[Sometimes, I believe I have valuable insight on sin and how the Devil can trip you up. Other times, I think I’ve learned absolutely nothing about sin at all.]
The world in which we live is not the world that God created for us. Unless we’re at a tropical resort on a sandy beach, in the mountains, or at some other breath-taking destination, few of us would call our world a paradise. Forces of nature and the destructiveness of people have reshaped it into what it is today.
Analogies
I first encountered the strangler fig and other similar plants when I lived in South Florida. You could not drive through the Everglades or visit tourist attractions such as the Orchid Jungle or the Parrot Jungle without noticing them. They begin as sticky seeds that are blown about until they get caught in a tree. Sometimes, they are transported to a tree in bird droppings. These epiphytes at first do not threaten the health of the tree, but rather help themselves to decaying leaves on the tree while they start to drop their roots, which either dangle as they grow until they reach the ground, or they creep down and often around the trunk of the tree until they take root in the ground. Some roots travel upwards to capture sunlight. Once established in the ground, the fig’s growth becomes explosive and the roots become larger, thicker, and more numerous. They siphon off water and nutrients before the tree can absorb them and they gradually choke the tree as they grow. Some healthy trees take years to die as they valiantly, but vainly, struggle against the attacker. Weak or sick trees can succumb in a single season, other survive longer, but the end is the same. Each year, the roots or vines enclose more and more of the surface area of the tree as the tree starts to decompose. At that point, the tree starts to rot and years later all you see is the fig plant, itself, with a hollow core that used to be the tree. While strangler figs grow predominantly in Florida and the Caribbean, there are almost 1,400 other species in the world commonly called “strangler figs.” I’ve seen them in upstate New York only a few hundred miles from Canada. If you went to Southeast Asia, you would see these plants wrapped around structures such as temples or statues, like tangled ropes.
The strangler fig provides a good analogy of sin and how it works. Temptation is represented by the fig seed, and that temptation might be a hateful attitude, a lie, an injury to another person, or a jealous thought. A person, whether a believer or unbeliever, is represented by the tree. If the temptation leads to sin and the seed takes root, it will grow at the expense of the person, and eventually choke out the spiritual life if not the physical life of the person on whom it has attached unless the sin is confessed. Like the trees, the people who are too weak or too powerless to resist are the first to go down, but eventually the power of the vines, like a boa constrictor, tightens its grip. It might claim the spiritual life of even the strongest among us if we let it. A minister or priest perhaps. Or a Christian musician or other personality. The moral of this story is that just as God has healthy plans to lift you up, the enemy has his own agenda which is designed to bring you down. The only way to defeat this process is to have a healthy, day-by-day relationship relationship with your Creator. What the Bible calls “walking in the light.”
Missing the mark
The Greek word for sin (hamartia or ἁμαρτία in Greek) means literally “to miss the mark.” Often, an archery target is used to illustrate this, but I’ve chosen a different example, that of a person trying to bridge a chasm with the ledge behind him representing mankind and the ledge he is jumping to representing God. It does not matter how strong, skilled, or lucky the jumper is, only one person in human history has been able successfully bridge that gap, and that was Jesus. Every other person has fallen to their death, because we cannot reach God (or even know Him) by our own devices. But because of the Cross, and more importantly the resurrection of Jesus (I Corinthians 15:14.), those who trust in God’s son can safely travel to the opposite side. That is because Jesus is a sort of bridge (we call him a mediator) between God and man. We learn that in I Timothy 2:5.
Some things I’ve learned about sin
- Confess your sin immediately to God. Sometimes it seems like you’re asking God to forgive you over and over and over for the same thing. But He does forgive, and you can’t enjoy the benefits of grace if sin has separated you from God. The sooner you come before the throne of grace, the better!
- Unconfessed sin has a corrosive effect, like acid or rust on metal. I used to find old abandoned cars in pastures where I grew up. These were Pontiacs, Mercurys, Fords and Hudsons from the thirties and forties. They were rusted so badly that entire fenders would collapse if you struck them with a stick. This is the effect of unconfessed sin in a person’s life. The sin eats away at the metal, corrupting it into something useless and unrecognizable. Note that I qualify my statement by saying “unconfessed” sin does this. When you confess your sin to God, the sin is essentially neutralized and you, like a properly maintained car, remain intact.
- People who have trouble with a particular sin need to take care. Let me use lying for example. A person who habitually lies may lose executive control over that particular sin and find themselves a “slave” to that behavior if they do not confess it and seek God’s help in prayer. Eventually, a person may not know anymore what the truth is, or that they are even being untruthful half of the time. This is true for lying as well as certain strong emotions such as not forgiving others, jealousy, hatefulness, dabbling wirh pornography, and so on. Tell God you have a problem with a particular sin (if you do), and ask Him to forgive you and to transform you as he promised. This transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit, because we cannot reform our lives to become righteous to God’s satisfaction. If we invite God to transform us, He will. I knew a person once who smoked a pack or more of cigarettes a day. I’m not saying smoking is a sin, but this person became a Christian and wanted to quit. He asked God to help him. The person continued to smoke as before, but he told me that over several week’s time, he noticed that he enjoyed smoking less and less, until after a while, he would light a cigarette, take one drag and then crush it out in disgust. But, I found it interesting when he said that if, after taking a puff without enjoying it, he could then nevertheless continue with it and eventually receive the same satisfaction (i.e., “hit”) he once did with the first puff. It was as if God was making it distasteful to him to help him quit, but if that person wanted the cigarette so badly that he would smoke something that tasted foul, then he might as well smoke it.
- If you’re having a problem with a particular sin, don’t be afraid to see a physician or a counselor. Many doctors and counselors are not Christians, but some are. And even if they are not believers, they may be able to help or provide valuable insight into a problem. An example. I have a friend who told me about a Christian couple she knew who were close to divorce. It seems like all of a sudden after many years of happy, faithful marriage, the husband was chasing other women. The couple talked, and he admitted he was hooking up with other women, but said he could not help himself. His doctor diagnosed him with depression, prescribed a common antidepressant, and then the husband soon returned to being faithful again. I’m not saying that there is a pill that stops you from sinning. Nor am I saying that depression is a license (excuse) to sin. What I am saying is that depression often robs a person of their will, their decision to do something (or not.) In his normal state, he could resist temptations to be unfaithful, but when depressed, he could not. He did not have the energy to do so. Practicing medicine is an honorable profession (Luke, who wrote more of the Bible than anyone else except perhaps Paul, David or Moses, was a doctor, himself.)
- As a child of God, your relatonship with your heavenly Father is more important to God than your sin. He wants you to be restored or reconciled to him STAT (immediately.) In II Corinthians 5:19, Paul writes: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them…”
- Sin can lead to unbelief. For example, the devil can suggest to you that Jesus isn’t who Scripture says he was. This occurs usually at the precise time you truly need Jesus. Some people don’t realize this is the adversary feeding thoughts to the them, and they believe they are “losing their faith” when it’s really the devil trying to get between you and God.
- Sin might affect your ability to pray. Unconfessed/unforgiven sin might pile around you like a wall, getting higher each day until you feel you are at the bottom of a well or in a dark, dank dungeon. These walls may need to be torn down in prayer. Remember what Paul wrote in II Corinthians 10:4: “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”
- Sometimes deliversance from sin can be painful. If you’ve ever read “Voyage of the Dawntredder” in C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia,” you know about Eustace. He was a little boy that disobeyed Aslan, and snatched a golden ring before falling into a deep sleep. He awoke because he felt a a great stabbing pain on his arm. Seeing his reflection, he noticed that the ring was constricting his arm, but that also he had turned into a dragon. Aslan (the Christ-like figure in Lewis’ work) had to cut the dragon’s skin off Eustace, so that the little boy could be restored. And that was painful because it had become attached to or a part of the little boy.
- Sometimes when you pray you may have lascivious thoughts or other distractions. Re-focus and “pray through” these thoughts. Resist them.
- A lot of people struggle with mechanical prayers (“Now I lay me down to sleep…”) Try different approaches, or pray several short prayers rather than lengthy ones.
- Sometimes doubt creeps in during prayer. This is where faith should kick in. We have no doubt that when we push a doorbell it will ring, or when we hit a light switch, the light will come on. It should be like this with God.
- Be honest with God. I’ve wrestled with sin at times and told God tearfully I thought I did not want to give the particular sin up, but I knew it was wrong, and I could not, I would not change unless he helped me, and he did. Think of Augustine and his girlfriend he lived with when he was born again. He loved her more than life itself. But after speaking to God repeatedly about her, he was eventually able to break off the relationship.
- Ignore that little voice in your head (e.g. “God will never forgive you for this.”) When Martin Luther stayed in the Wartsburg Castle, the devil would appear regularly at night, to haunt Luther and basically make a nusiance of himself. One night, Luther says Satan appeared with three large scrolls. Luther said roughly “What do you have there, devil?” “This!” said Satan. Satan unfurled one scroll and it listed those sins that Luther committed (date, time and place as well.) Luther asked Satan “Is that it?” and the devil snorted and shouted “No!” as he unrolled the last two scrolls filled with the rest of the sins tht Luther had committed. Apparently, Satan hoped to discourage Luther, but instead, Luther said to Satan “You’ve forgotten one thing.” “What?!” the devil shouted? Luther replied “On the bottom of each scroll, write that the blood of Jesus Christ has forgiven me for these sins.” At this, the devil cursed and disappeared.
- That leads me to the next point. We are forgiven because Jesus shed his blood as God’s perfect lamb, to atone for our sins. We are forgiven because of the blood. As the old hymn goes “There is power in the blood.”
- Give God time to respond to you when you pray. If you say “God, what do you have for me to do today, thank you, amen,” then all you are saying is “hello/goodbye.”
- Don’t think that once you are a Christian, that you can or should continue in your Christian life in a state of perfection. This is one of my follies. I have in the past thought that since Jesus saved me, I should then be able to live a holy, sinless life. This is the sin of the Galatians (“After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” Galatians 3:3.)
How to pray
There is no magical formula for a prayer to ask God to forgive your sins. A convenient one might be this which comes from the Lutheran liturgy, but any heartfelt prayer on contrition (confession) would do.
“O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee, and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them, and sincerely repent of them, and I pray Thee, of Thy boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being. Amen.“
Another useful prayer is one provided to us by Jesus, Himself (The Lord’s Prayer.)
Many pray after sinning because they fear their sins will consign them to punishment in this life or Hell in the next. Scripture says that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…” (Proverbs 9:10.) Both Catholic and Protestant churches believe that God honors (and forgives) whoever offers a prayer inspired by fear. Ideally, though, our prayer should be motivated by our love of God. We’ve disappointed our Creator, our Father Who loves dearly, and we want to draw near to himn again and express our sorrow and desire to “do better” in the future. Adam and Eve hid from God when they sinned. This most likely made Him sad. A tearful repentance from them when God discovered them concealing themselves the bushes would have been much more welcome.
So, these are some of the things I’ve personally learned about sin during the half century that I’ve been a Christian. Like other posts, I will continue to revise this as I think of more to add.
Feature image credit: Peangdao (Shutterstock.)