The Horror of Sin and the Power to Change

Last week, we began a series which is entitled Winning the Battle Against Sin, a series for every believer wanting to live for Christ. And I hope that you enjoyed that. I hope that it was a good introduction to the topic. In that sermon, just to recap, we looked at Romans 8, focusing especially on verse 13, where Paul commands us to die to the flesh so that we may live for Christ. Die to sin in order to live.

And part of that motivation, this theme that's introduced to us, which theologian John Owen and other theologians after his time have called the mortification of sin, the putting to death of sin. We looked at what it means for this death to exist in us. And we said that it cannot mean our sin, and the sin even at war within us as Christians, will put us to eternal death. Romans 8, verse 1 begins with that wonderful statement: there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. So we looked at what death meant, and we discovered it simply means that we don't live.

We don't live the inner life, the joy, the peace, the comfort, the assurance that we can live as Christians which God is calling us into. And so we thought about that and we started thinking about some of those topics last week. This morning we have to begin really though in earnest by really investigating the root cause of the problem of this death. And this morning we're going to investigate a part of the Christian understanding, Christian theology, which is called hamartiology, which is a big word to mean the theology of sin. Hamartia being the Greek word for sin or error in the Greek.

Before we can figure out what we need to pursue the life of the Christian that God wants for us, we need to understand what is happening in our hearts now that is preventing us from that life. And so this morning, we're going to investigate from Colossians chapter 3. That's where we are going to start and I guess that will be our main emphasis this morning. Colossians 3. But feel free to keep your Bibles open because we will be flipping around as well.

Colossians 3, verse 1. Paul writes: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passions, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

So far our reading. This morning we're going to look at what is entitled this morning in this sermon: The Horror of Sin and the Power to Change. And the first point this morning is the reality of sin in our lives. Paul's command to put to death what is earthly in you has the underlying assumption, doesn't it, that something earthly is in every Christian? The apostle Paul is saying that when someone becomes a Christian, even though objectively they have been radically removed from the kingdom of darkness and placed objectively into the kingdom of light.

Even though they have shifted in their relational, their functional actual relation with God to one of having been His enemy to now being His child, even though that objective position has changed, our natures are still catching up. In other words, while we live out our life in the kingdom of God, there will always be things that are earthly in us. They're inside of us. Two natures. The one nature is described at various times throughout the Bible as being a nature of the earth, a nature of the world.

At other times, it's called the nature of the flesh. And at other times, the nature of things that are from below as opposed to those things that are from above. That's what Paul uses here, doesn't he? The contrast between the things above and the things below. And so that second nature also that Paul talks to is often described throughout the Bible as being the nature of heaven, a heavenly nature.

The things that are from above, the things that are relating to the spirit, the things which are life as opposed to death. And so Paul is saying, first, we have to understand that inside every Christian, there exists two natures. And what Paul is referring to in this passage this morning is that there is something earthly in all of us that needs to be put down. And all of us have this inside of us. You can be an elder in the church.

You can be the pastor of the church. You can run your own network of churches and that is still inside of you. And this is so true, in fact, that even the great apostle Paul, a man many of us would admire for his love and his determination for Jesus, says of himself in Philippians 3, verse 2: I haven't obtained this, and he's referring to Christ-likeness. I haven't obtained Christ-likeness nor am I already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Paul is saying, I am so aware that I have not reached perfect imitation of Christ yet.

I haven't reached perfect conformity to live as Jesus lived. I haven't reached it, but I am desiring it because Jesus has changed my desires. He has transformed something in me that desires that now for the first time. But Paul is admitting that no one is without the frustrating effect of indwelling sin. No one lives without that frustration in their lives.

And it is not just that this thing, this power of sin, is passively in us, that it is just like a cyst that is just contained under the skin. No. It is actively at work in us. The frustrating reality is that sin is working against the heavenly nature that God has planted in us when we come to faith. Sin is actively working towards dragging us back into the areas that lead to death, areas that start breaking us down.

The things that break down our relationships with our wives and our husbands. The things that break down our relationships with daughters and sons. The things that break down self-esteem. Rob us of peace. Rob us of joy.

Even for the Christian, Paul writes, and we read it this morning, the desires of the flesh are against the spirit. And the apostle Peter describes it in these ways. 1 Peter 2:11, on the screen there, beloved, he writes to Christians: abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. That is not a passive force or power. It is a battle.

It is a war going on inside of us. But the horrifying reality of it is there is a conclusion to sin which is truly terrifying. And we also need to reflect on that this morning. The result, number point number two, the result of uncontrolled sin, natural consequences of it. Last week, like I said, we looked at Romans 8, verse 13.

Paul writes: If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And like I said, we saw that this death being talked about here is not eternal death, but for the Christian, the death of being hurt by, being damaged by, bruised by the effect of undealt with sin in our lives. Sin in the life of a person who has been saved by their faith, that sin won't ever steal them away from God. It cannot.

It does not have that power, thankfully. But Paul says the here and the now of our life is definitely impacted by it. But then we come to our passage this morning, Colossians 3, and we hear Paul again, again writing to Christians. Remember, this is not to non-Christians. This is to Christians he writes this.

And he tells them: put to death that which is earthly in you. Sexual impurity. And we think, oh, no, Christians, you can't be writing that to them. Sexual immorality happening in the church.

Impurity, lust, evil desires, covetous greed. These are Christians Paul is writing to, and these are Christians struggling with these things. And so I wanna tell you this morning, if you are struggling with any of these things, welcome. You belong to the church. Here is the evidence that, yes, even Christians who love Jesus, who cling to His saving work can and will wrestle with these things.

But Paul is encouraging Christians as well: die to them. Why? In that same passage in verse 6, why should we die to them? Verse 6: on account of these things the wrath of God is coming. That gives you an indication important and how serious this thing called sin is. Sin is the rebellion against God.

That is what sin is. Sin is a rebellion against God. Sin is active resistance to God's kingship over our lives. And the Bible teaches that God created a system. He created a world that was good.

It was perfect, but it was inherently good. And sin is anything that attempts to break out of that God-given mould. And God cannot stand for it because sin's basic essence, sin's basic premise is the attempt to take God's rightful position as instructor and creator and measuring stick, and to take that away from Him and to say, I will use something else. But God knows His worth. God who has perfect knowledge knows perfectly who He is, and He knows that He is the most glorious thing in all existence.

He knows that He is the single most perfect being in existence, and so God has to stand with holy hatred against sin, which tries to diminish His place. As theologian John Murray puts it: God cannot deny Himself. For Him to be complacent towards that which is the contradiction of His own holiness, for Him to not care about sin, in other words, would be a denial of Himself. So that wrath against sin is the correlate of His holiness. The two work together.

The two correlate together. His wrath against sin is related to His holiness. And this is just saying that the justice of God demands that sin receive its retribution. And so the question is not at all, how can God, being what He is, send men to hell. The question is, how can God, being what He is, be willing to save anyone from hell?

This week, we heard the devastating news that our elder Tony beautifully prayed about this morning: of a dad able to pour petrol over his wife and over the car containing his three kids. He set it alight and allowed them to burn to death. And Australia has been shocked. We've been gripped by that news.

And when, rightly so, we've asked how is this possible. But I can tell you with one word what the cause of this horrible event is, and it is sin. It is not lack of education. It is not lack of counselling. It is not lack of intervention by the government.

The cause of that is sin. And what the gospel teaches us that apart from the intervening grace of God, sin has the insatiable hunger that will always work its ways to the most extreme conclusions. Sin destroys. It always does. It does nothing else.

And apart from the mitigating grace of God, God's limiting grace, every glance of lust would always become adultery. Apart from God's grace constraining sin, every bit of coveting would result in the most extreme abuse of power. What drives a man to murder his own children is a heart consumed to the nth degree by coveting. The lust for power and control over this situation, over his wife needing to dominate.

Needing to be in control. People would try and say about this situation, it's because he loved his kids so much that he was driven to this. But love doesn't do that. Sin does this. Because of sin, a man can become so obsessed with having power and control, obsessed with dominating his own family that when a judge or a society decides you cannot have that power anymore, you have lost that right. The losing of that power can drive someone to take the lives of those he claims to have loved beyond all life itself.

And this is the horrifying truth that scripture tells us. Without God's intervention, all of us would have been that man. All of us. And someone might say, but not everyone is like that.

In fact, very few people are that bad. And I say, yes, that's true. But that's still the result of God's grace. The truth is God extends grace to every man, every woman, every child today, regardless of their relationship with Him. For the Christian, God's grace has so extended and so reached into our lives that God can enter our hearts and our minds and is able to change our desires from the inside out.

But amazingly, God's grace doesn't end there. God's grace isn't simply for the Christian. God's grace extends to everyone in some way. Firstly, by God's grace, He creates a humanity that has inherent morality built into us. We have a conscience.

Every single one of us. There is some sensitivity to what is good inside all of us. That is grace that God has created us to have. But then secondly, God's grace reveals a moral law to all of humanity. There came a point in time where God said, this is My will.

Humanity must live according to these principles. He used the nation of Israel to make that known through the giving of the law, the ten commandments. God told us the pattern by which we were created to operate. And now by God's grace, the summary of those laws, which we will call the ten commandments, these things have become enshrined in many of our human institutions by God's grace. So much so that today, in today's Australia, our justice system is built on these laws.

But don't be mistaken. It's by God's grace that these moral laws are influencing us on such a daily basis that even our non-Christian friends will say with some sense of unity: a man murdering his wife and his kids is wrong. It doesn't matter where or how or what their circumstances were. This is wrong absolutely. The truth is people would only be able to say these things because God all along has been extending grace.

The conscience of every heart, the revealed will of God is saving us in a daily way from the fullest horror of sin. And yet, this is what hell will be: unrestrained sin. Hell will be humanity existing unbridled, rampant, uncontrolled sin with no checks and balances. There will be no parameters. There will be no grace of God to limit its effects.

And that existence we should not wish on our worst enemies because it will truly be unimaginable. If the horror of this week's domestic violence case is part of a world, think about it, where God's mitigating grace exists, imagine a place where God's grace has been removed. So without the counteracting force of God's grace, sin will seek to bring about its worst conclusions in us. So not only is sin a part of us in our earthly nature, but it is actively at war within us, seeking to destroy anything and everything that is good. But then there is also hope.

That is our third and our final point. Even while sin is proactively working within us, the Holy Spirit is fighting against sin. Coming back to our passage in Colossians this morning, we find in verse 3 that Paul is saying Christians have a life hidden with Christ. The image here is of a person swallowed up by Jesus, consumed by Him, completely wrapped up in Christ. So much so that all that can be seen about that person is Christ Himself.

You are covered by God's forgiving grace so much so that God the Father only sees Christ when He looks at you. And the question is, how is this actualised? True? How can this be real for me? It is made real by the power of the Spirit.

We read earlier in Galatians 5:17 where Paul says: the desires of the flesh are against the desires of the spirit. The two are at odds with one another. But then Paul says in the same sentence: the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. Old English translations will say, the spirit lusteth against the flesh. The idea here is of a hunger and a desire and a passion to push back against sin.

As much as sin might try to rebel against God's Spirit, God's Spirit is hungrily trying to overcome sin in us. And this is our great, great comfort because often we are so aware of that active resistance in us against God. But the Bible says that the Holy Spirit is just as eagerly, just as eagerly fighting against that sin. Now we're going to spend a whole sermon next week looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us to overcome sin. But I want to point out our hope this morning.

In the face of the reality of sin, the Holy Spirit is working to kill sin in us. And how can you know that this is true this morning for you? Even if you sit here and you say, I just don't know, the evidence is found in you sitting here this morning. In and of yourself, you would not be here.

Something in you this morning decided I will rustle up my kids, my cranky, yelly, noisy kids. I will feed them. I will put clothes on them and I will bring them and just pray that they will be quiet. There is no mistake in you sitting here this morning hearing the Holy Spirit tell you: I am in you killing sin.

That is your evidence. That the Spirit is not giving up on you. That the Spirit is going to win. Now we're going to look at all of that more next week, but I want to end with this. We see in Colossians 3 this morning this concept of being hidden in Christ, swallowed up by His perfection.

It's like we've put on the Lord Jesus Christ like a robe, and His righteousness, and His beauty, and His holiness covers every part of us. And it is applied to each of us by the work of the Spirit. Not even us, not even how much we can keep that robe on us, try and tie it as much as possible around us so it doesn't fall off.

It's the Holy Spirit that keeps it on us. But Paul then commands, even in light of this great truth, Paul commands every Christian in the same passage that we must clothe ourselves with Christ, and we must do so by taking off the old clothes of sin. Cast that off. Verse 8: now you must put them all away, Paul says. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth.

Verse 9: do not lie to anyone, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. Take off the old clothes. Put on the new. That is what the Holy Spirit is working in us to do. Yet God knows what the reality is for many of us.

This clothing ourselves with Christ, this being hidden in Him, it often doesn't happen very neatly. Sometimes it doesn't fit that nice smooth sequence. Firstly, taking off the old and then putting on the new. There may be things even as you sit here this morning, you know, I just haven't conquered yet. Instead of a nice smooth sequence, what is happening is probably something we are familiar with here on the Gold Coast.

When you go to the beach and you see all those middle-aged dads with the beach towels around their waist trying to shimmy off their wet trunks underneath. That's probably what is more than likely happening with us. The big beach towel of God's grace covering us, but there's still the sticky, wet, gross jocks that has to come off underneath. Both the same still on us. Boy, haven't we been nervous when we've done that.

The coordination better be good because otherwise you're going to flash everyone on the beach. But that towel change, the beach change room is closer to the reality for many of us. Christ's righteousness is covering us. We have come to put our faith and trust in Him.

We have His righteousness and holiness covering us like that grand old beach towel and yet we have the wet sticky mess of sin clinging underneath it. We can be covered and messy at the same time. And the Holy Spirit is encouraging us this morning: take off those wet clothes, those things that are sticking to you. Shimmy out of them. Work them down.

Work them off. You have been raised with Christ, Paul says. Seek the things therefore that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on those things above, not on the things on the earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

And so with grateful hearts, we know that this is available to us ultimately because of the finished work of Jesus. Jesus who broke the shackles of sin in our lives. And friend, if you think that those chains cannot be broken, they are just too thick and too hard, that this sin will always stick, think again. Because the promise of Scripture is that the power that is in you is greater than the power that is in the world. Our great joy this morning is that we can be found hidden in Christ, hidden in His perfection because of that day on Calvary.

And it's this hope and this absolute awareness of our need to be hidden, to be kept in Christ which drove a man called Augustus Toplady to write this well-known song, Rock of Ages. I don't know when last we've sung it in our church, Rob, but this is the beautiful words of being hidden in Christ. Rock of ages, cleft, split for me. Let me hide myself in the water and the blood from Thy riven side which flowed. Be of sin the double cure.

Save me from its guilt and power. Not the labour of my hands can fulfil Thy law's demands. Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow? All for sin could not atone. Thou must save and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked, come to Thee for dress. Helpless, look to Thee for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly.

Wash me, Saviour, or I die. Jesus Christ is our only hope from the scourge which is sin. But thank God for Him. In Him, we find power that will finally beat this curse. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this truth that is so hard hitting and so profound that it shakes us in so many ways. Oh Lord, who of us can stand? If You were to measure our trespasses, if You were to write them down, who of us could come before the face of the holy God? And yet, Lord, we are hidden in Christ. Great rock of ages split so that we may bury ourself in His grace and mercy.

Thank You, Lord Jesus, that we may have that hope, that assurance, that promise. We pray, Lord, for that old self which comes again and again to try to kill and destroy. We thank You for Your mitigating grace that won't even allow us when we try our hardest to rebel, that won't allow us to experience the full extent of that sin. Our life is grace from beginning to end. Help us, Lord, to get rid of those things that stick, those things that are constrictive and will seek to rob us of our joy.

As we are covered by Your grace, help us to take on the life from above. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.