Deeper in Christ

 

We are joined in a mighty battle between the spirit and the flesh, Satan, and our Savior. Every day we are pulled away from our Savior and into sin. Many of us make commitments to follow Christ, and yet we struggle with sin and addiction. We want nothing more than to walk in righteousness, but we war with our flesh and unclean desires. The Bible is clear that either we will be killing sin, or sin will be killing us. "The wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23)

But one of the paradoxes of Christianity is that we do not fight this battle with sin and Satan with aggressive, forward action. It is less of an assault, and more a surrender. We do not go forward in a direct assault. We do not throw punches, thrust swords, or lob grenades. We lay down our weapons and stop fighting. Of course, to surrender to sin is to plunge ourselves deeper into sin and death. Sin must always be resisted, but as we turn away from sin, we look to the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ and we surrender to him. We abide in him:

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." (John 15:1-5)

This is Jesus talking and what he is saying is that if we want to have a flourishing, successful spiritual life we must learn to abide. We must unplug from the things of this world and plug into Jesus.

I remember riding a bike as a kid, and as I was cruising along the sidewalk one time and there was a large construction sign ahead of me, blocking half the sidewalk. There was enough room for me to get by, but just barely. I grew more anxious as the sign drew near and I couldn't take my attention off it, and I ended up clipping it with my handlebars and having a close encounter with the concrete. If I had been able to find that narrow lane right next to the curb and focus on that, or turn my focus further down the road, I probably would have been able to avoid that crash. But because I kept my attention on the sign, I ended up hitting it.

This is what happens with sin, we are tempted, and thoughts and desires come into our hearts and minds. We feel the gravitation pull, and if we continue to focus on that temptation, then we will end up stumbling into it. Even if we try to tell ourselves, "Don't think about that! Don't think lustful thoughts! Don't think about porn!"  This seldom works because even though we are attacking the thoughts, we are still dwelling on the problem.

What we must learn to do is to turn away from lust and center our attention on the Lord. We focus on Jesus, and let our thoughts synchronize with his. Christianity is fundamentally about relationship. We are walking with God. We are abiding in Christ. We turn our gaze away from the lust and uncleanness and rest it on Jesus, and as we do, we will find those thoughts losing their power.

If we find ourselves sinking deeper and deeper into sin, then we must go deeper and deeper into our relationship with Christ. What we will find is that the more sin and shame we bear, the more his mercy and grace abounds. The more ugly our sin, the more beautiful his grace becomes. There is no sin so dark and despicable that our Lord does not have grace to forgive. The more severe the wounds of our sin, the more lavish his love.

Too often we allow shame and inadequacy to keep us from walking with God. "Once I get rid of this sin, then I will start walking with God."  But if we follow that logic we will never walk with God. We need to walk with God if we are going to overcome sin, he is the only one who can empower us to walk in righteousness.

The primary way that we will overcome sin is by keeping our focus on Christ. We defeat sin, not by hurling weapons at it, but by centering our attention on Jesus. In him we find all the power we need to overcome any sin or sickness in our life.

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