God’s Plan for Walking With Jesus Everyday
Discovering how to walk in continual, conscious, and conspicuous victory is the goal of every believer. While many struggle, believing victory is only occasional or earned through strenuous effort, the sources reveal a profound truth: abounding victory is entirely possible only through God’s amazing grace.
This guide explores the three non-negotiable spiritual steps—Knowing, Reckoning, and Yielding—that unlock the transformative power of the Gospel, liberating you from the dominion of sin.
The Foundation of Grace: Victory is Not Earned
Many people mistakenly believe that preaching the message of grace is “being light on sin”. However, the exact opposite is true: nothing liberates you from a life of sin like God’s amazing grace.
Victory is an already-won gift, not a prize to be attained by human effort. Dwight L. Moody summarized the foundation of grace in three key points:
- I can do nothing to earn salvation.
- God does not require me to do anything.
- Jesus Christ has done it all.
This reality means that if you come to God as a beggar, you will be sent away as a prince, trusting Him simply by His amazing grace. Being saved by grace, however, is not a license to sin. The Apostle Paul asks, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid”. Grace does not excuse sin; it is the power that gives us amazing victory over it.
God’s plan for believers is victory all the time, in every place. This victory is continuous, contagious, and conspicuous. To access this abounding victory, you must understand and apply three key words from Romans Chapter 6: Knowing, Reckoning, and Yielding.
Key 1: Knowing (Fact) — Your Identification with Christ
The first key deals with fact—something you must know in your mind and believe. This fact is your identification with Christ.
The Profound Fact: When Christ Died, You Died
Identification means you have become one with Jesus Christ. When Christ died on the cross, He didn’t just take your sin; He took you, the source of the sin, to the cross.
- “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him“.
- When Jesus died, the “old Adrien died”.
- The death of Christ deals not only with the penalty of sin but also with the power of sin.
This identification is a historical fact: When Jesus died 2,000 years ago, you were there and died with Him.
Freedom from Penalty and Power
Identification breaks both the legal claim and the control of sin:
- Freedom from Penalty (The Criminal): Just as a criminal who dies is no longer subject to trial or punishment, when Christ died, the penalty of the law was finished.
- Freedom from Power (The Slave): Just as a master has no power over a dead slave, when you died with Christ, the power of the slave master, Satan, was broken.
Burial and Resurrection
The fact of identification extends beyond death to burial and resurrection:
- Burial: When Jesus was buried, you were buried with Him. This means your sin is “buried in the grave of God’s forgetfulness,” and Satan cannot intimidate you with the “bones of your old life”.
- Resurrection: Just as Christ was raised up from the dead, “even so we also” were raised with Him to walk in newness of life. This is not merely being a “forgiven patched up old person” but receiving resurrection life and becoming a brand-new person.
Baptism symbolizes this spiritual death, burial, and resurrection that occurred when you trusted Christ. Baptism by immersion pictures the old person being buried in a “liquid tomb” and the new person being raised to walk in newness of life.
This knowledge—the fact that you died with Him, were buried with Him, and arose with Him—is the prerequisite for victory.
Key 2: Reckoning (Faith) — The Appropriation of Christ
The second key is Reckoning, which is the appropriation of that fact through faith. Reckoning is a bookkeeping term, meaning to calculate or figure.
Acting on Known Fact
Reckoning is not about feeling; it is about faith acting on what you know to be true.
- Calculate on the Fact: Just as you calculated on the fact that Jesus died for your sins when you got saved, you must now calculate on the fact that you died with Him.
- Ignore Feelings: If you know the clock says six in the morning and the sun is up, you ignore your feeling that you haven’t slept long enough; you go by what you know to be true. Similarly, you must set aside feelings of struggle or defeat and reckon that you have been dead to sin for 2,000 years.
The word “reckon” is in the present tense in Greek, meaning it is something you must continually do, day after day. You must continuously say, “Sin’s penalty does not stand against me and sin’s power is broken over me. I by faith believe that”. If this truth truly gets into your heart, you are “about to be delivered”.
Key 3: Yielding (Function) — Your Submission to Christ
The final key is Yielding, which is your submission to Christ and a matter of function. This is where “the rubber really meets the road” and abounding victory begins.
The Choice to Yield
Sin shall not have dominion over you because you are under grace, not the law. If sin reigns in your mortal body, it is only because you let it.
Yielding involves a negative and a positive action:
- Negative (Dethronement of Sin): You must actively choose against King Satan, King Self, and King Sin. Before salvation, you were a slave to the devil and the flesh and could not say no; now you can. You must refuse to yield your hands, eyes, and tongue as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.
- Positive (Enthronement of the Savior): You must yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead.