We Sin Out of Ignorance

So why is it that Christians sin? We'll look at four reasons. First of all, many Christians are ignorant of who we are in Christ. That's way it's so important to teach people who they are before you tell them what to do. Too often Christians tell them what to do without ever telling them who they are. Christianity then becomes no more than loading extra burdens upon a person's back and trying to be obedient to God in their own strength.

Obedience should be a product of hearing the voice of Jesus illuminating the path He calls us to follow. We respond in loving obedience to the master. There ought to be something inside the believer that resonates with His Word; His Spirit (John 10:27f). If there is no resonance, obedience will only be superficial and likely degenerate into legalism. Don't tell a pagan to stop living with his girlfriend; what's wrong with two pagans living together? Get him renewed in Christ, and even then don't tell him to stop living with his girlfriend! He has to realize that this is what Christ wants him to do, and he needs to know why. Take him to the Word (eg. Ephesians 5:5) and see if the Spirit will open his eyes. Help him devise a plan for freedom (eg. marriage, another brothers home to stay at, etc.). But don't stand in God place. This will promote a priesthood of yourself and a legalism by him rather than an intimate relationship with God.

Keep in mind that revelation begins with who he is IN CHRIST. Many are ignorant of who they are. External obedience leading to legalism is not an appropriate solution to the deep seated problem of sin. They must understand that they are new creatures in Christ. They should no longer serve their immediate impulses, but must search for their deeper desires. Society today tells us to live by our feelings; emotion is truth. That is wrong! We need to teach people to respond to their deeper desires, not their immediate ones. We must deal with people's ignorance with the word of God and truth. Believers often sin because they are ignorant of who they really are.

We Sin Because we Forget
Secondly, we many times forget who we are in Christ. The Devil likes to confuse us, and he does! I've listened to "propositional statements"--things like "I am no good." Is the person a Christian? If so then this statement is a lie! Who are you to tell God what's good and not good? You're a liar! A good principle is found in Romans 3:4:

"Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar..."

We need to start listening to propositional statements which we, and others, make with our own lips in order to measure this truth against God's truth. There are an awful lot of people who are confused because they are deceived. They believe a lie rather than the truth. And they act accordingly.

A close believing relative struggled with anorexia for over a year and nearly died spending 9 weeks in the hospital. Though a believer, she was gripped by fear and deception. She was afraid that God's plan for her life was bad and would not including goals which she had set up as idols. And she believed that we (her family) were the enemy and really did not love her. When a believer gets to this point of confusion and self-deception they desperately need to see the truth of God's Word as an external lighthouse offering them a way to safety. Fortunately she came to her senses and repented of her belief of lies. Today she is walking with God and serving Him. But for a while she forgot who she was.

We Sin Because we Rebel
Thirdly, we rebel against who we are. And we do this much more often than we think we do. Basically, once you peel away all the Christian veneer we will often find rebellion deep in our hearts. Moses said of the people who were grumbling against him, "Do you not know that you're grumbling against God?" When we grumble against our circumstances, when we grumble against the hard work God has called us to, when we grumble against others, we are grumbling against God.

If you're called to shepherd God’s sheep, there will be many times when you grumble against God for the stubbornness and stupidity of His sheep. God understands, because He puts up with the same aggravation. He is shepherding thousands of souls. But He is there to teach us and make us stronger. And in order to do so, we have to continue learning about God. In the working out of our calling and ministry, God has so arranged it that we become transformed. Our God is a good God, even when He doesn't look good. What's the problem when we say that God doesn't "look good" to us? Of course it is our point-of-view. The solution then is to grow in faith; we need to have that vertical relationship improved. When we are in rebellion against God we need to seek the things above and get God's point of view.

We Sin When We Are Passive
The fourth and final thing we do which leads us into sin is, we simply refuse to choose. This gets a lot of believers into problems. Incidentally, do you know what happens if you have a choice between the flesh and the spirit and you refuse to choose?

With computers they have what is called a default drive. If you don't choose a drive for your computer the computer automatically chooses the default drive. Can you guess what is the default engine in a person's life?

You guessed it! The flesh wins, just by default. You have to choose the Spirit. (Galatians 5:16) Why is that? The reason is that God respects your ability to choose; He does not force Christians to choose Him. Nor does He deceive Christians into choosing. God wants you to choose with your will--choose Him out of love-- because then what you do gives him glory. The Devil does not have the same type of respect for our will. If Christians refuse to rebel against God, can't be deceived or confused, the devil would at least hope to freeze their will. Then he has you by default. God only wants the free, volitional surrender of lives to Him. The devil will take whatever he can get. Oftentimes we refuse to choose and this opens us up to the devil.

Christ died to restore our agency; our ability to choose. "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed." (John 8:36) Free from what? Free from sin (v.34)! That is, we are now free. We can now choose righteousness; but we must choose (Cf. Romans 6:13,16). If we do not choose, then deception, confusion, etc. opens us right up to demonic influence, and the Devil just walks right in.

If we could think of the spiritual life, God wants the Christian to be in a position of standing against the Devil and his attacks (I Peter 5:8ff). We could draw an small, inner circle below to represent the person; his being and personhood. The Outer Circle is his life; attitudes, regular daily patterns, etc. The Devil is constantly attacking a person’s life, looking for a place of entrance (2 Corinthians 2:11).

In Ephesians 4:26f it says, "Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun set on your anger, neither give the Devil a place." There's a clear illustration of this kind of attack, and in that case the Devil's trying to get a foothold through anger that the sun goes down on. Anger is not sinful; it's what motivates the anger and what you do with it that can be sinful and used by the devil. Anger is sinful if it's selfish. If you go to sleep on it, you give the Devil a place. (OUTER CIRCLE IS DENTED) Notice, the Devil has not entered the person's being, just his life. The Devil has a place now.

The thing with the Devil, he is never happy to just have a place; he's always looking for more. Always! (OUTER CIRCLE'S DENT GROWS) And ultimately, that place grows to such an extent that the Devil can actually commune (talking, putting thoughts into) with the person. Christians are not even safe from this; the Devil can commune with them too, and start communicating lies directly to the person. This becomes evident when you hear people say things that aren't just not true, but are absolutely false. They are becoming confused in their identity. I think this is likely what happens when a Christian commits suicide; they've yielded so much ground over to the Devil, and the person becomes so confused that they believe a lie rather than the truth. A person who commits suicide believes that he's no good, his life is better off ended.

Incidentally, no-one comes to Christ a completely full circle as an adult. Everyone has yielded some type of ground over to the Devil. Usually the devil doesn't really pay attention, because after all, none of us are very important to the Devil. But after we come to Christ, he starts paying attention, and starts attacking in those weak areas that he's had influence over. Because now we are a threat to his dominion.

When a person comes under attack while you're working with them, this often indicates that you have found an area of fortress sin. The attitude of the counselor has to be, "What a great opportunity; this person can actually be healed in this area of their life, by standing against the Devil and learning how to use spiritual weapons and tools (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)." In the area of fortress sin, we have to realize that it just doesn't "pop up"; fortress sin has been developed over time and often has some deep roots. Usually we see just the fruit of it, but we have to dig down deep and find the roots of it, in order for real healing to occur.

The Root of Sin
GOING FOR THE ROOTS
If we were to analyze the patterns of sin listed in Galatians 5, we could call them the branches of the sin tree. There are four general areas in which our flesh tends to become developed, different patterns of sin. You have the areas of sexual sin; the areas of social sin; the areas of religious sin; and the areas of sinful appetites. Moving into Ephesians 5, we can add covetousness to the list.

When you run into a person who has these types of problems and they are unable to shake them through simple confession and repentance, often you may need to understand where the problems come from (the roots). There are two possible roots: non-volitional and volitional.

Non-volitional roots are ones that we did not choose. For instance sins that are passed on from the parent to the child whether by genetic means or learned patterns would be non-volitional. For example problems a person has arising from abusive parents would have non-volitional roots.

Volitional roots are ones in which we have chosen patterns of sin and they have become areas of fortress in our lives. Examples of these would be pornography and masturbation. These are patterns often chosen in adolescence which often are carried well into adulthood.

In the next chapters we'll see that the way out is through Repentance (ownership of the sin that is ours) and Restitution (new patterns which will bring restoration) regardless of whether the roots are volitional or non-volitional. Obviously the focus of repentance will be different in each of the two roots as will the necessary restitution. But as for the subject of this chapter, Revelation, we need to expose the roots so that the believer will be able to understand and come before the Lord and fight against deeply embedded sin patterns.

Let me use myself as an example: If a person in the church looked at me in the first month after I was saved they would have seen that I was a hermit. I actually shrunk back into corners in the church and tried to avoid new people. Fortunately for me, the person who led me to the Lord would not let me escape.

On which branch of the sin tree was this pattern? The social branch. That much was obvious. What wasn't obvious was that I hated people; I was embittered towards them. A brief look at the elements making up this branch in Galatians 5:20 would have shown me guilty and practiced in all of those things enumerated.

Why was I embittered? The answer--and it took me three years before I fully understood the roots--led all the way back to childhood. Often sins lead back to childhood experiences when our view of the world is just forming. I was raised in a family of six children. I sought praise, wanted my parents to be proud of me, and never got it (from my point of view). Consequently I saw the people around me as competition, trying to do better than me, and so I, in turn, had to do better than them, by any means necessary. Bitterness gave me energy, and I channeled that energy into over achieving. And I did it. I was very successful in whatever I did. I beat everybody, so it was a no wonder I had no friends.

But when I got saved, I was embarking on a journey into a new kingdom, where there were new rules. And I had to begin to crucify much of my old world view including this one. Or else I may have become very "successful" in the church--but very destructive as well.

So with fortress sin, you often have to trace the fruit back to the root, in terms of showing where the flesh is highly developed. This done, you can begin to teach them how to stand against the flesh, in prayer and looking to God. Repentance comes ultimately through looking to God.

2 Corinthians 3:18: "Beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, we're transformed into that same image, from glory to glory."

Ultimately I need to have my eyes fixed back on God, praying that God will show me not just what to do but why to do it, and what to do when I get tested.

For me to walk in the Spirit, my whole world view had to change. I had to learn how to give myself to others, and how to react in Godly ways when I did get hurt. I had to look to God for this, and doing so meant realizing that I did not know God very well. I didn't understand God's plan for my life very well; I needed to get to know God better so he could teach me. God said, "I have a different way for you to deal with this; incidentally, it's going to hurt you a great deal. But that's part of my plan, too." With help from a mature believer, I had to dig down into my soul, to the root of my bitterness and sin, before I could be changed and become the man that God wanted me to be.

That's what we have to do: go to the root to fix the fruit if you're going to transform the life. God is still, 25 years later, working in areas of my life, working with fortress sin. When will I be through with this? When my body dies, then I'll be finished. God will take me to himself, and clean up the rest. But in this world, He wants me to go through this process of Repentance, Revelation, and Restitution, so that I can be renewed according to the Spirit of the Mind. This is the kind of thing we have to be doing, helping other people to see and do as well.