The power of sin

God is hardly concerned about the fact that you smoke or drink. Oh wow, I bet that will upset some. Indeed, He is more concerned by the reactions of those who don’t like what I am saying.

The dissenters might feel, “I don’t do any of that and surely that counts for something, so surely God must accept me because of that?” I never did like the word, 'surely'.

Hiding behind the things that make us relatively superior to others, hardly makes us absolutely right. That’s like saying I only jumped one red light and he did five, so he is the rotter not me.

God saw through Adam and Eve, not because fig leaves dry, scratch and don’t cover the details. If they had worn a whole fig tree, He would still have seen through it all.

I dare say that Jesus might say that the party animal to the left is closer to the kingdom of God than the pooper to the right. I suppose you want to know why?

Well it is because the first step in any process of reconciliation is to open up and be real. Fig-leafing is a form of denial, pride and avoidance. Hardly useful for getting closer to God.  

A friend has a mountain of issues tracing back to a dreadful childhood, but the issues affect everything he does and they are isolating him. Yet he believes he has sorted his stuff, that he is okay. But he is the only one who believes that and it is hurting him. He needs to open up.

The biggest problem with religion, is that it looks the part, but generally only to anyone else who is wearing a fig leaf. It is not just God who sees through the King’s clothes, you and I do as well.

IMDB’s highest ranked movie, Shawshank Redemption, looks beyond the warder’s religious veneer to a dark heart. Every man in his prison, guards and inmates included, saw right through him.

The only one taken in by his thin fig-leaf was the wearer, who convinced himself that he was fine, had no need to be vulnerable or real with God and was a sure-bet for heaven.

Smoking and drinking is an issue for religion, because it judges what it sees. It is easier to manage a religion like that, so all you have to do is fit in and maintain pretenses.

However God is far more concerned with why you would need to smoke or drink at all. What underlying self-awareness, sadness, tragedy, brokenness, vulnerability or ghost of our pasts lies at the root of such things. That is where sin stirs.

I have shared my own vulnerabilities already, but let me tell of lives like mine, who are haunted by so many ghosts of the past. My personal pain lay in a mental stronghold that was all I had ever known and which I took to be normal, because sin also deceived me.

I wanted to do right, just as Paul did, but I just kept missing the mark. The underlying root causes had distorted my whole way of looking at life and that distorted my judgment. I only made matters worse, because sin had me under its spell and was too powerful for me.

Sin was like a blackmailer. It exploited me because it saw me for who I am, but because I didn’t want that made public, sin exacted a blackmailer’s price – not in the form of money, but by way of the hard, sad, tragic toil of penitence that was laid on my wretched soul.  

Worse, like a serpent in lay in wait for me to find and then exploit my predispositions and vulnerabilities. The resulting strike, poisoned my system. For me that came in my childhood when the terrors of my home invoked a specific response pattern that did me in. 

I am deeply grateful that love and mercy freed me, and have no more need to judge others. All around me I see lives in trouble or heading there, and my heart aches because I know Paul was right – it is not because we don’t want it to be different, but sin is at work in us (Romans 7:20).

Biblically, sin is not an outcome, but a force at work in us to corrupt our souls and drive us from God. The law reveals our crisis and points to a Redeemer, because a world of laws could never save us.

It is like living with a silent killer, like cholesterol, and being told the truth we don’t want to hear: that we need to change or face consequences - except that Jesus faced that for me. 

Thus Paul, in verse 13, says that I really would not have known better or felt so bad, unless the law had come. Strangely he speaks in verse 7 of something he really didn’t seem to battle with, covetousness, but says I would have gone on doing that naturally until the law said no.

It poses a valid question. Why make me feel worse? Is the law, and the resulting implications of religion, only there to provide qualifiers: a basis for judging or exonerating me? Is it just an arbitrary code that separates the sheep from the goats?

If it is natural to covet, and it is critical in the animal world for the propagation of the species, then why is it such a problem to do what seems rather natural?

Well ask yourself where that leads – will it ensure a stable family, will it “reproduce” noble children, will it seed better lives into society, will our world be better off, will we enjoy a better home and married life, will we prosper if we choose the high road? Absolutely.

The opposite is as true. Sure it’s a thrill to cross the line. Sin works because it excites. It is a lure, a bait to every soul. There are always rewards. But where will that lead? Will you ultimately be better for it? I doubt it. Instead you will resent God for making you feel bad about it.  

That is like resenting a doctor for telling you that continued smoking will kill you, even if that is true. I have seen what it can do, so why resent what is very sound advice that will enhance your life?

The laws of God and the religious context that followed, really were never able to do anything about sin, except to be like a half-pregnant physician – able to tell you where the problem is, but unable to solve it. But, like a good GP, they could refer you to the specialist who can help: the great physician.

Sin is a kind of spiritual cancer. I use that analogy because for many, certainly in times past, cancer was incurable. It is a growth in us that eats up our natural resources and consumes us from within, until it is more alive than we are. Then we all die together. Sin is just like that.

It is at work in our mortal bodies and Paul confirms that, with or without the law, the fatal consequences of sin at work in us persisted long before the law (Romans 5:14), but Jesus confronted its power and broke that power so that we are no longer slaves to it (Romans 6:15-18).

Thus, instead of pointing to the obvious, to what is no secret to any of us, I point to Him who died in the open, stripped of all His dignity, so He could free us of the unseen killer inside us. 

(c) Peter Missing: bethelstone@gmail.com