Let Sin Have Its Day
By John Gavazzoni
The very title of this article may incite angry rebuff from some, if not many, readers. I'm going to, nevertheless, plunge on. I assure the reader, I'm not for sinning, nor am I making light of sin. Since Jesus called me to himself over sixty six years ago, at the time of this writing, I've been in agreement with the apostle John, i.e., "I write unto you, brethren, that ye sin not..." But long experience has taught me that fighting sin in one's life is fruitless. When I first considered that fact years ago, what came to mind very pictorially was the scene from the Disney movie, "Song of the South," (now considered a racist film), where Brer Rabbit attacks the tar baby. Net effect of his punching tirade: he gets tar all over him. When religion reduces us to fighting sin, inevitably we get tarred with the nasty stuff.
There's a non-reactive, non-pugilistic attitude about those possessed of some spiritual maturity. They remain in the face of sin, even that of their own, calm and collected, while properly and understandably sorrowful. They know that sin is against nature, and nature always wins out in the end. They know that sin is essentially parasitic, feeding on its host until it kills what it feeds on, and doing so, defeats itself. Anxious reaction in in the face of sin, isn't sure about that certainty. It doesn't act out of the surety which is the foundation of faith, it acts in frantic unsureness, doubtful re: the inevitability of sin's defeat and righteousness' ultimate reign.
It fears an angry reaction from God, and so becomes like a man who hasn't learned to swim, finding himself in deep water, flailing about trying to keep afloat, when his best action would be to relax, lay back in the water, and avail himself of his body's natural buoyancy. I think it's true that many folks who drown are drowned by their own frantic effort not to. I think there's an implication found in James exhortation that is applicable to our subject: "let patience have its perfect work..."
We need to be patient with ourselves, for indeed God is, and give sin its day, honestly acknowledging its presence as John urged us, for its day will be short-lived, then He, who "is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world, " will, "in due" time, deal firmly and thoroughly with the sin or sins confronting us. I'll dare to say that our eventual and inevitable victory over sin, paradoxically requires seasons when we suffer its existential domination. To be sure, "sin shall not have dominion over you," but in the meantime, to experience the grace that overcomes sin, we must face the futility of our own efforts against it. Does scripture present in any way a never-have-sinned victory over sin? No, it rather presents a victory over sin out from under it.
Fighting sin is a work of the flesh. It's fighting the sins of the flesh by the energy of the flesh. It don't work, folks, and it ain't ever gonna' work. Think with me of how our Lord Jesus dealt with the most extreme personification of sin... the condition of the demoniacs of His day. When He was called upon, as seeing what His Father was doing when He, Jesus, came upon, and was confronted by demonized folks (however you think of demonization), His attitude, His state of mind, was always on those occasions,one of calm assurance that He was about to do what He saw His Father do. No histrionics. No yelling. No hurling of invectives against the invading spirits, no sinking down to digging up proof texts to hurl at them, just a calm (to paraphrase), "go away, your time of dominion over this precious soul is over."
The time comes, for each of us, when we deal with sin with nothing less than that kind of surety and assurance, by the Spirit of Christ. Take heart, fellow saints, as the saying goes, "we can't lose for winning."
