Crucifying Sin: Make War!

I've been thinking about sin for a while. I don't like thinking about it too much. For one, Christianity isn't about just abstaining from bad things, but it's a pursual of something. Sin sometimes gets too much attention.

Still... I'm weighed down by it. I watch it ruin people's lives every day: marriages are broken, emotions are spoiled, friendships ruined, jobs lost, children abused. We constantly want to be first, to have the attention, to be right... and it ruins us. Sin is a disgusting poison.

I'm about to finish preaching a series on crucifying sin in our lives, so I thought I would share some of those thoughts on here as well.

One of the things in our Christian culture that strikes me as strange is that we have a tolerable level of sin that we accept as normal. It's okay to cheat on your taxes once in a while, make dirty jokes here and there, treat people badly when we're having a bad day. Just don't do anything too terrible. Why is that? Why do we treat sin like it's something we have to accept?

I watched this video a while back, and while it may be a little dramatic, I think it makes the point well.



Sin absolutely wants to crush us, and it never stops its pursuit. Sometimes I feel like we're naive villagers walking through a war zone without a clue. Gunshots are everywhere, but there we are, believing that if we pretend everything is fine, it will all just go away. But that's not spiritual; it's idiotic.

I mean, people whose life goal and pursuit is to follow God at all costs are caught up in immorality every single day. They're not all bad men; many of them have great intentions. And I don't claim to have the answers to all of that, but sometimes I wonder if they were in war mode against their sin. At what point do we stop and say, "That's enough. I'm going to declare all-out war against my evil desires because I don't want them ruining any more of my life, or anyone's around me!"

I love what God told Cain when he was about to do the unthinkable and murder his own brother. He told him, "Sin is crouching at the door. It desires to have you, but you must master it!" The same goes for us.

I truly pray that God would give me the same hatred for evil in my life that He has. It put His Son on the Cross, it hurts the innocent every day, and we cannot avoid its presence. We must fight it. There is no tolerable level of sin.