Sin is not wrong doing; it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God.
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
~ from Romans 6
Oh beloved, it is true. We have been set from the power of sin. And what we find at the core of the problem – and in the Word – is that sin is not necessarily the doing of bad stuff. Rather, sin is the terrible “I” in me which still wants to do its own thing. And then “I” commit myself to acts which fall terribly short of the glory of G_d.
So much of ourselves wants to dodge the truth and say that somehow we have fallen, or slid back into some behavior, or that we were tricked by something or someone else into the idiocy we now inhabit. And even in all these machinations, we know that we are lying.
The problem is us (me and you dear reader).
Even G_d Himself has declared us righteous. He bought the deed to our sin’s penalty and swallowed its death in a victory which only Infinite Love could win. We are utterly forgiven. And even better, we have been set free from the need to ever sin again.
Said simply: sin is voluntary for a believer. And it is the worst kind of volunteering. It is, rather, overt rebellion against the new nature our G_d has given us through the gift of His Son and the power of His Spirit at work within us.
Why do we do it?
It seems to this fool of a writer that the problem has to do with time.
What? Yeah, time.
We forget that we are now able to live “now,” right now in the presence of the One who has saved us. Because in this One’s presence is a joy that blasts the fears, that the flesh tries to satiate, straight away from us. And replacing the fear is a strength which does not fail – for it is His strength flowing towards, into and through us.
However, when we start to look back on our past – and cringe in shame or pain or wishing or missing – we can be easily tempted to try and make pain like that be covered up by something we might choose to do in our own strength. And anything we do apart from Him is flesh and ultimately death.
And when we look into the future – and begin to doubt that the One who has brought us this far will bring us all the way home – we can be just as easily tempted to try and shelter ourselves from things that have not even yet happened. Even in writing this, this logic seems just plain goofy (but don’t we all do it sometimes?). And again, this yielding to the flesh puts us on a terminal course.
Can we see it? He is the answer. To know Him is eternal, timeless life. And when we halt in the present moment and look to Him and His unchanging Love, suddenly the prospect of sin seems incredibly far away… i mean, why would we? He is so much more beautiful that all that fetid, putrid stuff anyway.
Stop beloved. Look at Him. He will drive all else away.
