The Weight Around Your Neck Series

16 So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

God seems to use a variety of kind of grotesque pictures when dealing with our tendency to keep sinning and finding sin appealing and attractive.

Let’s turn more to scripture and learn more about this weight of sin that at some point is around all of our necks. Non-Christians or seekers here today, my hope is that you will come a little closer to realizing that there is in fact this weight of sin. Christian today, my hope is that you will realize that often the only difference between Christ followers and non Christ-followers with regard to sin is that Christ followers usually feel guiltier for their sins. And that’s how we get into sin management – just trying to keep it below the surface, keep it from bubbling up and overwhelming us.

GOD

Romans 7:15-24 (NIV)

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.

20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;

23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

This is the quintessential Biblical passage on the struggle with sin. If you have struggled with sin, if you’re struggling with it now, this is probably a passage you really relate to. In this passage, Paul describes the struggle with sin in great detail. He starts with the fact that part of struggling with sin as a Christian is finding that you are at odds with yourself. When you are lost in sin before coming to Christ, you are whole. Wholly sinful! You sin without giving it much thought. Sin comes naturally to you. You feel in sinful ways, and then your feelings recruit your mind, your intellect, to find reasons to justify whatever it is they are telling you to do. As soon as you believe you’ve found “reasons” for doing what you want to do, you do it, and of course you feel justified in having done it, so you don’t feel guilty at all. Your emotions, intellect, and behaviors all work together in the service of sin. This is how it is that we can be godless for years and years and never sense that anything is missing. When we are wholly devoted to sin, we are whole! All of our faculties work together to serve sin.

Then at some point you become aware of your sin and need for God and surrender to him. But after that moment of surrender, you find yourself still struggling with sin. Only now something real has happened inside you. You are aware of sin. You are aware that it grieves God and debases you and hurts those around you and ultimately damages society. When you didn’t know that you were fine, but now your spirit has come alive and sin, for the first time, has become a stranger to you. You still do it – maybe even fairly regularly – but you suddenly have some perspective on it. It’s like you realize there’s this force inside of you – something that still drives you to sin, even though you don’t want to.