Before a person gets saved they live in a certain world. It is a world characterized by sin. It is a terrible world, not only for them, but for all those around them. It is a world that they are not in control of, for at any given moment, they may be swept up in the passions of their sins only to do and say things that afterwards, in a calmer moment, they may not understand and wish they had not done. But even such regret cannot get them out of this world that they are trapped in. Their passions may be those of anger and rage that rise with a ferocity which destroys everything in its path; it may be a bitterness or envy or hatred that burns like a fire consuming and eating away every ounce of love and pity they wished they had; it may be the violence of sexual passion that knows no shame and must have what it wants no matter the cost to one’s own self or the pain caused to others.
Every human being lives in his own uniquely wicked world of sin. It is not exactly the same as another’s world, but it is equally hellish. To live in any world of sin is to live in a violent, hurtful state that cannot be measured by those lulls that some times come, but by the recurring, inevitable episodes of madness which obliterate all reason and better judgment.
“Wake up, you don’t have to be here. This is no longer the world you live in.”
There is only one hope for any of us to be rescued from this world of sin that we live in. His name is Jesus Christ. His salvation is just this: being rescued from the sin that was the ongoing reality of our life. It is being placed in a new world where the gravitational pull of sin has been broken and goodness and love and purity are the norm. The new world that Christ translates us into is a world where righteousness reigns supreme within us. It is a world where God’s kingdom has come and His will can be done. And should any of the old sins seek to exert themselves again, they can be put to death, because they are not part of the new world that you now live in, they are part of the old world that you once lived in. Jesus has delivered you from that nightmare you could not get out of. And when it would seem like you are once more stuck, back in the old, dark, places of the past, say to yourself: “Wake up, you don’t have to be here. This is no longer the world you live in.”
“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:
In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.” (Colossians 3:5)