Now I don’t think smoking, swilling or swearing is ok for Christians.  We are called “out of” the world, not to be like the world. We are called to be holy for He is holy. However, many Christians hold a legalistic view of what sin is. So, let’s take a closer look at the question of sin. We may find more than expected.

In Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, he deftly lays out the problem of sin. But as we read this amazing treatise, we find in the first eight chapters two types of sin progressing from sins in the plural, the practice of sin, through to sin in the singular; the nature of sin. So how does this apply to us? Let’s begin with the nature of sin. This is our present human condition. It’s like an incurable disease. There is not a single human being who has not been affected. But this wasn’t always the case. At one time, mankind was free of sin. It simply didn’t exist.

Now let’s give sin a definition. In short, sin is rebellion against God. This rebellion began with man and woman as they walked in communion with God in a state of glory. Their bodies probably glowed with glory, like Moses’ appearance glowed after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai. Adam and Eve enjoyed their perfect environment, but they weren’t automatons, they were given the choice to “walk with God”. Their choice was simple. God told them very clearly how to remain in their glorious state. Much like we do with our own children, we tell them what they can do and what they shouldn’t do to avoid suffering. Like, “don’t step off the curb and onto the street!” Any parent of a two year old will attest to the strong will of a toddler. Warn as we may, they still think they know better. This sense of ‘thinking we know better’ is our human pride. In 1 John 2:15,16, the apostle John warns us:

Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world.

The consequence of their disobedience was made perfectly clear to them. “you will surely die.” (Gen 2:17); then the tempter came on the scene. Keep in mind, the tempter can only tempt. It’s up to us to resist and obey God. The tempter came in solitariness, which is often how he comes, and first appeals to the senses showing its beauty and creating desire. Then he questions the word of God, then contradicts the word of God and finally mocks the word of God saying, “you won’t die, He knows that your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like Him.” And there it is – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and human pride, the three ingredients which led to their spiritual fall.

But you may say, “they didn’t die. Their eyes were opened and they now knew both good and evil”. This may sound philosophical, but death is not, as many believe, the dissolution of self, but the absence of Life. Jesus said that He is Life. John also tells us in 1 John 5:11-13:

And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God, there’s no life in him. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.

So, why didn’t man physically die? What is meant by “there’s no life in him”? As we read earlier, Life is spiritual and God’s life does not reside in our physical body but in our spirit. Before the fall, God’s spirit was with and in man’s spirit. After the fall, it was not. I believe this is one of the mysteries we will only fully grasp in the afterlife; but let’s try. In creating man, God made us with three parts to our being: we have our physical body, then we have our cognitive functions: our reasoning, emotions and volition, or ability to choose. Finally, we have a spirit. Watchman Nee in his work The Spiritual Man distinguishes this aspect of our being as the soul consisting of the mind, will and emotions and the spirit being our conscience, intuition, and the faculty with which we commune with God (pg. 14). Some might also include imagination. But as we can see, the difference between the spirit and mind is not clearly delineated, so most simply refer to this non-physical part of our being as our soul or innerman. In the believer, the spirit, has been eternally infused with God’s Spirit and is now eternally melded with our mind. All three coexist in what we consider to be our body. It’s not like our mind exists outside of our body, just as it is also true that our own human spirit is in our body, not external to us. I know this sounds weird. But in the sense that our mind is not of physical matter, we also know that our spirit is not physical. Paul tells us that our bodies are the temple of God; but not in a physical sense. This is why Paul says in Romans 7:21-23,

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

And so, we may correctly say that the body, as referred to by Paul, is not purely of physical matter, but more of a container. When Paul says that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, he’s not referring to all of mankind, but to those who have been made alive in Christ. Those who are not part of “The Body of Christ”, are also not temples of God’s Holy Spirit. God will not exist in the same space along side sinful rebellion. Man chose to rebel against God and so the eternal life of God left man in a state of spiritual death. Not only did man die spiritually, but he also became a slave to sin. Paul tells us in Romans 6:16, “we are slaves to the one whom we obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness.” and again in Romans 3:23, “for the wages of sin is death”.

It is beyond the scope of this post to expound on the full consequence of man’s fall, but the result is seen in the pain and suffering and death that spread from that single act of disobedience to all the evil we see today. Often we hear people say, “If God is so loving, why does He allow suffering?” Man’s suffering is not of God, but a direct result of disobedience to God. After the fall, sin and death impregnated man’s spiritual DNA (so to speak). Man’s spirit now belonged to Satan and God’s life was gone. Each human spirit from that point forward would spend eternity alongside the hosts of hell in what Christ described as “weeping and grinding of teeth”. The sinful nature of man became like an incurable disease. It spread from the first of mankind to each and every one since.

This is sin in the singular Paul describes in Romans 5:12 – ch. 7. Sin in the plural, as in particular sins, is the direct result of the sinful nature. Each and every person, Christian and non-Christian alike has a sinful nature. We were born in sin and sin is what we do. As Roy Hession puts it in his timeless work, The Calvary Road:

Anything that springs from self, however small it may be, is sin. Self-energy or self-complacency in service is sin. Self-pity in trials or difficulties, self-seeking in business or Christian work, self-indulgence in one’s spare time, sensitiveness, touchiness, resentment and self-defence when we are hurt or injured by others, self-consciousness, reserve, worry, fear, all spring from self and all are sin.

In Romans 14:23, we read: …whatever is not of faith is sin. And so in answer to the question, ‘what is sin?’ We can safely say: if it proceeds from our natural self, it is sin. 

In Romans 7:18-24, Paul laments this sinful nature and compares it to what he saw and perhaps experienced in a dark dank Roman jail cell. In the days of the early church, the Roman guards would chain a surviving prisoner to the corpse of a dead one, thus spreading the rotting necrotic tissue causing a slow painful death.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good (the mind). For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man (the mind), but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Immediately following we find him rejoicing in what God, Himself, has done through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself, with my mind, am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh

Praise God! There is a joyous and wonderful ending for those who are in Christ – but at what cost? After Adam and Eve first rebelled, they hid themselves from God; and God said, “What have you done?” From that point forward, there is a long history of the consequences of that one act of rebellion. We can never fully comprehend the evil that was unleashed. We are still seeing it in its voracious hunger for suffering and death.

There needed to be an exacting for man’s rebellion and the sentence needed to be carried out. God knew there was only one who could pay the price and still save man. Christ Himself paid the penalty for our sin by offering Himself as a living sacrifice. God redeemed us with the ransom of His own Son. In Romans 5:8, we read: Even when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And again in John 3:16, “For God loves us so much, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”What incredible love the Father has for us. Christ was not only tortured and nailed to a cross suffering the most painful of all executions, but took upon Himself all of our sins – past, present and future sins. He experienced the guilt of all the evil spawned from that first act of rebellion to all the evil consequently unleashed upon the world. Now, remember, God cannot and will not share the same place as sin. Christ wailed, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” After His death, He gave up His spirit which was then cast into hell, that place of continuous torment; that place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. But He did not go on account of His own sin, for He was sinless, the spotless lamb of God, but for all of our sin. Three days later, He rose from the grave, the resurrection Sunday. Christ rose from the dead victorious over sin and death. Hallelujah!

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55)

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

What an awesome gift of God. And again I ask, at what cost? It was a huge cost to God. But what do we need to do? Is this a gift, or are there strings attached? It is absolutely free. No cost to you or me. It’s a gift of God.

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal Life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. 6:23)

Now, a gift is not a gift, until it is received. And God’s gift, the Messiah, had been prophesied from the time when the first sin was committed. In Genesis 3:15, we read:

And I will cause hostility between you (Satan) and the woman (Israel) and between your seed (the unsaved) and her seed (Jesus the messiah and those who are in Christ). And He (Jesus Christ) will crush your head, (the death blow) but you (Satan) will bruise His heel (inflict suffering).

Even though many knew He was the prophesied Messiah, they stood beneath the cross jeering.

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him. He came to His own and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:10-13)

But does this mean that we don’t sin? And what about smoking, drinking alcoholic drinks and using coarse language? Once again we find our answer in Paul’s writings:

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Cor. 6:12)

Yes, we still have a sinful nature. We are drawn to sin, and there is still the tempter. But those who have received Him, have the Spirit of the living God indwelling them.

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. Me and the Father are one. (John 10:27-30)

If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.      (1 John 1:6, 7)

But the question persists. How can we be saved from sin and still wallow in it? I would say that if one still lives like those of the world, then they are still of the world. I would further say, that all those who say they are Christians, but merely pretend for appearances, don’t have a love relationship with their Father, don’t really hate sin, just the consequences of sin, are still in their sins and not really saved, as they may think. And of those who say, “Lord, Lord… didn’t I…and he’ll say, “I never knew you”. These are the ones referred to as “the lukewarm Christians whom Christ said, he’ll spew out of His mouth. If we have been set free from sin, how can we still live in sin? This is how we know if we are truly set free.

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”(John 14:21)

We may and do sin on a regular basis, because we are sinners by nature. When we sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit within us, and being in Christ, we sense this in our spirit as a burden. Our proper response is to confess our sin, bring it into the light.

And as we walk in the Spirit, we strive to control our thoughts and actions; if we ask Him, He will come to our aid. We don’t have to be ensnared by sin. By His free gift of grace He has set us free.

If you have not yet received God’s gift of salvation, won’t you do so right now? If you sense you are being drawn to say yes, it is the Holy Spirit drawing you. Let’s talk to Him. Follow me in this simple prayer:Father, I have been rebelling against You. Even though I have sensed Your Spirit drawing me, I have resisted. I know I’m living in darkness and I want to live in Your light. Forgive me of my sinful lifestyle and cleanse me of my sins. I choose You, Lord. I now accept you as my new Life and will strive to live in the Light as you guide me. I thank you Jesus for Your precious gift of grace and eternal life. Amen.

 If you are continuously plagued by sin, or you feel you are in spiritual bondage, there may be areas in your life that need to be specifically addressed.  Neil T Anderson has produced a booklet called, The Ten Steps to Freedom in Christ, which he has made available to be used in spiritual counselling. This may be downloaded from this link: