"The Voice of Sin"
Sin wants to rule you.
The Voice of Sin
When I was a college student, you could spot me in the bars often. If you had, you might have come up to me and tried to share the gospel. The problem is, I would have responded like this: “I understand the gospel and I am saved. I prayed to Jesus when I was 7 and asked for forgiveness of my sins. So, thanks, but, I’m good!” Then, I would have proceeded to grab my 6th, or 7th, or 10th beer of the night.
God says this to Cain in Genesis 4:7: “Sin is crouching at the door, its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Isn’t that interesting? We don’t always talk about sin that way. I think sin had crouched at the door of my college life, and it was ruling over me.
In Romans 6:1-14, Paul is trying to reshape the way we think about sin by asking the hypothetical question: “Should we go on in sin so that grace may multiply?” We don’t really talk that way, but I think the every day language version of this question is this: should we just take sin lightly?
Paul invites us to actually understand the gospel better. I needed to understand the gospel better when I was 22.
If we understand the gospel better, this will transform the way we see the world—that includes the way we understand sin. And this starts to point out that sin has quite a nasty voice. That question (should we take sin lightly?) is built on a strange premise: that sin is inherently good and fun, and we just want to sin a little bit but we also want to follow Jesus.
Paul wants to ask a deeper question. What is our relationship to sin?
We Are United with Christ in Death
Paul answers the question in a strange way. Should we go on in sin? His response is not a series of reasons that we shouldn’t sin. Instead he says how, as in, “how could we go on in sin?”
We don’t always think this way, we try to explain that sin is bad and therefore we try to convince people not to sin. Paul says it in a completely different way, essentially saying: “How could we do that? We died to sin.” He then says “Or, are you unaware…?”
Paul is telling us that if we “go on in sin,” or “take sin lightly,” then we are “unaware.” If we take sin lightly, we don’t understand the gospel.
Paul simply proclaims that, in the gospel of Christ, we are already dead to sin. This is what he is trying to make us aware of. Paul wants us to think a certain way, to rightly understand the implications that the gospel has on our relationship to sin. We have died to sin in our “baptism” with Christ.
…And Resurrection
But, this does not end with death. We are united with Christ in death, so we will also be united with him in resurrection. We have been freed from the tyranny of sin. We need to rightly understand sin. Sin is a tyrant, a slave owner. Sin wants us to think it is the “fun stuff.” Remember Genesis 4:7, God tells Cain “Sin is crouching at the door, its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Sin has a voice.
When I was a college student, sin wanted me to think “I understand the gospel and I am saved,” while grabbing my 6th beer of the night. Sin loves when it has a stronghold in the life of someone who knows the gospel. Paul wants to correct our thinking. We are not free to sin, we are free from sin.
Therefore, Sin Will Not Rule Us
The conclusion to what Paul is teaching is that sin will not rule us. Steinbeck was wrong in East of Eden. (see the famous argument about “timshel” from Steinbeck’s East of Eden, thou “should,” or “can,” or “may” rule over sin? No. In Christ, thou will rule over sin! But, this is probably a whole separate article)
We are already living in victory over the power of sin. That’s the crazy thing Paul is trying to say.
Christ already defeated sin. So, though we still feel temptations, and we even still commit sin, (we are not perfect!) we also believe that sin has already lost. Though we are still fighting in the battle, the war is over.
Christ defeated sin by his death and resurrection. If we are with Christ, we are already in the victorious Kingdom. It feels ironic or perhaps contradictory, but Paul is teaching that we have to believe that we are already victorious over sin before we can actually make progress in fighting it.
So, what is our relationship to sin? Simply this: We are not ruled by sin. Though sin wants to own us, control us, manipulate us, we are not ruled by sin. Though sin has a nasty voice, we need no listen.
Sin already lost, so live in victory now. How do we live in victory? Paul offers essentially two practical pieces of advice.
“Consider” (v. 11)
Paul says we should: “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Basically, Paul wants us to “think,” to “consider,” to “understand” this changed relationship with sin. This first application is all about our understanding. There is a set of knowledge we must possess about the Gospel. It’s not really a complex math formula, it’s just a belief in the victory of Christ. Know that Jesus did something for us. Consider it. Meditate on the fact that we are already freed from slavery. We are freed from sin, so why would we want to walk back into it?
Surrender (v. 12-14)
Then, in v. 12-14, Paul essentially invites us to surrender our lives to God. The previous application was about understanding, this one is about allowing our soul to be shaped by the gospel. This is all about handing our lives over to Jesus. I love how Paul both says our “whole” self, and all the “parts” of ourselves. Maybe you are just holding back a little part, why not hand it over?