When Sin Keeps You from Sin

I'm a nerd, so gadgets appeal to me. Naturally, Dick Tracy smart watches are cool. I'd love to have spy smart glasses. Those cars with all the digital displays on the dashboard look like space ships! Fortunately, being deeply cheap keeps me from being broke. But I can take it too far. I will occasionally catch myself spending half an hour dithering over two options separated by $5. Thus one character flaw trumps another.

Sin can operate the same way.

Ugh, sin again? While the last post was percolating, I came across something by Charles Spurgeon that really hit me, showing a different way we don't recognize our sins. There's a real problem in the western church today, and it will do us good to spend some time reflecting and trying to root out the sins that so easily entangle us.

Spurgeon's observation was that "sin may be bound by sin, and one ruling passion may hold the rest in check."

One man is kept from licentiousness by covetousness: he would be glad to revel in vice if it were not so expensive; another would be a rake and a spendthrift, but then it would not be respectable, and thus his pride checks his passions. This restraint of sin by sin is no proof that the nature is one jot the better, but that it puts on a fairer appearance, and is more likely to deceive.

When a man doesn't blow up at another man because the other is twice his size, that's not godly self-restraint; it's cowardice. In the same way, a man who doesn't beat his wife because he's worried what the neighbors will think isn't virtuous; he's a people pleaser. We can be glad he doesn't beat his wife, but it's still a different sin.

While this was percolating, I stumbled across a video of Jase Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, sharing how anger and pride kept him from drunkenness and sexual sin. It's worth your time to watch.

When one sin keep you from another, that's not holiness. Jesus' strongest charge against the Pharisees was the superficiality of their morality:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matt 23:27-28)

A "small" or a quiet sin may keep us from a less socially acceptable one, but it's still sin, still something Christ had to die for. He doesn't want us to put on a good show; he wants us to be like him, and that requires putting to death all sin.

Spurgeon continues:

Nothing will answer with inbred sin but the killing of it. ... Sin will be our death if we do not put it to death. Checks and restraints are of small value; what is needed is the root-and-branch cure—crucifixion with Christ. To cure sin by sin is a mere piece of stage-playing, which will never answer before God.

We mustn't accept the mere appearance of virtue. God wants holiness, hatred of sin because we love God. So we should search ourselves. Am I merely behaving, appearing superficially righteous because of a deeper sin? Or do I truly want to love God with my life?

Search me, God, and know my heart;
   test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
   and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

Inspired by Charles Spurgeon, Flowers from a Puritan's Garden, "The Benumbed Snake"

Image via Pixabay