Death to Sin or Sin to Death

 

1 John 5:16-17, “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is a sin that does not lead to death.”

The ultimate result of sin is death. God told us this in the garden. He said not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than trust Him because if they do, they will surely die. Satan tricked them with the question, “Will they really die?”

It was through this act of disobedience, distrust, and desire for self-sufficiency in trying to be like God rather than depending upon God that Adam and Eve sinned and brought sin into the world that leads to death. We did die at this point spiritually as we were evicted from the garden and separated from this place of living in the full Kingdom realm.

Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.“

Sin starts with fleshly desires that are aroused and then rather than crucify them, we act on them. James 1:15, “Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. And Romans 7:25 says, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”

And we know what this flesh is as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, no revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God.”

I remember when I first came to the Lord. I told Him, “I have a list that is a mile long, of things just today that I have done wrong.” I was frustrated with myself and wondering when He would throw up His hands and tell me that it was the last straw and He was done with me. I felt I was maybe too much for Him.

His response was not that I should get my life in order or get out. He did not give me any ultimatum. Instead, He spoke to me so clearly to “Not worry as I would get there in time, so let go into my love that is so sublime.” What? Don’t worry about all this sin?

Our focus needs to be on Christ and not getting to a state without sin. It is only Jesus that is without sin and it is only by His power that we are given freedom from the sins we struggle with. As I have struggled with over the years, we can’t do this by our self-efforts as this is sin too. To accomplish holiness by our self-efforts only leads to self-righteousness and pride (more sin). It is as we surrender and grow in dependence that more of the Spirit flows in our lives and the sin is pushed out.

So what is most important is our relationship with the Lord and connection to Him. We will bear fruit of His Kingdom as we are connected to the Vine and will lose an appetite for sinful desires. It happens over time as we look to Him. This is the transformation process. If we want to speed up the process, we can fast, which helps our connection to Him. It is not by our might or effort but by His Spirit. As we are connected with Him, we are filled with not only joy but love, peace, long-suffering patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control.

Notice that all the fruit of the Spirit is other’s focused? It is all from a place of giving and sacrificing ourselves for others. Even peace as without conflict with others, it can’t really be tested that you have it. And joy has its way of spilling out on others around as it can shift the atmosphere. This place of giving is what it means to have the fruit of the Spirit, that we are overflowing in what others need and have the capacity to lift them up.

As love covers a multitude of sins, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13, that if we don’t have love, we miss the whole point of the gospel. Here He was confronting a situation in the church in the prior chapter where people were comparing their spiritual gifts to one another by a worldly means of trying to put people in a line of who is the greatest and least among them.

He noted that all the parts are indispensable, even the parts we see as weak. Not everyone is given the same exact gifts but the Holy Spirit distributes them as He determines. Since these gifts are given for the common good, we can rejoice in the ones we have and keep asking for the ones that we do not have. While the Holy Spirit is generous in giving out these gifts and we can ask for them all, He ultimately determines what gifts we operate in, when and how.

If one operates in miracles are they any greater than one who speaks in tongues or operates in gifts of healing? Paul reminds the church that the most important are those that outsiders can experience and encounter God through such as prophesy. And as Paul notes, all these gifts are worthless if we do not operate in His love. We need to be filled to overflowing with His capacity.

Ever notice this kind of love that is gooey and nice but feels insincere? It feels manipulative and with a desire to project an image. Then when you bump into the person what comes out is all this anger and frustration. I’ve experienced this person and I am this person at times.

It comes from a lack of being filled and tons of self-sufficiency. Rather than encountering God, we work for God. We try hard to get it right as we are working to earn our keep rather than living by faith in grace. We don’t abound in His goodness and belief because we are in lack.

I had this experience of coming to this point in my own life. I was struggling with something beyond my capacity and wanted to quit. I just wanted to give up. But what God spoke is not that I needed to get out of the circumstances, but what I needed was His limitless capacity. I just was missing the whole point of surrender and dependence.

I was trying super hard to be alive and put to death the flesh but it was all in my own strength. Where it was taking me to was needing a break. As I started to spend more energy in creating space to encounter God and spend time with Him, I found myself equipped with all I needed to overflowing. My efforts were wrongly placed in seeking to get it right rather than just seeking to know the One who gets it all right.

When I get in this place of spinning my wheels in self-sufficiency, what I find is that I struggle more with desires of the flesh. I want to compensate my inner misery in trying and feeling like I never measure up with escape into food or at one time, TV and movies.

We all sin and fall short so we are in need of a Savior. He paid the price of death on the cross. Yet, we also see this principle of sin at work in our lives when we sow into it. Escaping and seeking things outside of God become death to us if they grow. We sow to the wind and reap a whirlwind. As we indulge in the flesh, it sears our hearts and keeps us from fully connecting with the Spirit. Our hearts become hard which is this death we experience.

We either live in the flesh, giving into the desires aroused that bring forth spiritual death in our life or we put to death the flesh, and live by the Spirit. As we indulge in the flesh, it sears our hearts and keeps us from fully connecting with the Spirit. Our hearts eventually become hard as we follow this path.

David from the Bible had this temptation with Bathsheba that led down a path of harness until he felt totally crushed by it. He first escaped his duties and sat around unmotivated to fight with the others. Then, he was tempted and followed it. He not only watched Bathsheba take a bath and didn’t turn away, but then he called on her to be with him – knowing she was married. If that was not enough, he then killed her husband to cover it all up as she became pregnant and her husband wouldn’t give into indulgences while serving David.

There were many red lights along the way telling him he was on the wrong path but he just didn’t listen. His conscious became seared. Then we see some heartbreaking consequences for this sin in him losing their child and then ultimately losing his kingship for a time to his son, Absalom, who killed his son Amnon and overthrew David. And then losing this son as well as Adonijah who both tried to seize the throne.

Yet, David, after seeing misery and realizing his wrong, turned back to the Lord and prayed for forgiveness. He felt utterly crushed by his sin (psalm 51) and prayed earnestly for forgiveness. The Lord continued to be with Him and blessed him, (although he experienced many consequences for his sin even after repenting) eventually re-establishing him and placing his son Solomon on the throne.

There is a place in the Bible where Paul tells the people in the church to give a man over to Satan to be crushed so that he would stop sinning as he was sleeping with his father’s wife. He was confronting the church for being proud for extending grace by accepting this man in his sin. He told them to expel him. (1 Corinthians 5).

All this to say, that it is possible to be sinning and have your conscious seared. However, it does not come without warning and eventually difficulty, ultimately to circumstances that crush a person in their sin. The purpose is for them to turn, repent and follow, not to become bitter and blame God for it all.

It starts so sneaky sometimes with, not intentional going in the wrong direction but skewed beliefs. But then as those beliefs are followed and people put faith to them, they just get more and more skewed. They fail to listen to the Lord but are following some off kilter rules and beliefs.

For example, someone young may take the worldly belief that you have to sacrifice to get ahead and think their young family is taking too much time away from their career. They divorce their wife to more invest in their career only to find that their career then crumbles as the company they work for goes out of business or has a huge layoff.

Another example is someone who believes in the prosperity gospel that is based upon being personally blessed rather than being a blessing to others. Because of this, they take advantage of everything that comes their way as being God without any question. The more they are blessed, the more they associate it with this theology of God prospering them. As they make some choices that are not totally ethical to take advantage of opportunities to be blessed, they receive some warnings and ignore it. Then one day, some of their choices are brought to light in front of others in a bad light and they are devastated.

With Jeremiah in the Bible, he had the job of confronting the people who were all being led astray by sin. Their conscious was seared and they were going further and further down this line of hard-heartedness and rebellion. They thought that since they were God’s chosen people, they could do what they want and they were safe and would have peace. They even thought that having peace was God’s approval of their sin, so they just kept going.

It is this hard-hearted, conscious seared believing falsely in rules and not paying attention to any of the warning signals that brings about ultimate spiritual death. It is a resistant stubbornness that believes their way is right out of pride rather than a resilient, dependent, learning and humble heart. As a result, God sends more and more difficulty and consequences that may ultimately crush us to save our souls so we are not lost completely for all eternity.

In Jeremiah 6:28-30, the Lord says about them, “They are all hardened rebels, going about to slander. They are bronze and iron; they all act corruptly. The bellows blow fiercely to burn away the lead with fire, but the refining goes on in vain; the wicked are not purged out. They are called rejected silver, because the Lord has rejected them.”

The Lord goes on to confront the heart of their beliefs in Jeremiah 7:9-10, “Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name and say, ‘We are safe’-safe to do these detestable things?”

They had fallen away and couldn’t see it. They were following rules and serving other gods while they thought they were safe because they were descended from Abraham and Moses. They called themselves His people but lived in a way that brought death.

As a result, the Lord said in Jeremiah 6:19, “Hear, you earth: I am bringing disaster on this people, the fruit of their schemes, because they have not listened to my words and have rejected my law.”

As we know in Jeremiah through the prophesies, the people refused to believe until they experienced more and more pain. Then only a remnant of those who were crushed by their waywardness, turned back and repented. The Lord, in His kindness, spared none, so that the pain would turn some back towards Him and be spared this spiritual death.

I see this sometimes with addiction. The retired CEO would ask that anyone that wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for getting help in the program to raise their hand. Most all of them do. Saved or not, they were being crushed by the weight of their sin so that they would turn to God and find freedom.

The consequences of ongoing sin is death. And God puts their spiritual death as a higher priority than even their physical death. People who keep pushing into sin despite consequences may experience even physical consequences to their bodies. Our bodies were not made for sin; they are made for relationship God. Our bodies flourish as our spirits flourish.

At the same time, we have to be careful to not see every difficulty in our life or physical ailment as the result of sin. It may or may not be. We live in a world that has sin so we are not immune to potentially experiencing sickness, disease or some physical limitation. The Lord has told us that in this world we will have trouble, but we could take heart that He has overcome the world. This overcoming may be for the ailment to leave, or it may be strengthening to walk through it. P

Paul and other followers of Christ that were walking in miracles also struggled on occasion with illness. Paul speaks of a “thorn in the flesh” that caused him physical weakness and kept him humble. He also tells the church in Galatians 4:13-14, “You know that it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. And although my illness was a trial to you, you did not despise or reject me. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Jesus Himself.”

As the Lord tells us in His Word, we experience difficulty to grow in endurance and fruit of the Spirit. He may be forming and shaping us through difficulty we experience and not warning or confronting us. We need to have discernment, which comes from having a connection with the Lord. While difficulty may come from many sources such as other people’s sin, sin in the world, misfortune, attack from the enemy, correction and discipline of the Lord, and consequences of sin to name a few we know that God promises, if we look to Him, He will work all things (including any difficulty) for good in our lives.

Lord, help us to pay attention to difficulty or correction in our lives. We submit ourselves, spirit, soul and body to the work of Your Holy Spirit. Give us wisdom and discernment as we walk with you to partner in your purposes in the midst of it. Ultimately, let it lead to greater depth in our relationship, spiritual maturity, and trust that You work all things for the good of those who love you.

Jeremiah 6:10-15

To whom can I speak and give a warning?

Who will come listening and mourning?

I am full of wrath and cannot hold it in,

as my people are living in sin.

Pour it out on the children in the street,

and on the young men gathered, to their defeat.

Both husband and wife will be caught up by fears,

and the old will be weighed down with these years.

Upon my people, I will stretch out my hand;

against those who live in my land.

From the least to the greatest, they are all greedy for gain,

Prophets and priests alike, all practice religion in vain.

They dress the wound of my people as though it were no concern,

‘Peace, peace’ they say as they make my heart burn.

Are they ashamed of their detestable acts?

No, they don’t even blush as shame is in lack.

So they will fall among the fallen and be crushed

They will be humbled until these lies are hushed.