The first time Kurt Cobain used heroin, he called Krist Novoselic, bass player in Nirvana to tell him about the experience. Krist warned him he was 'playing with dynamite'. Heroin appears (from my very rudimentary research) to be about the most physically addictive drug that there is. It really is like injecting dynamite into your veins, except it has the opposite effect, causing all the muscles in your body to relax, meaning eventual loss of consciousness, and your skin turning blue. Heroine is so addictive that addicts end up not being able to live without it, even though it's killing them. Even on the day he married the woman he loved, Kurt had to shoot up 'just a little bit, so i wouldn't get sick'.
I think sin is like heroin. All sin ever does is make us want to sin more. All it ever does it make us hungrier for more of it. Actually thats not all true, if it was then perhaps sin wouldn't be so bad. Except the Bible tells us that we can not serve two masters. There is no void or vacuum when it comes to what we set our mind upon. It is either spiritual or it's sin. So sin pulls away from the God of glory. It blurs the vision of the
light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ to an extent that we can't see it at all unless we're careful. Unless we fight it. It makes us want to serve it. It doesn't satisfy us, it only intensifies the longing in our heart for pleasure, and joy, and acceptance. It intesifies the problems that we have inside ourselves already, because we were not created for the fleeting joys of sin, we were created for a much deeper, more satisfying, longer lasting, glorious pleasure. And here is, i think, the key to fighting sin. And we must fight sin. The fight is evidence of our salvation, not the source of it, the evidence of it. If we're not fighting sin on an intenional, conscious level (this obviously won't be possible with all sin because not all sin is conscious) then we may not be saved.
So how do we fight? We fight fire with fire. We look at God's glorious promises in the Bible, and we fight with them. We believe that there are
pleasure's forever at God's right hand and a fulness of joy in His presence. God is not a stoic, He's not merely ambivalent. He is a God of the fulness of pleasure. He is a God who is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Not when we are trying to satisfy our desires with lust, or money, or fame, or popularity. Our deepest longings and our cravings for pleasure will not be solved by drugs or sex. They will be solved by knowing and embracing and delighting in all the God is for us in Jesus Christ. All that God has for us in Jesus Christ. In knowing and loving Christ as our God and as our Savior. For surely that is the reason we have been made. We can fight by prohibition and warning all we want, and God makes some serious promises about the eternity of those who succumb to sin. But we are created for joy, and that joy is to be found in Christ, so the best way to fight for that joy is to tell ourselves about it. That only the
pure in heart will see God. That the faith that justifies is also the faith that sanctifies. That sanctification is an inevitable result of our salvation.
In the book 'Future Grace' John Piper says that 'sin is worse than satan'. Sin is the tool, the weapon, the means that satan uses to pull us toward him and away from God. Toward eternal destruction and away from eternal life. Sin is the way he does that. By sugar coating the horrors of a life of unrepentant sin to make it seem attractive, and good and desirable. If we lived with an all encompassing passion for the glory of God, then these promises would mean nothing to us. We would see through them in a second.
The power of sin has been defeated, once for all on the cross. When Jesus died as a
ransom the precious blood He shed bought all the good things that we need to live. When He rose again He defeated satan, who is now like a wounded animal lashing out to see who he can get at before the end comes, as it surely will. We need to remember this. We need to embrace the poweful realitiy of the cross, because how will we escape if we neglct such a salvation? We won't escape. The fight against sin is easy in theory. The Holy Spirit has given us all the weapons we need to fight. The reason why it's hard is that when we stop sinning, it means that we stop sinning, and we like sinning, otherwise we wouldn't do it. We have to choose what is better. We have to live for the deferred gratification in Heaven. We have to carve the mighty, wonderful promises of God on our hearts, and remember that those who
live according to the Spirit will surely live.
