The Scars of Sin

Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Romans 6:16

What happens when we give way to temptation? It is clear that several things occur. First, we always go farther than we intended to go. This is invariably true when we choose to sin. Which of us has not told a lie, intending to tell only one lie, but before the day was over we found that that one lie forced us to tell another to support it, and then another, and yet another. Before the thing was over, where we had intended to tell but one lie, we ended up telling twenty-five, each one worse than the one before. We have all felt, as one little boy once put it, that a lie is an abomination to the Lord, but it is a very present help in time of trouble. But as we look back on our lies, we discover that they are not a help at all; they have taken us much farther than we wanted to go. That is the first result of sin.

The second is that we invariably expose someone else to danger or to hurt. Because we are tied up in one bundle of life with all of our friends and relatives, what we do always affects someone else. I think of the tears in parents' eyes as they grieve over the folly into which their children have fallen. Sin is not a private affair, it always touches someone else. No one can sin in private, for God who sees the hearts always works to uncover that which is hidden. Eventually it all comes out, to the hurt, damage, sorrow, and despair of others whom we didn't mean to hurt at all.

The third effect of sin is that we find that repentance becomes increasingly difficult. The longer we go on, the more we give way and choose the evil, the harder it is to cast ourselves upon the forgiving, redeeming grace of God, and to stop the evil thing. In fact, if we go on too far this way, we may find it impossible to turn around. This is the thrust of the warnings that are found on page after page of the Bible. Five times in the book of Hebrews alone you will find this kind of a warning note, Be careful! If you go too far you will find that you cannot come back.

But suppose we find genuine forgiveness? Suppose we do repent and we stop the evil thing, what happens then? Immediately all the estrangement that was between us and God is gone, and we are restored to a sense of fellowship with him. Our guilt is removed, we are cleansed, and we do not need to beat ourselves over the head any more. We are washed and set free, and, in God's sight, treated as though the thing never happened. This is the amazing wonder of forgiveness, that we can find genuine relief from the inner torment of our hearts and be set free.

Thank you, Father, that your restrictions upon me are not prompted by a desire to limit me but rather to give me freedom; not prompted by a desire to hurt me, but to help me and to keep me from harm.