June 14
“Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. And the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:34-36)
We have been talking about reasons why we sometimes choose to ignore the way of escape and knowingly commit sin. Yesterday we spoke of pride and emotions getting the best of us as two reasons why we fail to retreat from sin.
A third reason we might ignore the way of escape and purposely go after sin is boredom; we might get bored with the same things day after day and think that some thing that we know Jesus would not do if He were here might be more fun. Faithfulness to God’s way, out of duty and not out of a love relationship, perhaps can become boring and tedious. Without Christ as the center of our obedience, keeping commandments can be dull, and perhaps we have lost our first love and sin because we think that more excitement in our lives is better.
Related to boredom, perhaps at times we purposely stumble into sin because we are curious about sin, or we are interested in what others find exciting about sinful things. The old saying applies here, “Curiosity killed the cat.” Curiosity can kill our spiritual lives and good conscience before the Lord also.
A fifth reason why we might choose to ignore the way of escape and purposely move forward into sin is that we crave sin. Our minds and bodies have not been trained in righteousness, and we have given them over to sin enough times that a love of sin has been firmly rooted in our hearts. Habits and addictions occur in this state. This state is obviously a major problem, and if we are not careful to avoid sin, this will become the result of those who fail to take the way of escape when it is available.
I am not an expert in overcoming addictions, but I do know that in Christ anything is possible, and it is possible to overcome any addiction by God’s grace and help. I am also confident that what the scriptures say is true, that when we are born again in Christ, our old selves are crucified with Him so that we need not be slaves of sin any longer. In Christ we have the capacity to choose to not sin. Sin becomes a choice in Christ, and we are able to say no to the cravings of our bodies, as difficult as that may seem to be. Study Romans chapter 6 (part of which is the topic of our next Resisting principle). Christ has set us free, and we are free indeed in Him. (John 8:34-36) In Christ we don’t have to sin; in Him, we only sin because we choose to sin.
There can be a variety of reasons why we sin and fail to take advantage of the way of escape, why we fail to flee. The wise person will examine him or herself and analyze their paths and the decisions they make so they can understand why they are choosing sin instead of obedience and make the appropriate adjustments to their thinking and behavior. We all need to repent of our failures to recognize and take advantage of the ways of escape God is always giving us. We need to repent of our failure to FLEE temptation when it comes and learn new habits and train our minds and bodies for obedience to God if we want to successfully overcome temptation.