On the subject of sin, it seems to me that there are two opposite traps believers are at risk of falling into. On the one side is the trap of hypocrisy, which followers of Christ seem to fall into with depressing regularity. But those who avoid that trap seem all too likely to fall into the opposite trap of failing to take sin seriously at all.
But really, both errors are about failing to take sin seriously. The person who refuses to take a stand says, “I won’t condemn your sins, because if I did, I would have to condemn my own,” while the hypocrite says, “I will condemn your sins, but I still won’t condemn my own.” When I look at the church today, it seems that hardly anyone is saying, “I will take a stand against all sin, and especially my own.”
I don’t need to ask why; it’s obvious. Taking a stand against my own sin is uncomfortable. And it’s inconvenient. It requires effort. It involves giving up things that I enjoy. It will probably mean changing the way I use my time, and it will certainly mean rearranging my priorities. It might even require me to confess embarrassing things to someone else. In short, taking a stand against my sin requires asking the Holy Spirit to change me, and then actively cooperating with that change. If I’m actually serious about getting rid of sin, and not just pretending, I have to make it a priority to become the person God created me to be. Even when I’d rather not.
Against this, however, God has something to say:
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been set free from sin (Romans 6:6).
That’s a bit uncomfortable. And just a few verses later, it gets more specific:
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:11-14).
We don’t take sin seriously because we don’t see it the way God does, as slavery (John 8:34), and as rebellion against his holy commands (James 2:10-11). How seriously does God take sin? Christ gave his life to set us free, that’s how seriously. And then, in the book, of Hebrews we read:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood (Hebrews 12:4).
Nobody said that taking a stand would be easy. It wasn’t easy for Jesus either.
But the good news is that God is committed to transforming us into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). Our task, then, is to cooperate with what the Holy Spirit is already doing (Philippians 2:12-13). And if this is already God’s priority, shouldn’t it be ours too?
You already know how to take the next step. Dive more deeply into the Scriptures. Pray. Practice living continually in the presence of God. Do the things that are inconvenient, and uncomfortable, and hard. Follow the example of the Apostle Paul:
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).
Take a stand.