Sin. It’s that dirty little three letter word that no one wants to talk about and the world seeks to minimize. Even well meaning Christians will attempt to share a gospel that omits sin because they fear man over God. If we seek to live the truth of Scripture then we must rightly view our struggle with sin so that we can truly understand our greatest need for a Savior.
I love how God works. I had not originally planned to talk about sin in the middle of December and so close to Christmas. However, that just happens to be where we are in the Anchored To Truth Bible study. We love to talk about the Christmas story and Jesus’ life and ministry. Less often are we willing to discuss the reason Christ came. As we see from this lyric from my favorite Christmas song, “O Holy Night”, we had a great need that only Christ could fill.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘Til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth
We Need a Savior
This Christmas season, you and I will celebrate the truth that Christ stepped into His creation, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, and rose on the third day defeating sin and death. But why did He do that? Because you and I are sinners who have sinned against a Holy God (Romans 3:23). Sin has separated us from God (Isaiah 59:2), and the punishment for our sin is death (Romans 6:23). God takes sin seriously (Psalm 5:4-5), and our sin requires judgement from a just God (Romans 3:26).
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:24
Sin causes us to reject truth and embrace lies. When we do that, we cannot understand the gravity of our sin and our need for a Savior. We minimize sin and play ignorant by saying things like, “I’m not here to judge.” We refuse to acknowledge when the world embraces and celebrates what God calls sin. By doing these things, we are not pointing others to their need for a Savior. Instead we are pointing them toward separation from God, now and in eternity.
Lie #1
Without Christ as Lord of my life and without rightly viewing the Bible as the Word of God, I believed many lies about sin. I want to share with you two that I believe are prominent among not only unbelievers, but also among Christians. The first was that my sin wasn’t that bad. I once believed that I obeyed more commandments than other people. For this reason, God couldn’t allow me to spend eternity separated from Him.
There are many problems with this way of thinking. For starters it minimizes my sin and doesn’t take seriously the destructive effect sin has on my life. My thoughts, motives, and actions are all affected by sin. There is no such thing as a little bit of sin. All sin is destructive and should be put to death in our lives (Colossians 3:5-6).
The second problem is that this is not the Gospel. The Gospel tells me that I am justified by faith the moment I believe. My righteousness before God comes from Christ, not how many commandments I get right (newsflash, I don’t get any of them right). This is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Receiving this gift means that God is not just my Savior in death. He is the Lord of my life. While I am no longer judged for my past, present, or future sin, I am no longer a slave to sin, but instead a slave to righteousness (Romans 6:17-18).
Galatians 2:20 says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Lie #2
Which brings me to the second lie. I believed that if I’m justified by faith then I don’t need to do anything else. Therefore, I don’t have to go to church, read my Bible, pray, or make disciples. However, this does not demonstrate someone who believes that Christ is Lord of her life. This was me for many years. Without these fruits, it was clear that the Holy Spirit was not present in my life.
I will never forget as an unbeliever reading a book my sister gave me about why a person should believe in God. I don’t remember the title because I’m pretty sure I threw it away. The author used Revelation 3:14-22 to make the argument that a Christian with no fruit was worse than an unbeliever who rejected God. This made me very angry. How dare this person judge me. But the truth is I was being confronted with the fact that if Jesus was Lord of my life, then my life should look different from the world. I should desire the things of God. Fellowship with God should be more appealing to me than fellowship with the world.
I believed the lie that I was a Christian just because I said I was and it allowed me to go on sinning. My sin seemed small to me, and I didn’t I understand the damage it was causing in my life. I viewed my salvation as a “get out of hell free” card and continued to walk in darkness rather than the light of Christ.
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 1 John 1:6
The Battle With Sin
As I mentioned in my last post, self-control is something I struggled with greatly as an unbeliever. I still wage war against it today. For years, I was ruled by my emotions instead of being ruled by godly wisdom. My emotions were fueled by anxiety and ungratefulness, which often led to angry outbursts. Even as an unbeliever I knew my actions were wrong, but I had no idea how to stop. I never physically hurt myself or anyone else, but I began to fear that my children would grow up afraid of me. For this reason, I sought therapy for anger management, but my therapist never got to the root of my problem.
When I became a believer and began to study God’s Word, I realized that I, like every other man and woman born after Adam and Eve, am cursed by sin. Because of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, I no longer had to pay the penalty for my sin in the next life. And in this life, I no longer had to be ruled by my sin.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
Apart from Christ, I could seek to modify my behavior. With Christ, I had the power to put to death the sin in my life through repentance. In my moments of temptation, I call on the Lord in prayer, recite Scripture, and make a conscious choice not to sin. When I do give into the temptation to sin, I go to God in prayer to ask for forgiveness and for His help to turn away from that very sin in the future. It sounds so simple, but it is a daily battle I will wage for the rest of my life.
Anchored To Truth
The more I learn about God through the study of His Word, the more I see the sin in my life and the more I realize my great need for a Savior. The best thing we can do is acknowledge our struggle with sin and our desperate need for a Savior to battle our sin.
Pray to God that you have a right understanding of sin. Pray for understanding of the seriousness of sin, even the sin you view as small. Actively put to death sin in your life through repentance. Let your fear of God be greater than your fear of man, and don’t be afraid to call sin what it is.
Be sure to download Lesson 3: Sin of Anchored to Truth on my Resource Page. I welcome your questions and comments. Send me an email through my Contact Page.