FREE NOT TO SIN

2 Chronicles 1:1-3:17; Romans 6:1-23; Psalm 16:1-11; Proverbs 19:20-21

“God said to Solomon, “Because your greatest desire is to help your people, and you did not ask for wealth, riches, fame, or even the death of your enemies or a long life, but rather you asked for wisdom and knowledge to properly govern my people—I will certainly give you the wisdom and knowledge you requested. But I will also give you wealth, riches, and fame such as no other king has had before you or will ever have in the future!”

“We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin…. Sin is no longer your master…. ”

“Keep me safe, O God, for I have come to you for refuge. I said to the Lord, “You are my Master! Every good thing I have comes from you.”

“You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.”

Most of life is a choice. Certainly, there are things over which we have no control, but true character is revealed by the way we control the things we can control. We choose our mates. We select our jobs and friends. We decide when to tell the truth and how much to say. We even pick our Gods. However, the most important decision we make on a day-to-day basis is often the intentional decision to sin. Even Christians tend to think sin remains inevitable, whether salvation has occurred or not. They are wrong, and when we think the contrary, we leave one more door open for Satan to return. When Christ is accepted as Lord and Master, we are truly, fundamentally freed from the power of sin. We are no longer “hard wired” to do it. If we continue sinning, it is a matter of choice: we have chosen to hold something back from the Lord, or have decided to affirmatively allow Satan to continue his reign over certain areas of our lives. So, reread today’s selection from Romans. Sin after salvation is no longer inevitable. Even the most oft-quoted Scripture establishing the reign of sin in our lives, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” is stated in the past tense. We no longer have to sin!

Gulp! When I first discovered this fact, it initially brought a sense of incredible relief, and then a foreboding guilt. First, the idea that I did not have to sin, that I was really, really free, blew me away. It was as close as I will ever come to flying. The weight off my back was immense… until it came back with a vengeance, seemingly ten times heavier than before. There’s no arguing with Scripture. Out of the frying pan, into the fire! I was still sinning, although I had accepted Christ as Savior. Consequently, I immediately began to doubt my salvation and my commitment to Christ. What I forgot – or more accurately just completely missed – is that sin, like any behavior, can be learned. Unchecked, it gets to be a habit. And habits, by definition, are hard creatures to break. They actually have to be unlearned. So while I no longer inevitably sinned, I still had to learn how not to sin, or how to break the very real physical and emotional habit of sin. It’s a lesson I’m beginning to suspect will take the better part of a lifetime. Clearly, I’m not much of a student. But as I have focused on owning the habituality of my sin, that honesty alone has caused me to take more than one step away from the abyss.

Then, I had to confront the truth that I usually sinned simply because I wanted to sin more than I wanted to please God. This intentionality of sin probably isn’t much of a revelation to anyone who actually attempts to engage and struggle with sin. But it is, in my experience teaching and counseling other Christians, a largely unspoken horror, and so it was with me. To admit the depravity of that struggle seemed like it would be admitting the futility of salvation itself. Until that thought chased me all the way back to where I’d started, and I realized it was an incomplete thought. We are no longer bound to choose sin. That much is true. But that’s still very different from saying we have the power on our own to choose not to sin every time. Here’s the rest of the story. The decision to affirmatively sin – or not - is no longer a choice I have to make at all.  It is a decision I can completely give over to Jesus, and when I do, the results are a foregone conclusion.

The actual mechanics of battling sin as a “new man in Christ” still strike me as more than a little mystical at times, but they certainly helped clarify my thinking on the subject. I always thought it remained up to me to say no to sin, even after (especially after) I accepted the grace of the Crucifixion. But actually, I’ve come to believe it means nothing of the sort. That kind of thinking is self-defeating and puts one right back into the Old Testament performance-based, legalistic theology. Jesus proposes something completely different; He proposes to make the sin/not sin decision for us. We cannot decide not to sin in our own power, but in His power, we don’t have to. All we have to do is give Him the authority to decide for us, and that we can do.

Like so many ethical and spiritual decisions, the decision to sin or not is actually far more simple than it seems. It’s not about how much to give, what sacrifices to make or how to change our lives. The most important “do/do not” decision we’ll ever make is not about performance at all. It’s about being. Being Christ, specifically. More accurately, it’s about being an empty vessel through which the Holy Spirit can flow unobstructed, cleaning out our spiritual pipeline on the way to minister to others through us. Again, Paul is extraordinarily clear, albeit a bit hard to actually put into action. He reveals a mystery: we really do have the power and authority to think with the mind of Christ!

Life is a choice. In fact, almost all decisions ultimately resolve into or are determined by a single choice. Who we choose to be preordains what we will do. Joshua’s famous quote, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” was really more a statement of identity than hoped-for accomplishments. We are called Christians, not “do-gooders.” We are defined by what we believe, not by our works. We believe that Christ can and does live and work in and through us. Being free not to sin just means letting ourselves be fully captured by Jesus. He’s already proved He has the power not to sin. He will share that power with us if we let Him. Choose wisely.