"In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus."
-Romans 6:11
A lot of things in my life have been pointing to a principle that I am hoping to apply to my life. We'll get to what the principle is, but first, let me discuss the premise. Our church has been studying the book of Romans, where Paul constantly urges the Romans to stop sinning. He reminds them of the death Jesus died, and how we no longer should be bound to the powers of sin. I also finished reading "Knowing God" by J.I. Packer, where he discusses resisting sin and temptation. Lastly, today at work I read an article on cracked.com that talks about things that hinder our lives.
So what is the principle I gleaned from these things? It's that in order to combat temptations, you have to stop trying so hard to fight temptation. You might think, "well that doesn't make sense", and you're right. At the same time, it makes sense in light of the way we should resist temptation; spend more time in God's presence. I'm learning in my struggle with temptation that the harder I try to fight temptation, the harder it gets to actually beat it. That's because when I try to fight temptation, I'm focusing on those temptations, and it can actually be more appealing. The way I should be resisting temptation and sin is to focus on Christ.
Let's break this down a bit. In Romans, especially the early chapters, Paul constantly talks about the inadequacy of the law. I've actually written a bit about the inadequacy of the law early in my blog, and I encourage you to read the post. The reason the law is inadequate in fixing our sin problems is that it exposes our sins without solving them. The law required that people become righteous by obeying rules, but no one could possibly completely obey the law. Even the contents of the law reveal its own insufficiency. What do I mean by that? The law required that the people give animal sacrifices to atone for their sin every year. This meant that the sacrifices could not completely solve their sins, because the sacrifices were made continually. I encourage you to read Hebrews 10 to learn more about the law's inadequacy. The point is, the law is insufficient because it depends on people's efforts to defeat sin rather than on God.
The last chapter of "Knowing God" is titled "The Adequacy of God", which I really like. The chapter focuses on Romans chapter 8, particular the last paragraph, which I again encourage you to read. J.I. Packer talks about the fact that Jesus's sacrifice for our sin is adequate enough to fully save us. Not only that, but we now know that Jesus can and will sustain us in our struggle with temptation and sin. Paul says in Romans 8, "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?". In other words, God is willing to give us anything we need in order to sustain our lives. This includes the strength to fight against sin.
The article on cracked.com mentions one hindrance to our lives that I can easily relate to. This hindrance is the unwillingness to give up something in order to gain something else. The article gives the example of getting in shape. Many people would say they want to get in shape, yet they do not do anything that will help them get healthier. The author claims that this is due in part to the fact that people don't realize that in order to go to the gym and exercise, you have to give up something that you are doing now. For example, if you say you want to go to the gym in the morning, you have to give up sleep, and we often don't realize how much we value sleep. I believe that this principle works in reverse as well; if you want to get rid of something in your life, you have to replace it with something else.
Let's tie this together before this post gets too long. What I hope you are seeing is that the key to resisting temptation and sin is not to try to fight it directly. As we learned in Romans, this is what the law tried to get people to do; simply stop sinning through our own efforts. However, it is impossible for any of us to beat sin that way, because we all have sinned and we all fall short of God's glory. Next, we talked about the fact that only God is adequate in solving our sin problems. Only God can sustain us in our struggle with sin. However, we shouldn't approach sin with the attitude "I will try really hard not to sin and pray that God sustains me". Remember that in order to get rid of something, you have to replace it with something else. Instead of trying to not sin, we should be spending more time in prayer and God's Word. The more time we spend in God's presence, the less time we will have for sin. When we spend time in prayer and God's Word, our focus shifts away from sin and instead it shifts towards God. I hope that we can stop trying to resist temptation and sin by our own strength and instead learn to rest in God.
-Smart
