Satan has a subtle trap he would love for Christians to fall into. Rather than struggle against, radically eradicate, and kill off sin, Satan wants us to believe that we can manage our sin. Consider these questions:
Do you establish rules that are designed to limit, rather than eliminate, opportunities to sin?
Do you ever rationalize why a sin “isn’t so bad”?
Do you let yourself commit a lesser version of a more serious sin, thinking, “at least it’s not as bad as it could be”?
Do you find solace in the fact that your sins aren’t as bad as someone else's?
If you said yes to any of these questions, you might be managing your sin. Truth be told, we all, at different points, answer these questions in the affirmative. Managing sin is all too common amongst Christians. Before I go on, I should be clear—what exactly do I mean by “managing” sin? Any attempt to personally control the sin in our lives, rather than repenting and taking offensive action to destroy that sin, is sin-management. Christ calls us not to manage our sin, but to struggle against it, to kill it, and to eradicate it.
Struggle Against Sin
Sin is something which Christians must battle because it is our enemy. If you want to win a war, you don’t manage your enemy; you fight them in hopes of defeating them. The author of Hebrews picks up on the idea of struggle when he describes the Christian life as a race.
He writes:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.— Heb. 12:1–4
Sin is described as a burden that holds us back. We are called to toss our sins off and run towards Jesus. Sin is a burden we need to get rid of. When we manage sin, we try to figure out how we can go through life with our sins rather than cast them away. Christians are called to look to Jesus, who is both the founder and the perfecter of our faith. He gives us salvation, and he sustains us through the Christian life. Even with Christ sustaining us, we still must persevere. We are in a struggle against sin, and we are called to fight it even “to the point of shedding your blood”!
Kill Sin
The apostle Paul exhorts Christians to, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col. 3:5). This is extreme and intense language! Sin is not something we can manage; it is something we must kill off. This entails purposeful, definitive action. We don’t put sin to death by making allowances for it. We don’t put sin to death by rationalizing our behavior. Rather, we put sin to death by recognizing that our disobedience to God is wrong and betrays our creator. We put sin to death when we repent of our wrongdoing and, by the grace of God, put on the new man in Christ. Paul writes,
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.— Col. 3:12–14
Paul tells us that killing sin means more than just controlling and ceasing sinful behaviors. We must actively seek to replace sin with the fruit of the Spirit. Only then do we find victory over the enemy of sin. Furthermore, Jesus teaches us that this victory does not come without sacrifice.
Eradicate Sin
Jesus tells his followers that the fight against sin requires radical sacrifice. He uses a vivid hyperbole, a gross exaggeration to make a point, to explain how important it is to eradicate sin from our lives:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.— Matthew 5:29–30
To put sin to death, we will sometimes have to sacrifice something that is as hard to let go of as it would be to gouge out our own eye or cut off our hand! Choosing to flee sin means we might miss out on opportunities, we might stand out as strange compared to others, or we might experience real pain. Yet, Jesus teaches that it is all worth it because it is better to enter eternal life through the difficult process of eradicating sin than to enter hell through an easy and pleasant life full of the pleasures that sin provides.
Fight the Good Fight
The Christian life is a battle against sin and the devil. We would do well to consider the words Paul wrote to the younger pastor Timothy, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called” (1 Tim. 6:12). Sin is not something we can control or manage on our own. Christ died for our sins, he freed us from sin, and his power enables us to conquer sin. Trusting in the power of Christ, we find the strength to fight the good fight of the faith. More than that, resting in the finished work of Christ, we find the power to defeat sin as we take hold of God’s promise of eternal life.
