Pushing Out the Old

Hebrews 10:9

Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.

A critical principle is taught when God took away the first commandment to establish the second. The first commandment was sacrifice and offerings, but the second commandment was that Christ became our sacrifice so that we don't have to do the first commandment. Now, it is critical for the second commandment to be in place before Christ took away the first commandment. If Christ had taken away the first commandment and not established the second, there would be a vacancy, and man would not have a way for his sins to be paid. It was critical that the second be put in the place of the first before the first was taken away. We could put it this way: the second pushed out the first. The second commandment made the first commandment void. Simply put, God established a law of replacement in our lives to show that sin does not have to reign over us.

This law of replacement is critical to your life. One of the great mistakes many people make is that they stop doing something, but they never replace it with something else. Throughout the Scriptures, you will see this law of replacement. For instance, in Romans 12:20, it says, Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. You will notice that good replaced evil. If I stop doing evil without replacing it with good, then evil will have a place to come back to. Therefore, if I don't want evil to come back, I must put good in the place where evil once resided.

This is still true for your life today. When you take away the first, you must always establish the second. One of the greatest reasons that people do not conquer sin is because they never replace the putting away of sin with the putting on of good. If you don't replace sin with good, there is a vacancy for sin to come back. For instance, we replace bad music with good music. If we are going to conquer bad music, we must have good music to replace it with.

Likewise, if we are going to stop bad actions, then we must replace them with good actions. For instance, we replace anger with love. We are to replace bitterness with forgiveness. We are to replace the yoke of the world with the yoke of Christ. We are to replace laziness with work. If you don't practice this law of replacement, you will never overcome sin. This law of replacement is for conquering sin.

Now here's the key to this principle. You replace the bad by doing the good first. You will notice that the first commandment was made obsolete by establishing the second commandment. Evil stopped happening when good was done. In essence, we don't stop doing bad; we just start doing good. When we do good, the bad will fall off. Too many people want to stop doing things that are bad when what they need to do is simply start doing good, and the bad will fall off because it has no place to reside in your life.

Let me illustrate. When I start walking with Christ, all the bad that I do naturally falls off. You cannot be in the presence of Christ and commit sin at the same time. So, the answer to overcoming sin is to walk with Christ daily, and the sin will fall off. Stop trying not to sin, and simply start doing right. You will find that by doing right, you will overcome your besetting sins. Besetting sins are bad habits. If you establish a good habit, you will find the besetting sins in your life will fall off. This is how you overcome sin.