So far we looked at the four Life Goals God has for His children, then last week we saw three Life Assurances God gives us as we face the complexity of trials in our Christian lives, which range from those that God uses to test or prove and also improve our faith through to Satan’s temptations either in those trials or more directly.
What great encouragement we received from the essential truth of 1 Cor 10:13 that God will never let us be in a situation where a sinful option is the only option. No trial is ever unique. No trial is more than we as His people can withstand. No trial will ever be without hope – for God always makes sure there is a way of escape that we may be delivered without engaging in sinful responses. In other words, if we sin we can never say it was God’s fault, that He put us in a situation where sin was the only option.
On the contrary we can and should benefit from trials. The key is not our ability or wisdom, but is found in God. Jesus promises His people in Acts 1:8 “all power when the Spirit comes upon you…” In Jeremiah 32:17 we read the assurance in the light of His great power and authority that “Nothing is too hard for you”.
Yet we all know too well the reality of failure, of renewed sin in trial and under temptations. Though we know the trial is not unique, and is not beyond our ability as Christians to withstand its temptations to compromise and to engage in other sin, and there is a way of escape provided the all too frequent reality is that we do surrender to temptations and fall into sin. What then?
The unbeliever to use Augustine’s phrase has moved from ‘able not to sin’ to ‘not able not to sin’. Even so there is a limited freedom as the image of God though marred is not totally lost, or to put it another way that while the unconverted sinner may not be as sinful as they could be yet sin clings to every part of their being and life. As Boice observes, in their fallen state we ‘do not need to sin as we do or as often as we do. And even when we sin under compulsion, we still know it is wrong and, thus, inadvertently confess our likeness to God in this as in other areas.’
When the Christian sins however, we are sinning against light and in spite of the freedom to choose obedience, the good as set before us in the Bible.
But though the Christians relationship with sin is different to that of the unbeliever – radically so, and thank God for our deliverance form the power and pollution of sin – yet there is a genuine similarity in that the answer remains the same.
Read 1 John 1:9-2:2 and ponder God’s Mercy for Life in Jesus Christ.