Have you heard the expression, “Sin will take you farther
than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you
more than you are willing to pay?” Romans 3:23 tells us, “For all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God,” but we delude ourselves if we think it’s
simply a matter of ‘occasionally I slip up.’
Like an alcoholic, unable to stop at “just one drink,” we are
addicted to sin. With each little white lie, angry response, or lustful thought
that passes without confession or repentance, the gravitational pull of sin
grows within us. It drags us downward into behavior that once would have seemed
unthinkable.
2 Corinthians 10:5 (a book written to a group of people who
definitely understood the progressively destructive nature of sin) provides
wise counsel to the sin-aholic:
We demolish arguments and every pretension
that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to
make it obedient to Christ.
There is no sin so minor that we can shrug it off. No
offense to God so petty that we need not see it for what it is: a stripe on
Christ’s back, a thorn in his brow, Judas’s kiss (Sidewalk Prophets, He Loves
Me Anyway).
Because it is not about that one sin alone. We must
recognize that one sin, if not dealt with, will lead to another and another. As
believers in Christ, we are not immune from the pull of sin. We haven’t
arrived. We aren’t cured. And we won’t be cured until we see Jesus face to
face.
Fortunately, the pull of God is far greater than the pull of
sin. As we confront each sin, repent and turn toward God, we experience
greater and greater freedom from the deadly draw of temptation through the power of the Holy Spirit in us as believers in Jesus Christ. Our victory
comes not in a single battle, but in a million daily choices to turn away from
sin.
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit
says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of
life, which is in the paradise of God. Revelation 2:7
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