Build the Wall - Against Sin

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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