to get in when the waters were stirred by the angel. And Jesus says to him: “Rise, take up your bed and walk” (John 5:8). And it was the Sabbath on the day Jesus did this work. It is the Word: the only thing that will make us whole, the only thing that will make us saved, the only thing that will make us free.
To begin with, know the truth. It is not enough to say “Christ is the truth”; it is not enough to say that. Many of us are hiding in religious confessions: “Christ is the truth.” But do you know the Word? The Word speaks of Christ; do you know it? To the degree that we come to know it, to that degree we will be made well and be set free from our old man; to the degree that we establish it, to that degree we will keep escaping from him.
There is a truth that we must not ignore: we are not fighting only against the kingdom of darkness; we are fighting against the old man. He is not outside; he is inside each one of us. And the only way to be freed from the kingdom of darkness is to be freed from our old man, because the old man is a link to the kingdom of darkness.
Conclusion
The Spirit of God has given us four instructions for working against the old man: to put him off, to put him to death, to crucify him, and to be reformed by the renewing of our mind. The first two are basic; the last two require greater strength, because the old man is strong. To crucify him is not to declare it with the mouth, but to combine faithfulness—detailed repentance and total conversion—, faith—walking by what God has said and not by our own judgment—, prayer and humility at the very moment of the battle, and deliverance from the demon that sustains him. To be reformed, for its part, is the sum of faith and the Word: knowing the Scriptures, establishing them in our life, and trusting that God does not change His mind.
May the eternal, Almighty God open your senses and your understanding to grasp this subject. And may you, by the Spirit of God, make firm decisions today—real decisions, unambiguous decisions, decisions of integrity—so that the Kingdom of God may be established in you and with you, wherever the Lord has caused you to dwell. The peace of the Lord be with you. Amen.
Review Questions
- Why is it not enough to declare, “I have already crucified my old man”? Explain, in your own words, the four elements that make up the crucifixion of the old man: faithfulness, faith, prayer with humility, and deliverance.
- As in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, is there a “ten percent” of your life that you have not yet repented of in detail and that could be giving life to the old man? What will you do this week to present yourself before the Lord and name it?
- What does it mean to be reformed by the renewing of the mind, and what role does knowledge of the Holy Scriptures play in that renewal? What does the case of Abraham teach about walking by faith in the Word when one word from God seems to contradict another?
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