Sin Is a Choice

Pastor’s Note: Starting today, Monday, I am going to be adding short commentaries on certain practicalities of life each Monday. These are meant to make you think on the Word of God, the written AND living Word and I hope will give you some things to think about as you walk daily in this pilgrimage towards our final home. They are meant to teach, inspire and encourage. God Bless!

WHAT is it in human nature—a nature which God created—that makes it temptable, vulnerable to sin? Adam and Eve were created apart from sin, and without the need to sin, yet some characteristic in their makeup allowed sin to enter their lives (Genesis 3:6-7). What was that characteristic?

Scripture offers two answers. For Eve, the choice to believe a lie was the doorway through which sin entered her life (Genesis 3:13; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14). For Adam, it was the choice to ignore God’s voice of authority (Genesis 3:17). These two choices—self-deception and self-will—are two sides of the same coin. Both remain as complicating realities in our own lives today, allowing sin to continue to take root and bear its deadly fruit in us, until Christ enters our lives and breaks the bonds of sin, empowering us to resist it.

Temptation is sin’s call to our basic needs and desires to be satisfied in self-serving or perverted ways. It is also a call to practice self-deception, finding ways to justify doing as we please even though we know in our heart of hearts that it is wrong.

For this reason, Scripture frequently speaks of blindness as a willful act in which we choose to practice rebellion and self-deception. But when Christ enters our lives, He regenerates our hearts and sets us free to choose what is true and righteous (1 Corinthians 6:9–11; James 1:26-27; 1 John 3:7–9).

*Scripture links courtesy of Biblia.com