The devil has a rather clever marketing technique, he pretends he doesn’t exist. As a deeply logical world, we appear to operate on the assumption that the devil exists only in two places. The first is in churches that wage a perpetual war against him, for surely if you call a person enough times he will appear. The second is at the center of large scale malevolence, the type often documented by Crime TV and CNN. Our assumption is, unfortunately, untrue. The devil is very much around… although not in consistent battle with God as usually portrayed. (God is sovereign, He has no contemporaries).

I’ve been thinking a lot about sin recently and I realize that many Christians compartmentalize sin. We create a hierarchy of sin based on the world’s general outlook and classify certain sins abhorrent, make allowances for other ‘forgivable’ sins and do not even consider certain sins, sin at all, despite what the Bible says. Persons of extreme deviance aside, most would agree that murder, grievous bodily harm and sexual assault are sin…and everything else is up for grabs. Sins like premarital sex (I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but alas, it is sin) offend our 21st century Christianity. It messes things up! Why would God impose a “practically impossible” standard?! Clearly He meant no sex before marriage back in the day when people married at 14, duh! Maybe. But He might have thought to send another Jesus and a new bible fit for 21st c living if He did. They’re not here yet so I guess we’re stuck with The Book written in the days of baby brides. 21ST century Christians have changed the game, but the bible has stayed exactly the same. We lower our standards and hope (ironically) to God…that He will do the same.

In Hebrews 12:1, Paul refers to a sin that “… so easily trips us up or ensnares us”. I personally think Paul ought to have written “…that sin that you really LOVE!” as the words ‘trips’ or ‘ensnares’ presupposes that we are being put upon or suffering, when in actual fact we are thoroughly enjoying our sin! One reason sin keeps a hold on us logical people is that we can rationalize our way out of a guilty conscience. I know how many times I thought “Oh read the Bible in the right context, some of it doesn’t apply today”. Or “Everyone does it, will He punish all of us?!” Or “I don’t think I can actually stop this sin, it’s sort of late for that now”. Or my personal favourite, “God understands.” But these are lies; logical, yes! But still, lies. We are constantly bombarded with ideas that are so deeply contradictory to God’s words that if we do not consciously fortify ourselves against them, we will begin to believe them.

Our mindset is automatically set AGAINST God’s words and so we don’t even believe we have the power or discipline to fight against certain sins. But Paul says, it is a battle you CAN win. You don’t have to give in to sin. 2nd Corinthians 14:4 AMP says,

 “The fight for a pure mind is not a day’s job so don’t give up when it doesn’t appear overnight. It’s a fight that might take days, weeks or months. Appreciate every small step you take forward and when it feels like you have fallen, don’t give up! Just get up and continue the fight. This is a fight you are guaranteed to win because God is on your side.”

– That is why David begged in Psalm 51

“…create in me a clean heart and renew the right spirit in me!”

and in Romans we’re told the key to change is to,

“…be transformed by the renewing of your minds”. Romans 12:2 .

One big misconception people have is that from birth, we are wired to sin. I propose an alternative, from birth, we are wired to be Christlike because GOD breathed life into you. Sure, no one teaches a little child to lie but is there an elementary school lesson on Growing a Conscience? The world trains you to lie from childhood but God and the Christlike spirit within you tells you that it is wrong to lie. It is as we grow older that we slowly dull out our conscience and erode the purity and innocence God left in each of us. We begin to believe that we are part human and part sin, ergo we are certain that we cannot truly overcome sin because it is a part of us. We are so bombarded with images of sin everywhere we turn that it insidiously creeps into our consciousness and manifests as actions. But we were NOT made for sin, there is so much more for us to use our minds, bodies and hearts for. It is important to know that you do not have to be enslaved by your sin, otherwise you will remain in that vicious repent-and-sin, rise-and-fall cycle. The bible says that,

“We (must) demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”-<em>

-2 Corinthians 5 NLT.

If you desire a change, little by little you can begin to FORCE your thoughts to submit to God’s will by monitoring the things you see, your associations, your surroundings, your relationships. The way you baby-proof a house for a baby’s safety, is the same way you must God-proof your mind for your soul’s safety. It is a daily fight. Challenging, but ceratinly doable.

But, why do we even need to stop sinning? For one thing, we don’t often get the immediate consequence of our sin and God is merciful so we don’t always appear to pay for sin. Let me tell you why I personally chose to break the vicious sin cycle in my life. I sensed there was more. Sin defiles, it soils you; it messes up your thoughts and those distorted thoughts become actions, then habits and finally unbreakable cycles. Like a phone with limited battery life, you cannot perform at your optimum because you are cut off from the power source. So continuing with the phone analogy, you can take pictures with a phone whose battery is almost dead but you can’t take good pictures because the battery is too low for the flash to work. You can’t even make videos or access higher powered apps on your phone because of your low battery life. Is the phone not working? Oh it is! But is the phone working to the capacity it was created to work at? Certainly not. And that is what sin does, it limits your capacity to be the person God created you to be. And this has nothing to do with material success and everything to do with the state of your soul.

Come on now, when you do not even have dominion over your own actions, you cannot discipline your thoughts, you cannot control yourself, you are certainly not performing to capacity. There is so much more in store for you. Besides, the side effects of sin isn’t merely internal, sin seeps out of you no matter how you think you’ve hidden it. Guilty conscience? Surliness? Defensiveness? Yes, they are side effects of sin. Sin honestly, separates us from God. You cant even imagine the sort of bond your soul can have with God when you work everyday to live a life free of sin. Sounds impossible but I refer especially to living free of that sin that you think you have no control over, living free of that fall-and-repent cycle. I desire above many things, to live purely. Purity, holiness and virtue are so poorly rated today but these are values that God holds in high honour. Purity seems soft and fragile but it is an incredibly powerful virtue. Purity is powerful because it takes immense discipline, true integrity and a very brave individuality to carve your own path in a noisy world.

(Photo credit: I got this off shutterchance.com, I failed to save the link from the site. Please, dear hardworking and excellent photographer, forgive me. Once I trace you, I will put the link up).