THE LIES OF SIN – PART THREE

Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. ¹³ But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴ For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end,

Hebrews 3:12-14 (NASB)

SIN DECEIVES US TO BELIEVE THAT IT IS NOT HARMFUL

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have {it} abundantly.

John 10:10

A great deception of sin is that it is really good but a bad god messes things up by not approving us doing it. We need to really understand what sin is. Sin is participation in death giving practices. It is never good. It always steals from, kills and destroys us and others.

If we are ever going to win the victory over sin’s lies we must begin here. We must unmask sin for what it is. No act of sin is without harm to us, harm to our relationship with God and most likely others and their relationship with God.

But how do we know the harm unless we experience it? My son has never put his hand on a hot stove again. He knows better. He has experience the consequences of doing so.

Some people say that this is how we deal with wrongdoing in every case. They would say we need to let ourselves and others only learn through natural consequences.

Experiencing natural consequences is certainly a wonderful way to help ourselves and others learn about the dangers of life.

As His children God often supervises our experience of natural consequences for our good. We as parents can do this with our children as well.

My father in law had a son not unlike my son. He did not respond to verbal warnings. They lived in Holland on a farm surrounded with deep canals that drained the water from the land. These canals were deadly to anyone who could not swim. The more he told his son not to go near the canals the more the son felt he must do it. One day when he took his eyes off him and finding him almost in the canal he decided he needed to administer reality therapy. He tied a rope around the little guy and let him go. As expected the irresistible temptation to throw himself in the deadly canal was followed.  Pa was wise enough to let him feel the full fear of what he had done before he pulled him out with the rope. He never went near the canal again.

Learning by natural consequences may be an excellent way to teach a little boy to not put his hand on a hot woodstove or go into a canal but some actions have consequences so severe that we cannot just let the natural consequences teach us their harm. There is a place to learn from others and especially God.

I have a friend who runs a Cabinet making shop. His father taught him the proper way to work with tools that were dangerous. He is usually very careful with his saws but one day he ran his fingers over the blade. I met him in the hospital. Gratefully he lost only a little of the fingers and could return to work. Only a few weeks later he was in the hospital again for a worse cut.  It seemed that even with all the training and proper care he was still needing to be safer.

His familiarity with the tools was leading him to be less careful. As I was pondering his situation I realized that sin was exactly like what was happening to him. If we truly understand the reality and the consequences of sin we would see it like he did the saw that tore into his flesh that day.

I realized that sin was like the saw and my friend’s hand. When I sinned, even unintentionally, it was terribly destructive to me.

When I sin intentionally it would be just like me going into my friend’s shop turning on a saw and putting my hand squarely on to the blade. Only a psychotic person would do anything like this. Yet it is precisely what we are doing when we sin.

Even the word sin has taken on a meaning other than what it really is. It is often seen as desirable, forbidden, harmless and very tasty fruit. 

In reality sin is any death giving action we do. Sin is when we harm ourselves or others by what we do. It is when we harm our or other’s relationship with God by what we do. This was what the first sin did. This is what every sin since did.

Next Part - The Lies of Sin Part Four

http://leonardterry.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-lies-of-sin-part-four.html