Are You Managing or Killing It?

Last night the leader of a men's group asked this question, "Are you managing your sin or are you killing it?"

Before we can answer that question we first have to define sin. In the world we live in today each of us might have a different definition of what sin is. For some of us it is the violation of the 10 Commandments and for others it is the violation of the church's teachings. What I hope to do by giving you a definition is to give you a clear one found in the Bible.

Sin: 1 John 5:17 (King James Version) 17 All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.

Let's define Unrighteousness

1. not righteous; not upright or virtuous; wicked; sinful; evil: an unrighteous king. 
2. not in accordance with right or justice; unfair or unjust: an unrighteous law.

Here is the BAD news / GOOD news: Romans 3:10 (The Message)

We're All in the Same Sinking Boat
 9-20 So where does that put us? Do we Jews get a better break than the others? Not really. Basically, all of us, whether insiders or outsiders, start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it: There's nobody living right, not even one, nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. They've all taken the wrong turn; they've all wandered down blind alleys. No one's living right; I can't find a single one. Their throats are gaping graves, their tongues slick as mudslides. Every word they speak is tinged with poison. They open their mouths and pollute the air. They race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year, litter the land with heartbreak and ruin, Don't know the first thing about living with others. They never give God the time of day. This makes it clear, doesn't it, that whatever is written in these Scriptures is not what God says about others but to us to whom these Scriptures were addressed in the first place! And it's clear enough, isn't it, that we're sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else? Our involvement with God's revelation doesn't put us right with God. What it does is force us to face our complicity in everyone else's sin.

The BAD News is: "It is clear that this thing about Righteousness is not a "We verses Them" thing. Where it is them or us we are all guilty of being unrighteous."

The GOOD News is: Romans 4:3 (The Message)

Trusting God
1-3 So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own."

Abraham became Righteous not on his own merits but by trusting God. We cannot become righteous by managing our sin. We become righteous through trusting God to forgive us of our sins through accepting Jesus' sacrifice for us and then by trusting God to replace our sinful nature with His through the Holy Spirit living in us. Although we will never in this life reach perfection in righteousness we can kill the control sin has over us. 

So again the question for each of us is: "Am I trying to manage my sin or am I killing it?" Another way of putting it would be: "Am I living through my own strength or am I living through Faith?"

The BAD News / GOOD News is: You managing your sin is Wrong (SIN) and You trusting in God to Kill your sin is Right (RIGHTEOUS).