SIN acronym

Step 1: Remember that you still have a sin nature

SIN

Sold to wickedness

1 Kings 21:25, “There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the LORD like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited.”

What does Ahab’s wickedness have to do with my sin?  Ahab was one of the most notoriously wicked kings of Northern Israel.  He married the Phoenician princess Jezebel for a trade relationship.  She led him to worship Baal.  Baal worship included sleeping with prostitutes to induce the god Baal to sleep with his consort Asherah so that they could produce rain.  Some Baal worship also included sacrificing children in fire.

Has my sin ever been this bad?  I have never slept with anyone other than my husband and I have fought the pro-life cause for a long time.  But I have an idolatrous heart that places loves above my Lord and a wicked mind that takes pleasure in wrong things.  And everybody has some beset sin that they are born with.  Lady Gaga is right.  Before Christ saves you, you are born that way, though that way is sin, and it takes many forms.

God wiped out a whole generation of people in a flood because they were all naturally wicked, but he graciously saved Noah, Mrs. Noah, their sons, and their sons’ wives.   And those eight were sinners, too.

…In sin did my mother conceive me, Psalm 51:5b

David wrote that line in a Psalm where he repented of his sin of taking a married woman as his own wife and then killing her husband.  Nobody knew about that sin except God and maybe Joab.  But God revealed David’s sin to Nathan who called him out.  And David repented.  Through God’s grace, David did good things.  He stood up for God against a nine-foot-tall Philistine that everyone else feared.  He spared his enemy, King Saul, when Saul tried to kill him out of jealousy and fear of God’s judgment.  He showed kindness to Saul’s crippled grandson, Mephibosheth, when he had every right to kill him.

But through all his goodness and devotion to God, David still had a prideful sin nature that came out the first time he marred more than one woman, and then really came to a head when he happened to see Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, bathing from a rooftop, slept with her, made her pregnant, and then had Uriah conveniently on a front line in battle and killed. 

And despite all our deeds, we still have pride, and our sin nature still lives.  We cannot be fully Christ’s until that sin is gone.

No one is righteous, no, not one, Romans 3:10b

Romans 7:24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  Paul captures the believer’s struggle perfectly.  Praise God, he sent Jesus to die for my sins and for the sins of all believers.  You don’t have to stay in your sin.  Even if you really love your sin, the Holy Spirit will convict you, show you Jesus, and change your heart so that you no longer desire it.  It will even become ugly to you.  And he will give you Christ’s goodness so that you can love Jesus more than you hated your sin.  Please believe in him.