9. Reasons for Sin in the Renewal Process

 

Some people, even after reading these chapters, are still unsure if they are regenerate. This uncer­tain­ty is inevit­a­ble if they continue to live in sin. Every time you sin, the question of whether you are regener­ate will come back to trouble you. The problem will become more and more acute until you deal with sin decisively, as opposed to choosing the fatal path of smother­ing your conscience.

Every time you do something wrong, you might say to yourself, “Am I a true Christian? If I am regenerate, why am I behaving like this?” Where is the borderline — the line of demarcation — that crosses into regeneration? How can we tell whet­her we have crossed it? Or does my problem have to do with renewal rather than regen­eration?

Not even when we are born anew is sin eradicated from our lives. Sin is always a possibility because it dwells in our flesh. The flesh, accord­ing to Paul, is where sin has its root or base of operation. So long as we have a body of flesh, sin will dwell there, entrenched in our flesh.

It doesn’t mean that we have no choice but to sin. With God’s help we can overcome the sin that is lodged in our flesh. In fact all our lives we will be waging a war with this ever-present reality of sin. By God’s grace we can triumph over sin and become stronger with every victory over it.

At those times when you seem to be losing the battle, the quest­ion, “Am I truly regenerate?” may come back to perplex you. You may have lost your temper or treated your room­mate inappropriate­ly. After com­ing to your senses, you ask yourself, “How could I, as a Christian, have behaved like that?” Then you begin to doubt whether you are a true Christian. This prob­lem is particularly acute for those who lose the battle frequent­ly.

What is the line of demarcation between the unregenerate man and the regenerate man? In Romans 6 to 8, Paul gives a clear answer. To remove any guesswork, let us establish statistically what the important words in these three chapters are. The frequency of words will help us establish what Paul is saying, so that our conclu­sions are based on facts and not on guesswork.

In these three chapters, particularly in Romans 6:18-8:21, Paul uses the word “free” and related words frequently — seven times to be exact. These Greek words are all related: eleutheroō (ἐλευθερόω, to set free), eleutheros (ἐλεύθερος, free) and eleutheria (ἐλευθερία, freedom).[1]

In these three chapters, Paul uses another word even more often: “slave” (plus related words such as “slavery” and “en­slave”). These occur a to­tal of 13 times.[2] This is significant because these words occur only four times in the rest of Romans.

Hence the opposite concepts of slavery and freedom are two key ideas in Romans 6-8. Moreover, when Paul employs these con­cepts, it is in connection to sin. Therefore Romans 6-8 has two specific themes: slavery to sin and free­dom from sin. This gives us a clear line of demarca­tion: The unregenerate man is enslaved to sin where­as the regenerate man has been freed from sin.

The unregenerate man lives under the dominion of sin,[3] whereas the regenerate man has been set free from it because he has died with Christ and has been raised with him. That is the central thesis of Romans 6 to 8; it is the sharp line of demar­cation between the two.

The regenerate man has experienced God’s power that broke the chains and shackles of sin in his life. In his former days, he was sinning by sheer compulsion because he was too weak to resist sin. But now he is a new person in Christ, and is no longer under the compulsion to sin. He can still sin out of carelessness, but is no longer under its power. He can still lose his temper as before because the reaction may have been habitual and the habit is not yet broken; but the flare-up can be con­trolled because the Holy Spirit has come into his life, giving him the strength to overcome it.

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). If you are regenerate, the law (prin­ciple) of sin and death can no longer compel you. Apply this litmus test to your life. Are you still failing to break free from a particu­lar sin despite repeated attempts? Then you are still unregenerate and still enslaved to it. You are too weak to resist it; and even when you do resist, the effort tends to be futile because sin still compels you despite your intentions.

The compulsion to sin doesn’t necessarily stem from a desire to sin. The will of the unregenerate man is not in bondage to the extent of being totally incapable of willing the good (Romans 7:18,19). It is in bondage only in the sense of being unable to do the good. We must get this distinction clear in our minds. The unregenerate man is capa­ble of desiring the good (and he occasionally does good, e.g., donating money to an orphanage or a famine relief) but he is power­less to live the right­eous life consistently. Paul does not depict the unregenerate man as being totally incapable of doing any good at all, but as being unable to live a consistently righteous life. By con­trast, the regenerate man is able to live the righteous life consistent­ly despite the occasional sin committed unintentionally.

The line of demarcation can be restated as follows: The unregener­ate man may do the occasional good, but cannot live in right­eous­ness consistently. The regenerate man, on the other hand, might commit the occasional sin, but he lives in righteousness con­sistently.

Which is your situation? If by God’s grace you can say “no” to sin, then you are regenerate. If and when you do sin, your conscience will be disturbed right away, and will impel you to repent straightaway.

But if sinning doesn’t bother your conscience, you have every rea­son to doubt your regeneration, for if the Holy Spirit is living in you, your con­science would be sensitive to sin. The sins that didn’t bother you before now have a way of disturbing you profoundly. That is a sure sign that the Spirit is working in you. You can tell whether you are a child of God by whether you are grieved and contrite after committing a sin.

A sensitive conscience is the evidence that the Spirit is working in your heart. The grief that comes from having sinned against God is a sign that you are a child of God. But the one who sins and is not grieved by it, is not a true Christian. He shrugs it off: “Nobody’s perfect. Many people do the same.” This shows that his conscience is hardened to God’s voice.

With this line of demarcation, it is easy to discern for yourself whether you have been born anew. It is harder for other people to tell whether you are regenerate because they have no direct access to your conscience. But in your own heart, you can tell whether you have been freed from sin or not.

If you are truly regenerate, why do you still fail from time to time? Why do you still do the things that are dis­pleasing to God?

In Romans chapter 7, Paul describes his state of affairs in the days when he lived under the Law. As a practicing Pharisee, he was trying to fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law in his own strength. He soon realized that although he could and did comply with the letter of the Law in terms of outward literal observance, he could not fulfill its spirit within his own heart.

The commands regarding the Sabbath, not stealing, not commit­ting adultery, he successfully obeyed; but what about covetousness in the heart? [4] What about loving God with the whole heart and loving the neighbor as oneself, which to­gether constitute the sum total of all the commandments? These were beyond the hope of attainment. The good that Paul wanted to do, he could not do. In that sense, the religious man is no better off than the unre­generate man. Being relig­ious is not the same as being spiritual; the two must not be confused.

Whereas Romans 7 describes the predicament of a religious man living under the Law, Romans 8 describes the freedom of a spiritual man living by the Spirit. This brings out the vital distinction between being religious and being spiritual. Many people in the world are religious in the sense of following a religion. Romans 7 warns us of the futility of being a religious per­son, even a religious Christian. We are not saved by religion but by Christ. Paul knows from his own experience that religion does not free a man from slavery to sin.

Romans 7 is different from the adjacent chap­ters because here Paul is speaking in the first person. He is speaking from his intense­ly person­al exper­ience of being a religious Pharisee who lived under the Law yet languished under slavery to sin. Religious people are gener­ally unregen­erate people; so they will not change until the Holy Spirit comes into their lives, and they become new people in Christ.

The three chapters — Romans 6,7,8 — describe three types of people:

• Romans 6 is applicable to all unregenerate people,
• Romans 7 describes the predicament of the unregenerate relig­ious or moral person, the religious Jew being an example of this,
• Romans 8 portrays life as a regenerate or spiritual person.

These three chapters are among the most important in the Bible. If your life story has gone from Romans 6 to Romans 7 to Romans 8 (or directly from 6 to 8, if you have never been a religious person), then you can be sure that you are a new person in Christ. As a regenerate person, you now live by the Holy Spirit under the lordship of Yahweh God. At this point you can start talking about renewal. If regeneration had not yet taken place, there would be no renewal to talk about.

Paul says, “Though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2Cor.4:16). The words “renewed day by day” indicate that renewal is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. Today you are being renewed, tomorrow you will be renewed, and so it continues until you meet the Lord. At this very moment, while reading this exposition of God’s word, you are being renewed.

The word “renewal” implies that the old still exists in us. By God’s grace, the old is being removed progressively in the renewal process. If the old had vanished completely, there would be nothing left to renew. In reality the old is still present in the Christian life but it is being steadily removed as we move closer to the image of Christ.

Every day in the renewal process, we move one step closer to our final destination. When we evaluate our present position compared with where we were before, we will see that we are gradually getting closer to the fullness of Christ’s stature.

Renewal is not achieved by human effort; we cannot renew ourselves by our own righteous deeds. It is the Holy Spirit who renews us. The Spirit of God is the chief engineer of the renewal process. Every day the Spirit is transform­ing us through our life situations.

You may find yourself in an unhappy situa­tion, say, in your marriage or in your relationship with your college roommate. Are you aware that these problems, whether they pertain to your room­mate or your marriage or your health or your work or your studies, are being used by the Holy Spirit to renew you? Once you realize that, you would not grumble about it. It often takes a lot of hammering, grinding, sanding, and polishing to produce a beautiful piece of work.

From time to time I work on the rust spots of my car. I would use a sharp tool to scrape off the rust until the bare metal is exposed. I work hard at it, hammering away until the rust is removed. I then patch the hole with fiberglass, and sand it down with coarse sand­paper by hand or with a machine. Next, I use fine sandpaper to get a smooth surface, over which I apply a coat of paint, then a second coat, then a third. The fumes that fill the place can do interesting things to your respirat­ory system if you are allergic to the chemicals. But when you are done, ah, the work is beautiful. Few will be able to tell that something was previously wrong with the car. The car has been renewed: the old has gone and the new has come.

You need sharp tools to do the hammering and chiseling. That’s exactly what the Holy Spirit does to us in renewing us. Our rough spots are showing, so God has to work on us. Your husband or your wife may turn out to be the rough sandpaper that God applies to you, remov­ing your rough edges and making you beautiful. In that process, you might not appreciate your husband or wife or roommate who is “rubbing you the wrong way”.

Though the hammering and the polishing are not plea­sant exper­iences, how else will we be made beautiful? Paul exhorts us to give thanks in all situations (1Th.5:18) because all things work out for good in God’s hand. If we take it in the right attitude, we are going to be beautiful; but if we take it in the wrong spirit, we will only get uglier. Thanks be to God, He is working in us through the Spirit, renewing us every day in various life situations, making us yet more beautiful and bringing us closer to the image of Christ.

Renewal changes the way we think and therefore the way we act. Our actions stem from our thoughts. When we lose our temper, it originates from the heart. “The mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart” (Mt.12:34). If you think something unkind, you will say something unkind. To change our speech or conduct, the Holy Spirit has to work on our minds. Ephesians 4:22-23 says,

The Holy Spirit has to change the spirit or attitude of our minds. “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

Attitudes are hard to change, but we must remember that the old and the new are incompatible. We cannot patch a new piece of cloth onto an old garment because when the patch shrinks, it will tear off from the garment (Mt.9:16-17). Nor do you pour new wine into an old wineskin because the skin will burst, spill­ing the wine. The old and the new are utterly incom­patible. If your mind has not been renewed, a fierce battle will rage inside you. The conflict between the old and the new will make life unbear­able, zapping away any peace or happiness that you may have.

Any effort on our part to harmonize the two will be in vain. We cannot say to ourselves, “I am willing to be made new in order to be saved, but I also want to keep the old because I still have pet sins such as selfishness. I have lived with these all my life, and I cannot bid them farewell just yet.” The refusal to let go of the old while also trying to take hold of the new will inevitably lead to problems in the form of an inner conflict.

The intense inner battle can even lead to mental breakdown. If that should ever happen to a Christian, people will wonder why he became a Christian in the first place. The conflict between the old and the new must be settled once and for all.

If anyone thinks it is too costly to put away the old in order to enter the new, it would be best for him to forget about being a Christian. Go out and enjoy sin while there is opportunity. Sin today and die tomor­row. Judg­ment and hell await such a person, but for now, he can enjoy his sins in the little time that remains. But he cannot play around with both the old life and the new. That would be like mixing two volatile chemicals and getting an explosion.

It is hard to understand why some people cling to the old even after they have been warned about it time and again. They mix in equal portions of the old and the new, harming themselves and others in a conflict between the two irrecon­cilable elements. Some try to minim­ize the damage by mixing a larger amount of the new with a smaller amount of the old. But a small explosion is still an explosion, and can cause a lot of damage.

To live the Christian life as it is meant to be lived, in the joy and peace available to us in Christ, we must get rid of the old. Someone might say, “Aren’t you contradicting yourself because just now you said that the old still remains in us, to some extent at least?” Yes, the old is still around, but what matters is our attitude towards it. The old may still be around, but the quest­ion is whether we are condon­ing and pam­pering it. Or do we let it die by refusing to submit to it, by not comprom­ising with it? The old may be present, but it cannot do much to us if we constantly say “no” to it.

We will grow stronger and stronger through battling the old. I used to wonder why God does not simply remove the old instantly, but now I see His wisdom. It is through constant battle with the old that we grow ever stronger. If there were no battles to fight or challenges to face, we would become weak.

When I was young, I grew strong because of fighting. We boys had a way of getting into fights. But strangely, we would remain good friends after a fight, forgetting the disagreement that started the fight in the first place.

One can acquire a strong physique through wrestling, boxing, or the martial arts. Another way is through competitive sports. Now I see God’s wisdom in allowing us to go through nonstop fight­ing with the old things in us, to make us stronger in the new life.

Though the old is still with us and is still strong, espe­cially in young Christ­ians, we gain constant victory by depending ever more on the Spirit. Winning battles will get easier with time as we grow strong­er. But we need to keep alert and rely on the Holy Spirit constantly.

When we are spiritually young and inexperienced at the start of the Christian life, we are still relatively weak and fall into sin more easily. The contrast between “old man” and “new man” is very relevant in this regard. Colossians 3:9-10 says:

We are in the process of being renewed into the image of our Creator and Redeemer. The “old man” is discarded like old clothes and the “new man” is “put on” like new garments.

There are two Greek words for “new”: neos (νέος) and kainos (καινός). Neos means new in terms of age or time, whereas kainos means new in terms of quality. The concise United Bible Societies Greek-English Diction­ary of the New Testament defines neos as “new, fresh, young,” and kainos as “new, of new quality,” though there is an overlap in meaning between the two words.

A thing can be new in terms of its age, or it can be new in terms of its having a different quality. This important distinction does not come out in the English except by paraphras­ing.

Kainos is used by Jesus at the Last Supper when he speaks of “the new covenant in my blood” (Lk.22:20; 1Cor.11:25; cf. 2Cor.3:6; Heb.8:8,13; 9:15). It is qualitatively new, that is, it is different from the old in that it is “better” (Heb.7:22; 8:6). But the new covenant is new also in the other sense of “new”: In Hebrews 12:24, neos is used of the “new covenant” to indicate that it is new in time; it is more recent than the Old Covenant established 1500 years earlier.

The “new man” is also new in both senses. On the one hand, “new man” in Ephesians 2:15 is kainos anthrōpos, referring to a new man who lives a new quality of life, one that is totally different from the old life. On the other hand, it is also true, as is seen in “the new (neos) man” of Colossians 3:10, that the new man is new in the sense of being more recent in time as compared to the old: we were first born physically and only later born anew spiritually. But even this serves to emphasize the qualitative difference too: The old is of the flesh, the new is of the Spirit.

Notice how the qualitative newness of kainos finds expression in the following two verses: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2Cor.5:17) “Neither circum­cision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.” (Gal.6:15)

Let us consider four things that give rise to sin in the renewal process.

A “new man” who is spiritually young tends to be fascin­ated by super­ficial things. This is a common reason for sin in the renewal process. He might not intend to sin but he is attracted to the superficial because of immaturity.

Children love toys, whether they are two years old, ten years old, or fifty years old. Walk into any toy store and take a look. Some stores have toys that are designed for grown­ups, and they dignify these toys by calling them “model air­planes” which you build yourself. And these are exciting! There are radio-controlled planes that can fly. Have you ever seen a ten-year-old playing with one of these? It’s more likely to be a thirty-year-old or a fifty-year-old. If you strike up a conversation with one of them, he will tell you, “This is my son’s toy.” Of course the son hardly gets a chance to play with it because the father doesn’t want him to smash it up. So the father ends up enjoying the expensive radio-controlled airplane.

The spiritually immature are attracted to the toys of the world. If you think you are above that, just walk into a shopping plaza and watch your reaction. The world has so many fascinating gadgets on display. The other day I saw an advertisement for a camera that talks to you. When you are about to shoot, it says, “Too dark” or “Out of focus”. At the end of the roll, it says, “No more film”. The newest cameras don’t even need to talk; they automatically adjust everything for you.

There is also the TV watch. On the bus you can switch on your TV watch and enjoy the baseball game. To get a full sound, plug in an earphone. It’s a fascinating toy. Of course it will set you back $500, which is unaffordable to most twenty-year-olds, but within the reach of many fifty-year-old kids. The Christian too is fascinated by the TV watch. He looks into his wallet and says to himself, “Five hundred dollars! But I deserve a treat once in a while, don’t I?” After paying the $500, your con­science begins to bother you. You realize that you have wasted money on a toy, and then you remember that brother so-and-so cannot pay his school fees.

The spiritually young Christian sins because he is still fascinated by the world. The world has it all, from smart gadgets to electronic games. The world knows how to keep you occupied 24 hours a day.

In the process of renewal, we face tempt­ations posed by a mind-boggling array of new toys being advertised every­where to capture our imagination. When a new-model computer arrives on the market, it is already on its way to obsolescence.

High-tech devices such as computers are undeniably useful, and in today’s world, almost indispensable. This gives the fascination with these devices a certain legitimacy, even in the minds of Christians. We do well to heed Paul’s cautionary words that we should be as those “who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away” (1Cor.7:31).

The fascination with the toys of the world has caused the down­fall of many Christians who have no more time for spiritual things. Who wants to read the Bible when you can watch kung fu movies? You have Chinese kung fu, Japanese karate, and Korean Tae Kwon Do. It is fun to watch people flying up the walls and running on rooftops. The Bible seems less exciting.

The world ensnares us with its array of attention-getting devices. This is one of the many dangers in the renewal pro­cess. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1Jn.2:15).

Secondly, we sin in the renewal process when we are unable to distin­guish between good and evil. The danger is especially real for those who are young in the faith, as was the case with the Corin­thians, who had difficulty discerning good and evil. Hebrews 5:13-14 says,

The young Christian lives on “milk” (the ele­mentary teachings in God’s word), and is unskilled in “the word of righteousness”. The Bible contains milk as well as solid food. The young Christian feeds on milk whereas the mature Christian feeds, according to his capacity, on solid food. Those who live on milk are those who have not yet grown to the point where they can digest the word of right­eousness; they are still spiritually immature and cannot discern good and evil.

What we need to learn from this important verse is that if we do not grow out of infancy into matur­ity, that is, if we do not grow out of the milk-drinking stage to the solid food stage, we may not survive in the spiritual life. Why? Because we wouldn’t be able to distinguish between good and evil, between what is good for us and what is deadly to us. An infant living on milk would scarcely know the difference between the fam­ily’s farm animals and a wolf that comes in search of a prey — including the infant itself.

Discerning good and evil is a matter of life and death. Grow­ing from spiritual infancy to maturity is not something we can be indifferent to, for it is a matter of survival. Amazingly, some Christian leaders today are so ignorant of this truth that they regard in-depth Bible training as unnecess­ary. Just stick to simple Bible reading, they would say.

But the “solid food” which Hebrews speaks of is not easy to digest, especially for babies who are unable to discern between good and evil, or to compre­hend deeper Biblical truths. They urgently need to grow into maturity in Christ if they are not to end up as spiritual casualties because of a lack of discernment.

Some churches are unable to provide anything more than milk, because not even their leaders can handle the “solid food” of “the word of righteousness”. The consequences for such churches are tragic: the people cannot grow beyond infancy and become weak because the vital spiritual nourishment needed for further growth is unavailable; often they are scattered and harmed by “savage wolves” (Ac.20:29; Mt.7:15). They have neither the capacity to discern the wolves nor the strength to resist them.

Many church leaders are poorly trained in the exposition and exe­gesis of God’s Word. The matter is made worse when they try to justify their incapacity to feed those under their care with the explan­ation that “simple” teaching is actually all that is needed. So their churches are left without the hope of moving beyond the infancy stage, without the hope of reaching the stage in which they develop spiritual discernment, with “their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Heb.5:14).

Paul had to deal with the serious problem of poor discern­ment among the Corinthians. He said to them:

The Corinthians had not grown out of the infancy stage; they were still “babes”. That is why Paul told them earlier, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able” (1Cor.3:2). So when eloquent people came along and preached an­other Jesus or another gospel, they could not tell the difference. They could not tell one gospel from an­other, one Jesus from another, one apostle from another. Neither could they discern good from evil, true from false. This left them vulnerable to spiritual deception and disaster.

Paul exposes their vulnerability by pointing out their gullibility: If someone proclaims himself a super apostle, putting on airs and speak­ing in a self-elevating manner, they listen to him, swayed by his charm and char­isma (cf. 2Cor.11:4,5,13). Then Paul remonstrates, “For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles. But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge” (vv.5-6).

Chapters 11 and 12 tell us what was happen­ing. Slick and charis­matic preachers were preaching a different gospel, and their eloquence was sweeping the Corinthians off their feet. Paul, after conceding that he was less eloquent than these super-eloquent preach­ers, went on to bemoan the fact that, “You bear with anyone if he enslaves you, if he devours you, if he takes ad­vantage of you (e.g., gets money out of you), if he exalts himself, if he hits you in the face” (v.20).

Then he added sarcastically, “To my shame I must say that we have been weak by comparison” (v.21). What did he mean by this? He was saying to them in effect, “In your presence we acted courteously and gently, without bossing you around or barking out commands. And you despise us for that. Then the super-apostles came along in a self-exalting grandiose manner, barking out orders and making demands, and you readily submitted to their authority.”

It is amazing that people are adored for putting on airs. Hitler screamed and shouted, yet multitudes ap­plauded him and obeyed his every whim. They ecstatically saluted him with shouts of “Heil! Heil!”

Paul was telling the Corinthians, “If someone enslaves you, you bear it well enough. But when we come along and act humbly, you despise us.” The Corinthians could not tell between good and evil, true and false. People without spiritual discernment are easily swept away by worldly behavior and false teaching.

These super-apostles got money out of the Corinthians (2Cor. 11:7ff). That is why Paul wrote, “Did I commit a sin in humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge?” Paul refused to take money from them, but when the “super-apostles” came along with their collection bags, the Corinthians were all too happy to unload their money. Paul was too “foolish” to do that, so the Corinthians despised him.

Worldly mentality is strange and twisted: Humility is seen as self-deprecating and invites disrespect, while those who make demands are seen as having authority. The greater the demands, the greater the authority. Many preachers use the phrase, “I want you to (raise your hand, come forward, etc)”. Even if these exact words are not used, the preacher speaks in a commanding tone.

How crucial it is to have discern­ment, otherwise we will reject the apostle Paul and welcome some self-important “super-apostle” to our eternal detriment!

The carnal Christian thinks in a worldly way and holds to worldly values. He is impressed by the worldly ways of doing things, especially when done in grand style. He is taken advantage of by clever people in the church, especially impressive “apostles” or “super-apostles”. Be on the alert! There are people in the church today who do not hesitate to call themselves “apostles”.

The consequences of the lack of spiritual discernment are disas­trous, as in the case of the Galatians to whom Paul said, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel” (1:6).

Thirdly, Christians sin because they have ingrained old habits of the mind. Habits are hard to change. When you first become a Christian, you still think in non-Christian ways. The old habits of the mind are removed through the gradual process of renewal.

Colossians 3:9 says, “You have put off the old man” (past event) whereas Ephesians 4:22 says, “Put off the old man” (present event). There seems to be a contradiction. If you have already put off the old man, why must you continue to put off the old man? The reason is that though the old man was put off at baptism when we died with Christ and were buried with him, yet the old ways of the old man continue to live in the habits of our minds. The old man is still active through our old ways of thinking. It is this that needs to be “put off”; that is also why the next verse goes on to say, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph.4:23).

In the same verse Paul says, “Do not lie to one another.” Surely we don’t expect the new man (in this case the Colossian believers) to lie, do we? Why then are they told not to lie? The problem is that in their non-Christian days, when they were still the “old man,” they were in the habit of lying. Whether it was a big lie or a “small white lie,” they habitually con­formed to the ways of the world in their thinking and behavior. Lying is a way of life in the world, especially in the business world. Just the other day, someone told me that if you stop lying, you’ll soon be out of business. In the highly competitive world of business, we are told that we cannot survive without lying. People make money by lying; so if you don’t lie you are at a great disad­vantage compared to others.

When people become Christians, the habit of lying is still so deeply ingrained that they lie inadvertently and without thinking. When Paul says, “Do not lie to one another,” he is telling them to put off the old habit of lying. Old habits are tenacious, but they will eventually destroy us if we do not remove them.

2 Peter 2:22 cites a proverb, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallow­ing in the mire.” Like the pig that enjoys wallowing in the mud, some Christians go back into the “mud” by force of habit. It is not Peter’s intention to insult the Christian by that comparison. But he gives urgent warning that unless we change our habitual ways of think­ing, we will be drawn back to the mud and filth of the old way of life even though we have been cleansed through “the washing of regener­ation” (Titus 3:5). Peter warns his readers of the serious danger of falling away in the renewal process and ending up in a situation in which their “last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteous­ness, than having known it, to turn away …” (v.20,21).

The story is told of a pig who visited a stately mansion adorned with crystal chandeliers and expensive oil paintings. The pig walked into the man­sion and trampled over the beautiful carpets — Afghan, Persian, and Chinese carpets. The pig was not, however, interested in the carpets or the paintings, but headed straight for the kitchen. Just as strange, it ignored the refrigerator filled with delicious food and headed straight for the back door. When it saw the garbage bin, it squealed with delight. After a garbage feast, the pig went home. The owner asked the pig, “What did you see in the stately mansion? Beautiful paintings and chandeliers?” The pig replied, “What paintings? What chandeliers? The only good thing was the garbage.”

When people go to church, what do they look for? The beauty of Christ? The right­eousness of Christ? Hopefully, yes. But there are, sadly, some Christians who are interested chiefly in the garbage; these are the garbage-mongers in the church, the gossips and the slanderers whose habits of mind have not changed.

It takes just one bad habit to destroy your Christian life if you do not remove it. An Arab philoso­pher illustrated this with a real-life parable taken from his own life. He had offered his house for sale at a very low price but on one condition: “I shall retain pos­session of one nail that is located upstairs in this house. The nail will always be mine, and I retain the right and the freedom to visit it whenever I wish. I can come up anytime to inspect it or even to polish it. Only on this condi­tion will I sell the house at this price.”

The price was so attractive that someone soon bought the house from him. As agreed, the original owner retained possession of the nail, and could go in and out whenever he wanted. Though he no longer owned the house, in reality he still possessed it because he had unrestricted access to it. It illustrates one vital point: If you keep one sinful habit in your life, sin will always retain possession of your life.

Fourthly, Christians sin because they are ig­norant of many spiritual truths. Young Christians in particular are generally unin­formed about what the Bible teaches, and are ignorant of God’s will when confronted by life situations. That is why Paul says, “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant …” (1Thess.4:13).

The Corinthians were evidently the least mature of the Christians that Paul had to deal with. It was to them that Paul repeatedly posed the rhetorical question, “Do you not know?” This question appears ten times in First Corinthians alone, but only twice in all the rest of his writings (Rom.6:16; 11:2). They were so ignorant of spiritual things that they were falling into all kinds of sin such as dissension, and were even partaking of the Lord’s Supper in the wrong spirit, thereby becoming guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord (1Cor.11:27).

Hence it is crucial to take to heart the apostle’s counsel, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you” (Col.3:16). We need to let Christ’s word live in our hearts in its dynamic richness. We need to know his word with depth and clarity. How can this be attained unless, like the Psalmist, we are prepared to meditate for long hours on God’s word (Psalm 119:148)? Why does the Psalmist do this? “I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You” (119:11).

We have seen four reasons why Christians, especially young ones, might commit sin in the renewal process. You can be truly regenerate yet fall into sin. It is of the greatest importance to speedily repent of sin. The one who doesn’t re­pent of a sin will feel the need to conceal it. But hidden sin has the tendency to grow larger and larger like a hidden cancer that will eventually kill and destroy.

To drive home the seriousness of the matter, I close with this true story. Some forty years ago in the United States, a respected pastor of a church — a married man — began to develop a liking for a young woman who was in charge of the church choir. He gradually built up a relationship with her. At first it seemed innocent, but the relation­ship grew deeper and deeper until he was having an affair with her. They became so deeply in­volved that one day the gravity of the situation began to dawn on him. The affair was in increas­ing danger of being exposed. If that should happen, how could he, a pastor, face the world? How would he look his wife and children in the face when they find out that the affair had been going on for several years?

But something worse happened: she became pregnant. How could he hide the matter? What would be the outcome of this messy affair? His career, his family life, and his reputation were on the line. How many non-Christians would be stumbled when they find out that a pastor had fallen into such hein­ous sin? The consequences were incalculable.

It started with a tiny thing, like the nail in the house. As he tried to hide it, it only got bigger and bigger. Instead of con­fessing the sin and dealing with it immediately, he allowed it to get out of hand.

And do you know what that pastor did? He mur­dered the woman! Mind-boggling, isn’t it? A preacher who was committing adultery went on to com­mit murder, in the hope that killing her would terminate all the fearsome conse­quences of his sin. But the word of God says, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num.32:23). God won’t allow sin to remain hidden and unaddressed. Sure enough, this whole hideous story was widely published in the newspapers.

Repent of sin speedily. Any attempt to conceal it will only make it worse. It will become harder to handle and to repent of, and it will eventually bring about destruction.

Let us realize with fear and trembling that pastors and preachers who sin and do not repent will not escape God’s righteous judgment. They should not imagine that they can sin with impunity, or that they will always be safe from the fearful fires of hell. On the contrary, precisely because they are preachers and pas­tors, they will be judged the more severely. The Lord Jesus — who will be Judge on the Day of Judgment (2Tim.4:1) — warns us: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be de­manded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be required.” (Luke 12:48)