Many of us make the mistake that we can stay clear of sin through the sheer force of our will power.  Trying to go it on your own is a recipe for disaster.  The truth is our souls are spiritual battlegrounds.  There are dark forces at work in this world constantly seeking ways to place stumbling blocks in our paths.  Ultimately, we are still free to make our own choices and we bear the consequences for them.  But we need to be mindful of how those choices can be influenced.

Satan opened the battle by speaking words of persuasion through the serpent to Eve as she stood before the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We will never know whether or not she would have followed through on her act of rebellion without that nudge, but there is no denying that Satan’s intervention helped to move her in that direction.

Again, this is not to excuse away our sins and fall back on a “the devil made me do it” justification.  Satan does not conjure temptations out of thin air.  He plays on our own inclinations.  He exploits our curiosities.  There is no doubt that Eve was curious as to what would really happen if she ate the fruit from the Forbidden Tree.  Satan gave her the rationalization that she was craving deep down to explore that curiosity.

That is the very purpose of the existence of Satan.  He is the counterbalance that makes free will possible.  God’s plan was and is for us to freely choose to love him.  But that choice cannot be a true free choice if there is no alternative.  God is very clear about the consequences of choosing to follow Satan’s path, but he gives us the freedom to make that choice.  And these consequences are not born out of spite or retribution on God’s part for having chosen against him.  Rather, they are the natural results of the chain of events we unleash when we deviate from God’s perfect plan.  The child who touches a hot stove gets burned, not because the parent is seeking to punish him for having disobeyed the warning to not touch the stove.  The burn is the natural result of skin coming into contact with a surface that has reached a certain temperature.  So too there are natural results for adultery, murder and all manner of sin.

But God would not let Satan have the last word.  He gave Satan the ability to play a role in the Fall of the human race, but he reserved for himself the ability to redeem those who fell.  He did this by sending his son Jesus to live as a human, withstand all worldly temptations, and die as a sacrifice to atone for all the sins of the human race.  The path to the Fall was paved through the belief in Satan’s false promise that one could eat the Forbidden Fruit and not die.  The path to salvation and eternal life is paved through the belief that Jesus died to save us from our sins.

God could not have made it any simpler for humans to find redemption.  And yet so many do not take advantage of this gift.  That is due in large part to Satan’s continued efforts.  First, he actively works to create doubt regarding the very existence of God.  He is even willing to mock his own existence (for a time) to achieve this end.  Second, he creates doubt regarding the path to salvation.  He helps to trap Christians in a cycle of sin and shame, dragging them ever deeper to the point where they falsely believe that they are unworthy of salvation.  This deep shame drives them away from their faith and away from God.

This is why it is important to deny sin a foothold in our lives.  But that is no easy task.  Do not presume to think that you are morally superior to Eve and would have withstood the persuasions of the serpent.  We all have our own particular inclinations and curiosities that can lead us astray if a certain moment of opportunity opens up before us.  We are all one step away from slipping into a downward spiral that can bring us so low that we foolishly question our worthiness to be saved.

The fact is that we cannot withstand temptation on our own.  It took the Son of God fasting for forty days to prepare himself to withstand the temptations of Satan in the desert.  We stand no chance on our own.  If you try to go it alone, you will most certainly fail.  Try to end your pornography habit on your own and you’ll see a suggestive commercial while innocently watching a football game that will spark your lust and drive you back into sin.  Vow that you will never succumb to adultery and suddenly a new girl will start working at your office who laughs at all your jokes and tells you how much she wishes she could find a boyfriend as nice as you.  We live in a Fallen world and as such there is no end to assaults waged against those who have proclaimed allegiance to God.

Will power is not enough.  If it was as simple as mustering up enough will power to ward off sin, God would not have had to send his Son to die to save the world from sin.  We need God’s help to fight off the temptations that lead to sin.  Paul describes it as putting on the armor of God.  I will invoke a metaphor that is perhaps more relatable in our current climate.  You need to build a wall.

How does one build a wall to ward off sin?  You build it one brick at a time.  The more you involve God in your life, the more bricks you add to your wall.  If you think you can just go to church twice a year and never read the Bible, you’ll end up with a rather pathetic wall so filled with gaps that temptation can flow right through.  If you have a particular weakness that you are fighting – a particular sin that you’ve been trying to break but just keep falling back into it – I recommend a very consistent prayer regime.  When you wake up in the morning, pray for protection against that sin.  Pray again before you leave your car to go into work.  Pray again at lunch.  Pray when you get in your car to come home from work.  Pray before you go to sleep that night.  Each prayer is a brick in your wall.  I would add further reinforcement by reading the Bible every day and going to church every Sunday.  It’s up to you how much work you want to put into it.  Just ask yourself, how strong do you want your wall to be?

But no wall will keep out all sin.  Sooner or later something will slip over it or through it.  That’s just the nature of our mortal existence.  We all slip up, even those who try their hardest to please God.  The key is to not let a minor breach in your wall become something larger.  Do not slip down the cycle of shame and start to withdraw from God.  Stick to your prayer schedule.  Add to it if you feel it is necessary.  When a wall becomes damaged, you work to rebuild it.  If you neglect it, the entire wall starts to crumble and soon it falls to ruin.
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Just remember that you don’t have to do this alone.  God is always there to help you.  He will protect you.  And he will lift you back up when you fall.  He knows you are not perfect.  His forgiveness knows no end and his love for you is boundless.
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I think I need to clarify my previous post a little bit regarding how Christians should behave in the aftermath of the culture war.  Christians sometimes struggle when it comes to separating sin from the sinner.  This causes us to swing to one of two extremes.  We either alienate those who have sinned by coming across as too judgmental or we find ourselves excusing all manner of sin to the point where our society no longer properly functions.

On the one hand there are Christians who are all law and no mercy and on the other you have those who are all mercy and no law.  The fact is we need both the law and mercy.  Jesus illustrated this when he saved the adulteress from being stoned – an event that many misinterpret to justify their all mercy/no law point of view.

Jesus famously challenges those who are without sin to cast the first stone.  Of course no one is without sin, so the crowd disperses.  Jesus ends the encounter by telling the woman, “Go and sin no more”.

In this episode Jesus does not validate the lifestyle choice the woman made that led her into adultery.  His proclamation to “sin no more” points out the fact that the manner in which she had been living was wrong and she needs to stop it.

You can substitute any form of aberrant behavior into this story.  Replace the adulteress with a thief or a murderer and it still holds true.  We all sin.  God sent Jesus to wash away all of our sins.  None of us has the moral high ground from which to cast stones of judgment at each other.

But our collective moral failings do not make the law invalid.  Jesus did not take the opportunity of that encounter to tell the crowd, “you know what, that whole adultery thing is outdated.  From this point forward I proclaim love is love, even if you are in love with someone else’s husband or wife.”

Jesus said “sin no more” – meaning that despite the reprieve the woman had been given, the behavior that led her to that point was still wrong.  In sparing her, he validated her worth as a child of God, but he did not validate her sinful behavior.

This distinction is important because nowadays a lot of Christians are falling into the trap of validating sin because so many people are now leading lives where they are choosing to be defined by their sin.  It is a lot trickier for a Christian to navigate a relationship with a homosexual than it is with someone who has fallen into adultery.  No one self-identifies as an adulterer.  It is pretty straightforward for a Christian to make it clear that they don’t condone the act of adultery but still show love and compassion to the adulterer.  And most importantly, the Christian would make it clear that they would not define that person as an adulterer going forward.

But how does this work when you have someone who wants to be defined by their sin?  What would Jesus say if the woman had been targeting for stoning because she was engaging in homosexual behavior?  The story would play out the same way.  He would challenge the accusers by pointing out that they are no less guilty than her.  He would show her mercy, but he would end by telling her to sin no more.  So just as before, he would validate her intrinsic worth, but he would not validate her lifestyle choice.

So for us as Christians that means loving all those who live in ways that don’t agree with our Christian beliefs.  But as much as we love the individuals, we cannot support the lifestyle choices they make.  We don’t turn our backs on them.  We don’t cut them out of our lives.  We don’t point fingers at them and call them sinners.  But it is fair for us to raise our voices in disagreement when they want to make changes in our society to validate their lifestyle choice.  In fact, it is our duty to protect the integrity of God’s laws just as Jesus protected the integrity of the law during his earthly ministry.  At every turn he told the sinners that their sins were forgiven.  He did not go around telling people that they were wrong to think of themselves as sinners.

Think of it this way, when given the choice between declaring his laws null and void to remove the concept of sin or sending his son to die on a cross to redeem people from sin, God chose to keep the concept of sin and redeem people from it.  He did this because his laws have value – so much so that he was willing to let his son suffer to maintain their integrity.  He did it because human civilization requires laws to properly function.  Without them we devolve into madness and chaos.  Some might argue we are seeing that unfold right now.
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So the next time you feel sheepish about taking a stand on an issue because you don’t want to be guilty of judging, remember to separate the sinner from the sin.  Have compassion for the person but hold strong to the values that God has assigned to our society.  If you are someone who strongly believes in protecting the environment, would you stay silent as some of your friends and neighbors pushed policies that you knew would harm the environment or would you politely take a stand and attempt to counter their actions?  If it is acceptable for an environmentalist to speak out to protect the environment, it is equally justified for Christians to speak out to protect the laws of God.  But in doing so we must never lose sight of love for our neighbor, for that is the highest of laws, second only to loving God.
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The sad fact is, American culture is growing increasingly hostile toward Christianity.  People used to talk of a Culture War.  I have news for you my friends.  The war is over.  We lost.  We live in a country where drag queen story hours for children are sweeping the nation and encouraging children to “transition” to another gender (and there are no longer just two anymore, in case you were wondering) has become all the rage.

We have politicians racing to see who can take the most extreme position in support of abortion.  Apparently, infanticide is on the table now.  The US Congress has refused to take up a vote on whether babies who survive abortion should be provided medical care.  The prevailing opinion of those in charge of Congress now is obviously – no, they should not.

We always took comfort in the fact that we were the majority.  Surely as long as the majority of the country answered yes to whether or not they were a Christian in a poll, America could never become hostile to Christian beliefs.  But the people who call themselves Christians today are very different than Christians from previous generations.  Today there are self-professed Christians that among other things, do not believe in much of the Bible (the creation in particular).  Many view the Judeo-Christian moral code to be outdated.  Some don’t believe in Hell.  Some don’t even believe in the divinity of Jesus.

But even many of those who do believe as a traditional Christian should have been complicit in this cultural shift.  It happens one small compromise at a time.  A popular TV show that pushes the boundaries of taste just a little further.  A must-see movie that is just a bit more outrageous than what we would normally feel comfortable watching.  A video game for our kids that blurs the lines of good and evil and is more violent than anything we grew up playing, but hey all the other kids are playing it.

Some were moved by the “Love is Love” movement and helped make Gay Marriage mainstream.  But the culture warriors opposed to Christian values weren’t content to stop there.  What followed were Christians who owned bakeries or wedding venues facing the loss of their livelihoods for refusing to participate in ceremonies that they felt were against their beliefs.  And then, embolden by the triumphs of the Homosexual movement, Transsexuals have risen up demanding that our society be remade to accommodate their unique mental condition.  Once again, many Christians have opened the door for them out of compassion and a desire not to be seen as judgmental.  Both are the proper instincts for Christians.  And that is where our dilemma lies.  For the very nature of our Christianity is turned against us and we soon find ourselves branded as hateful if we don’t accept things like shared bathrooms and locker rooms.


If you think it is bad now, just wait.  Here are a few possible things on the horizon: polygamy, pedophilia, bestiality, and the ritual sacrifice of aborted children in pagan ceremonies.  If you think that sounds crazy how crazy would 100 genders, Bruce Jenner proclaiming to be a woman, and politicians openly making a case for infanticide have sounded about fifteen years ago? 

But if the war is lost, what are we to do now?  We do two things.  We live a Christian life and we refuse to participate in any further cultural madness.

Living a Christian life means allowing Christianity to permeate all aspects of your life.  There has been a growing trend to convince Christians that they must keep their beliefs to themselves.  The Separation of Church and State is constantly invoked (a term that is found no where in the Constitution by the way).  This country was settled by Christians who were fleeing religious persecution at the hands of the Church of England.  The founders never intended that government officials should not be guided by their beliefs.  What they did intend to do was to make sure there would never be an official Church of the United States that would tell people how they had to worship and what they had to believe.  However, more and more it seems like an official “secular” church is being established seeking to tell people precisely what they should believe.

Judeo-Christian themes permeate the architecture of the buildings in our nation’s Capitol and the documents upon which this nation was founded.  The sermons of Christian ministers helped stoke the fires of rebellion against England.  Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned the term Separation of Church and State, attended Christian church services held in the Capitol Building.  So don’t let anyone tell you that there is no place for your Christian beliefs in politics or in our culture.  

Living a Christian life is done in big ways and little ways.  Here are some examples:

1.       Stop voting for politicians who advocate policies that will undermine Christian values.
2.       Stop doing business with companies that are undermining Christian values.
3.       Stop compromising your values.  Don’t watch those TV shows and movies that are deliberately pushing the envelope and shifting us further from our Christian values.
4.       Start going to church if you aren’t already.  It is important that Christians be seen actively participating in their faith.  It is important for children to see their parents actively worshiping God.
5.        Start saying a brief prayer at your meals both at home and especially when you are dining out.  I’m not talking about making a big show of it when you are in a restaurant.  But it is important that you get comfortable living out your faith in public.  This is a small way to do it.
6.       Start attending school board meetings and take voting for school board members seriously.  Perhaps consider running for a school board position yourself.  We lost the culture war in large part because we lost the hearts and minds of far too many young people.
7.       Stay informed.  Too many Christians have been on cruise control just thinking that the country they grew up in would always be the same.  You don’t need to spend hours watching the news.  Just take some time every day to get the news from the source of your choice and then do some additional research if you come across a story/event that is particularly concerning.

I had also mentioned that Christians should no longer participate in furthering cultural madness.  Others have termed this “Refusing to Go Off the Cliff”.  This is where it starts to get difficult, because there is a risk of some form of persecution, be it social ostracization or an actual loss of livelihood.  But we as Christians really need to take a stand on some of the affronts to human nature and simple biology we have seen unfold.  Here are just a few things we need to stand for:

1.       There are only 2 genders – male and female.
2.       “Transitioning” a child to another gender is a form of child abuse.  There are enough cases of individuals who made the decision to transition as an adult that have gone on to regret it and transition back to make it completely irresponsible to think that a child is capable of properly contributing to a decision to make such a life-altering change.
3.       We as Christians and Americans should respect the right of adults to choose to live as another gender.  After all, God gave all of us the free will to live as we choose.  However, choices have consequences.  We have a right to stand against policies intended to normalize previously deemed abnormal behavior if such policies undermine our values.  We have a right to say that our wives and daughters should not be forced to suddenly be ok with having biological males in their bathrooms and locker rooms just to validate the self-esteem of a gender confused individual.  And our daughters should not be asked to compete in high school and collegiate sports against boys who have decided that they are now girls but retain the obvious competitive edge of their biology.
4.       We as Christians need to stand for the truth that life begins at conception.  It is at conception when a unique human DNA code is created.  Just because the nature of human biology is such that every human begins life in a woman’s womb it does not give a woman the right to claim authority of life and death over the unique individual inside of her.  We also need to be consistent in this belief, as hard as it can be in cases of rape.  A human life is a human life, regardless of how it is conceived or whether or not its parents want it to live.
5.       We need to be watchful against any attempts to censor the Bible or any forms of Christian speech that those who have chosen to alter our country’s traditional values might brand as hate speech.  This is the next step in the evolution of their validation.  The first step is acceptance.  The second is normalization.  The third step is the marginalization of any opposition.  The final step is the silencing of opposition.
6.       We need to brace ourselves to stand against the coming forms of aberrant behavior that we will soon be asked to accept and normalize.  There will be appeals to our compassion.  We will be shamed as bigots if we don’t go whatever the next mile is with those who have seized control of our culture.  But we must stand strong because any further descent will plunge our country into a darkness that may be irredeemable.

Just because we have lost the culture war does not mean that all is lost.  The tables have now turned.  We must adopt the tactics of those who defeated us.  Say what you will about those on the other side of this battle, but they ultimately fought harder and smarter than us.  They had the courage to stand even when they were labeled as different and bizarre.  They were tenacious, never giving up even in the face of early losses.  The rebounded from any set-back and fought harder. 
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If we ever want to reclaim our place in American culture, we need to resolve to fight even harder than they did, because unlike we have been up until now, they are ever-vigilant and still pushing the boundaries further.  But fight we must, or else we will find ourselves as the new Pilgrims, seeking refuge from a country that has no place for our beliefs.
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The Bible contains many passages that illustrate God’s unconditional love and forgiveness.  And it speaks of how Jesus reached out to sinners to call them back into fellowship.
 
“Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.
And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, ‘Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’
When Jesus heard that, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Matthew 9:10-13
 
This is just one of several instances where Jesus receives criticism from the religious class for his association with sinners.
 
“And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
Luke 15:2
 
“So he told them this parable: What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
Luke 15:7
  
There are several verses that speak directly of forgiveness.  Here are a few:
 
“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12
 
“The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him.”
Daniel 9:9
 
“Then he adds: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”
Hebrews 10:17
 
“Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
Isaiah 1:18
 
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”
Isaiah 43:25
 
“For the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate.  He will not turn his face from you if you return to him.”
2 Chronicles 30:9
 
Conclusion
 
By simply claiming the payment made by Jesus we are all immediately reconciled to God.  There is forgiveness for all who seek it.  But more than forgiveness – a freedom from the past.  God does not chain us with guilt.  He does not seek restitution or even penance.  When Jesus saved the woman from being stoned he did not say – now go say 30 Our Father’s and 20 Hail Mary’s on your rosary.  He simply said “go and sin no more”.
All God asks is that we accept what he is giving us.  Imagine if the prodigal son would have had second thoughts when he saw his father running toward him and decided to turn and run away in shame?  He never would have seen the great banquet prepared for him.  If you turn from God you will never see the great eternal future he has in store for you.

The good news is that it is not too late to turn to him.  Even if you wait until your final breath to turn to him he will accept you no questions asked.  But I would encourage you not to wait, because in doing so you are missing out on the peace and joy that comes from fellowship with God.  You will still have hard times, but God will help you through them.  You will still have pain, sadness and loss, but God will bring you comfort, perspective, and wisdom so as to weather the trials of this life.  And when this life ends, he will be there to greet you at the great banquet he has prepared in Heaven.
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