Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
John 8.34
All sin is slavery, but it’s easier to see that with certain kinds of sin. Addiction is easy to perceive as slavery: once you’re hooked, there’s no easy way out. You’re in a prison of need, and every fix only adds years to your sentence. Cruelty is another easy one. Once you have learned the habit of meanness, it’s always so easy to slip back into it. Even when you try to speak positively and to think of others, the temptation to slide in one last cruel jape is almost impossible to overcome. You can spend months trying to change your spirit, but that old impulse can still sneak attack you, leaving you right back where you left off.
If you have ever been caught in a lie and had to tell additional lies to cover your tracks, you will also understand how sin is slavery. In the movie Spy Game, Robert Redford plays a seasoned CIA operative responsible for giving field training to a new recruit played by Brad Pitt. In a charming moment, Redford directs his recruit to approach a woman, flirt, and get her phone number. Pitt succeeds but is still chastened by his mentor. Redford tells him: You gave away too much. You told two lies that now need to be true.
In this case, Pitt told the woman about (1) a false profession, and (2) a false pretense for why he was in town. If for some reason he needed to continue his charade with his “mark,” he would have to find a way to support his cover story.
Deceit is always like this. When you start out with a lie, you must do something to make that lie true before you’re discovered. You must now tell a bunch of additional lies to create a scenario in which your original lie can be believed.
We all know there is only way real way out of a mess like that: just tell the truth. The truth will liberate you from the prison of your sin. The truth will set you free.
In the Christian understanding, truth is the person of Jesus. To know the truth means to know Christ, and in the intimacy of that knowledge, all our self-deceit is exposed and our sin is revealed. We don’t need to inflate our own importance when we find our true identity in Christ: he’s all we need. We don’t need to be enslaved to our addictions, because the power of Christ can liberate us from our sickness and our need for a fix. We don’t need to continue treating others poorly, because the Spirit is alive and at work in us, coaxing us to live differently.
Jesus is the truth, and knowing the truth changes everything about what is possible in this life. Imagine a schoolyard bully tormenting you every day. When you were alone, you got pummeled and had no hope of standing up to this tyrant. But imagine that now you’re facing all of life’s bullies with Christ beside you, behind you, and before you. Just having him there changes everything. You take confidence from his presence, so you can tell the bully to leave you alone. You know that with Christ right there, the bully isn’t going to attack you, but if he does, you know Christ will intervene. But you’ve still got to have the jam to stand up to the bully and stand up for yourself. You couldn’t do it before because you were alone, but now you’re not alone. You used to believe that this bully was invincible, but now you see the truth: the bully is only slightly tougher than you used to be, but nowhere near as powerful as you are with Christ on your side.
With Christ on your side, you can see the true nature of life’s challenges and of your own sin. Yes, the challenges are real and significant, but they are not insurmountable. Yes, your sin is real and you must really struggle to be different, but you do not have to rely solely on your strength. Christ is with you. It is his strength that defeats your enemies. It is his power that sets you free.
You just have to know that and know him.
This post is from Seasons of Christian Spirituality.