"For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity." (Proverbs 24:16)

Each and every one of us has our own issues and struggles that we face. Many of us fail and can't find the power to overcome the sins that keep defeating us, and it just gets tiring to face defeat over and over again.

Wouldn't it be a great thing to be able to overcome this year what kept defeating us last year? Wouldn't it be great to be able to say "no" to the sin that we found ourselves repeatedly saying "yes" to? Wouldn't it be great to finally embrace freedom from the thing that kept tying us down on the ground called "guilt" and "condemnation"?

Friend, we can overcome. We can overcome through the victory that Christ has won. We may have fallen once, twice, or more times last year, but this year gives us another opportunity to rise up and learn to walk in the victory of Christ.

Living on the finished work of Christ

The Bible tells us that Christ successfully defeated the power of sin and death. Many of us just don't understand how that happened. Let's go over a few things in order to understand this very liberating truth.

• First, we need to understand that Christ came to destroy the work of the devil. 1 John 3:8 tells us,

"He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil."

• Second, we need to understand that the devil's work is solely to steal, kill, and destroy us by tempting us and causing us to sin. Christ, however, came to give us abundant life. We read Him saying in John 10:10,

"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."

• Third, we need to understand that Christ is able to give us that abundant life through His finished work on the cross. We read in Colossians 2:13-15,

"And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it."

So, what does this have to do with us? How does His finished work allow us to live victoriously?

His finished work allows us to live free from the sin that used to entangle us. Because we are in Him, we must realize that we are no longer under the power of sin to obey it. We are no longer obliged to commit sin! Romans 6:4-11 tells us,

"Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 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 be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So how do we overcome?

Friends, by now we must have realized that Christ has already set us free from sin by uniting us with Him in His death, effectively putting an end to sin's hold over our lives. We now belong to Him, and are thus not under sin's dominion anymore. In Christ we can say "no" to sin, no matter how tempting it may be.

In fact, through Christ, all that used to be enticing and tempting to us will slowly become unappealing and uninviting to us. This is because He has made us into a new creation, complete with a new heart and a new Spirit - His Spirit - living in us (see 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ezekiel 36:26; Ephesians 1:14; 2 Corinthians 1:22).

I leave you with this very encouraging and liberating verse:

"He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:13-14)