Plants
are fascinating to me. Likewise, people who can keep plants alive are
fascinating to me! I have a black thumb. I literally had a cactus die on me! I
am Roundup in the flesh! It amazes me how people keep plants alive for years at
a time. I have never had a plant that lasted more than a few weeks. However,
while plants don’t seem to like me at all, weeds love me! I can remember as a
child trying to help my mom kill the weeds in her flowerbed. Try as we may the
weeds always returned. It is just unfortunate that no one is ever impressed
with a flowerbed full of weeds. Undoubtedly I could keep them alive!
Sin
and weeds are very similar. It seems that no matter what we do we can’t get rid
of either one; especially sin. You would think that eventually we would just
“get over” sin. However, the sad truth is that we are broken. As long as we are
in the flesh we will continue to sin. Obviously as Christians we want to sin
less than we do! So what can be
done about sin? Let’s look briefly at a few options we have.
Option 1. Bring it on.
The
first option is simply to keep sinning and don’t even attempt to improve. The
idea is that God loves us and that He is merciful and so it really doesn’t
matter if we sin. This type of thinking makes much of us and our desires and
very little of Jesus. It is obviously faulty. Just look at Romans 6:1-2; “ What shall we say then? Are we to
continue that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still
live in it? That is crystal clear. Truly no more needs to be said.
Option 2. Back up Jesus I got this.
The
second option is the default religious position. In a nutshell this option
takes a “pull myself up by my bootstraps approach.” It is all about my
willpower and my performance. In this thinking one can will himself to stop
sinning. For example, if you struggle with a temper problem all you have to do
is learn to control it. This option is really about behavior modification. You
are supposed to learn to modify your behavior and force it into submission.
There are a few problems with this approach. Firstly, if you have been a
Christian for more than ten minutes you know that sin is not nearly that cut
and dry. If we could beat ourselves into submission than why don’t we? We don’t
because we can’t! If I could will myself to be more loving I would. What’s more
this approach yields little true fruit. It is entirely possible to work on your
temper and master it for a few weeks or even a few months, but inevitably
behavior modification wears off and you are back where you started. Also, even
if you cured yourself of a bad temper you cannot cure yourself of the root.
Much like weeds in the garden, a casual plucking up will never truly take care
of the problem. The truth is that a bad temper is only the fruit of a deeper
issue. All sin is the fruit of a deeper issue. Let me give you a personal
example. I have always hated to lose arguments. I use to get so frustrated with
myself because whenever I would start to lose an argument I would get indignant
and my blood would start to boil. I tried for a long time to break myself of
that sin. However, what I found is that I didn’t just have a problem with
losing arguments, but rather I had an issue with feeling accepted. I figured
out that I was insecure. By winning
an argument I would succeed in convincing a person that my position was right.
In this way I vindicated myself and it made me feel better about myself. You
see option 2 can fix the manifestations of sin (well sort of), but it can never
cure the root of the problem. We must come to the point where we accept the
fact that we cannot will ourselves to stop sinning. The issue is way beyond our
own capacities. We must realize that we sin, because we are sinful! Our flesh
is wicked and no amount of behavior modification can transform us. We don’t
need a Band-Aid; we need a cure.
We will discuss option 3 tomorrow. Option 3 deserves a whole lot of time and so I am going to
commit tomorrow’s post to it. SPOILER: Option 3 is the gospel J
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