One of them asked how I, as a pastor, think about it. My response went something like this: Sin is more powerful than we give it credit for being. Then I thought about a passage our son had read to his wife and daughters during family worship a few nights before. (They are staying with us for awhile between moves.) He read from Genesis 4 and talked about God's message to Cain. I told my friends what the Lord told Cain even before he murdered his brother Abel: Sin is crouching at the door.
The answer I provided in that conversation is not a complete one, but it is an important part. Sin wants us, and we are susceptible to its power.
The complete divine message to Cain was: "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it" (Gen. 4:6b-7).
This passage indicates Cain could have pre-emptively prevented sin from gaining a hold on him. Cain didn't, however. And he didn't master sin. Even before sin brought destruction in his brother's life, it did so in his own.
What happens to the Christian who doesn't recognize sin is stalking him? What happens to the Christian who opens the door to the sin crouching outside? What happens to the Christian who thinks he can toy with sin for the briefest of seasons?
The late Adrian Rogers, whom our family was blessed to call pastor for eight years, said this: “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”
Once a Christian opens the door to sin and excuses it in the slightest way, there is no guarantee he or she will be able to put the brakes on it. If we, as followers of Jesus, do not master sin, we should assume it will master us. Everyone who reads this blog may know a professing brother or sister in Christ who has stepped slightly onto sin's slope and found it a slippery one. How many of us know another Christian, including one in pastoral ministry, who has fallen so badly he has brought reproach on the name of Christ and His church, destroyed a marriage, and done dreadful harm to others?
Given the danger and power of sin, how should we respond as followers of Christ? Though this is not a complete guide, here are some recommendations:
1. Remind ourselves often of the holiness of God. Sin is no small matter to Him. It has no part in Him. He despises it. He will judge every sin for eternity. Our desire should be to emulate Him in hatred of sin.
2. Confess -- and repent of -- our sins quickly and fully. We cannot minimize sin if we would guard ourselves against sin's threat to consume us. We cannot think some sins are too insignificant to require us to agree with God about the offense they are to His holiness. If we are lethargic about confessing and repenting of a sin, we risk becoming lackadaisical about a growing number of sins.
3. Commit ourselves to other saints who humbly recognize their need for, and practice, confession of sin. The confession of sin by a church in corporate worship is an important and regular reminder of our need and God's cleansing. As the church of Jesus, we are going in the same direction with no one left behind -- likeness to Jesus.
4. Rehearse the gospel frequently. Preaching the gospel to ourselves helps us remember the condemnation we were under because of our sin and the comprehensiveness of Jesus' work to atone for our sin. May we remind ourselves of the great price the Son of God paid to conquer every sin, and may we rejoice in the forgiveness for every sin fully given on the basis of Christ's life, death and resurrection.
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