We’ve all heard the story: long ago at the beginning of humanity the first two humans Adam and Eve sinned against God by violating the one thing He told them not to do: eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For this they were cast from the Garden of Eden and the unhindered presence of God. Since then the world has been overtaken by sin and evil in every conceivable form: murder, dishonesty, hatred of God, uncontrolled wrath, lust for people who aren’t for us or who are the same sex as us, drunkenness, theft, gluttony, feeding addiction, the list goes on and on. This is one of the things that makes Christ’s sacrifice for us so beautiful: no matter how far down the road of evil you have walked, a genuine repentance and faith in Jesus can bring you back to where you and He can have relationship.
This is where some Christians can get it wrong on both extremes. On one hand you’ll have the Pharisaical crowd whose pride won’t let them see the logs in their own eyes before pointing out the specks in others. Their sins are not as bad as others, and this gives them a self-appointed sense of piety and superiority to those poor peasants who haven’t yet become as holy as they think themselves to be. There is just one problem with this: no sin is less separating from God than others. It isn’t a sliding scale wherein the Billy Grahams of the world can say that they get a pass while Hitler doesn’t, but rather “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). If you’ve messed up even once and haven’t Christ to cover it, you are as far away from God as the worst child-harming, cannibalistic, devil worshiping slime that can be conceived. To forget that it is by Christ and Him alone that we have any hope of redemption is to downplay the weight of iniquity, elevate our own efforts at holiness, and cheapen the significance of Christ’s lifeline.
On the other hand, you’ll have the crowd that subscribes to what I’ve heard called “greasy grace”: the idea that because Christ has paid for your sins when you believe in Him, that you are forever given a pass to do as you please and call it good because “He paid for it all”. This falls also into a deluded and sinful mentality, as instead of pride in your own supposed holiness, you wear for your badge laziness and complacency about sin. Some who live in this mindset will cite Romans 5:20-21: “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The logic here based on context is that the knowledge of the Laws of God shows how hopeless our case before Him is, so the grace of Christ must and thankfully does increase to cover us that we may be redeemed, but here’s the catch: this is a correlative note, not a prescriptive one. This says that because actions that were shown to be sin were numerous, that grace had to increase to cover them, not “use the grace given as you please, because it’s covered this up until now, so why not keep going?” It treats Christ like an insurance policy rather than the sacrificial mercy He is.
Turn the page of your Bible and you’ll find the very next verse to be Romans 6:1-2: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” Paul’s “by no means” also translates as “God forbid!”, a clear exclamation of disapproval. He continues in verses 11-14: “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” Dead to sin. Don’t let sin reign. Offer yourself to God rather than to sin. Sin is no longer your master. The point of grace is not to be a trampoline for your entertainment, but a safety net for when you unintentionally fall.
What then does this mean for those of us who still sin? (Spoiler alert: that’s everyone.) It means that your relationship to sin shows your relationship to Christ. Even Paul, the man who did a complete 180 on his life and authored the majority of the New Testament said that he still wrestled with the inner man. He stated in Romans 7 the good that he wanted to do he doesn’t, and the things he does he hates, being caught in the middle of wanting to do good amidst internal evil. “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law, but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Waging war, prisoner, wretched, death. Paul uses language conveying his agony over what sins he still does…and that’s the point. Holiness as we humans can attain it on earth is not the absence of sin (only Jesus could pull that off), but the grief that it causes us to participate. Does your sin grieve you? Do you do something you know you shouldn’t and are immediately overcome with conviction and a desire to repent and seek the Lord? Or do you find yourself making excuses, or justifying your sins? Perhaps something you used to be appalled by is now commonplace to you, having “seared your conscience”, as Romans 1 puts it.
The point of this line of questioning is not to send you down either a road of self-congratulation or self-flagellation, but to put into mind how you treat sin in your life. I’ve heard countless times “oh, they struggle with this.” Okay, let’s look at that: a struggle implies a fight, a combat, a wrestling of two opposing forces. Is this truly what is happening in the heart of the one saying it, or is that the commonly accepted phrase that has no true requirement of change? If you are bound in the tendrils of sin but try desperately to be free and take steps toward that freedom, then it is a struggle like Paul’s. If, however, you are in your heart quite at home among the thorns of your iniquity and have little intention of throwing them off for the holiness of Christ, what does this say about your “struggle”? It says that you are not struggling at all, but are okay losing more times than you win to an enemy that Christ has already defeated. You don’t need to live there, yet you do because it’s more comfortable than the growth that requires you to leave it behind you. I once heard a sales guru say “It’s really easy to do the right thing, but it’s just a little easier not to, and that’s where people fail.” He was referencing sales success, but the principle is applicable: it’s easy to submit your sin to Christ and ask for His help in repentance from it…but it’s just a little bit easier to stay sinful and drink in the synthetic comfort it brings you, hoping that Jesus doesn’t look too closely at the bill and ask for an account from you about it. Which is indicative of a humble and repentant heart: one that seeks righteousness and takes the mercy of God not for granted, but as the immeasurable gift it is, or one that hides in the shadows of its own corruption hoping not to get caught, or worse yet, willfully thumbing their nose at God as though He won't seek justice?
Are you winning more times than you lose? Does your sin disgust you and you seek to turn from it and do so more often than not? Do you seek the presence and holiness of God thoroughly enough that sin is generally unpleasant to you, at least compared to how you used to be? Then, my friend, you are in the godly struggle, one that if you persist in long enough you will someday win. If you admit your struggle, be sure you’re actually fighting what you’re owning up to, and not using the phrase as a happily nebulous and zero-expectation term for your surrendering to an old master.
0 comments