What gives sin its “strength”?
Is it a man’s innate, inborn, sinful disposition? Is that what gives sin its strength? Is the strength of sin simply the product of man having been born a sinner? Or is sin’s strength found in where a man goes and with whom he goes, and in what he does when he gets there? Is sin’s strength found in the power of association with other like-minded sinners? Or is the strength of sin found in its repetition – the more a man sins, the stronger sin becomes in that man? Or is it all of the above?
According to the apostle Paul, the answers to all these questions would be a resounding “no.”
Paul says the strength of sin is none of those things at all; astonishingly, he says it’s exactly what you would never have imagined: the strength of sin is the law.
The word “strength” comes from the Greek word dunamai, meaning “to be able or possible.” It’s from the same word Jesus uses when He promises the disciples “power,” dunamis, to be witnesses of Him:
Contrary to what you’ve been taught, the law is not the strength or the power of righteousness. The law is the strength and power of sin. The law enables you and gives you the power to sin.
And what exactly is the law? The law is the ten commandments. Plain and simple.
Then in the verses that immediately follow these, Moses enumerated the ten commandments. The ten commands that Moses gives to them are the agreement. And he concludes with these words:
Just ten, said Moses. And he added no more.
And then again later, Moses explained to the children of Israel that the two stones with the ten commandments on them were the actual agreement, the contract and the covenant that God had made with them.
And again, a short while later, Moses recounts his time in the mountain with God after having broken the first two tablets in anger:
God took His own finger and inscribed the ten commandments on tablets of stone. No once, but twice. This was the covenant. This was the agreement. This was the law.
And why do you think God gave the law in the first place?
Most would incorrectly answer, “So that man, by adhering to the law, might become righteous.” That’s exactly what the Pharisees believed. And that’s what the “repent from sins before forgiveness” preachers believe. They call sinners to a repentance of the law and a consequential righteousness of the law. The law came, they assure you, to inform you of exactly how to be righteous.
And that answer is precisely, by exactly one entire universe of difference, wrong. Listen to Paul explain why the law was really given:
The law “entered,” pareiserchomai, “come in alongside, i.e. supervene additionally or stealthily; come in privily, enter.” According to Paul, the law entered the room with an ulterior and totally hidden motive in order to accomplish exactly what you would never have imagined: to cause sin to abound in you.
“Abound,” huperperisseuo, means “to grow in quality and quantity until it becomes the dominant part; to be in excess, to superabound or excel, to have more than enough.”
The law came so that you might have “more than enough” sin to convince you that you cannot repent and turn from your sins. The law has only one goal. And it’s not your repentance or your righteousness:
The law comes to thoroughly convince you. But not about what you thought. By the law is not the knowledge of righteousness like you’ve been told. By the law is the knowledge of sin. The word “knowledge” is the Greek word epignosis, “recognition.”
Does the law create sin? Of course not. We recognize sin by the law. The light that you turn on in the kitchen doesn’t create the cockroaches. It just reveals them. But the law does something that the light in the kitchen can’t do: it makes the cockroaches bigger. And it strengthens them until they take over the whole house. And start answering the phone.
The single and solitary goal of the law is to strengthen the sin that is already in you until it becomes the most powerful and dominating force in your life.
Contrary to what the Pharisee tells you, to strengthen the law is to strengthen sin. The Pharisee would have you believe that to strengthen the law is to strengthen righteousness. The astonishing fact is, where the law abounds, sin does much more abound.
That is, in fact, the only reason God sent the law. That sin might abound in you. The law is steroids for your sin. So that it can grow as much muscle as it needs to overpower you and subdue you once and for all.
Listen carefully: God has a wonderful plan for your life; He wills that the sin that chose you from birth should, by the law, be strengthened until it becomes the very most dominant trait of your life. He wills that your sin, by its strength which is the law, should abound.
Why? Because where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (Romans 5:20).
Grace can only abound where sin abounds. Why can grace only abound where sin abounds? Because sin is the necessary condition for grace. Those that say they have no sin can have no grace. No sin, no grace.
Most self-named Christians I meet are dyslexic when it comes to this particular verse. They seem to think it says, “Where grace abounds, sin does much more abound.”
They think that God’s idea is “the less grace the better.” Their goal for the Christian experience appears to be such that, even though you start with that messy stuff called grace, you should move as far and as fast away from grace as you can as soon as possible. Like they have. The ultimate goal, in their estimation, would be a sinless righteousness that needed no grace at all. Just like the sinless righteousness that they and all their Pharisee friends have right now. You know the kind. That sinless, graceless righteousness that allows you to condemn the sins of others all around you. It’s the only real fun a Pharisee ever has.
But on the contrary, Peter says you actually need to grow in grace (2 Peter 3:18).
But how would that be possible? How could you grow in grace, unless you also grew in the only condition that necessitated grace? That is, in the condition of sin?
The preachers of “repentance from sins before forgiveness” entirely miss the point of Jesus’ story of the two men who went up to the temple to pray. They concede that the publican may represent where men start in their relationship with God, but their goal is to hurry as quickly as possible away from that confession, to the place where they can actually make the confession of the Pharisee. Their ultimate goal is to be able to say with great conviction, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.
Listen to them as they speak. That indeed is their very confession. Their goal is to fill their churches with as many people making that confession as possible. But they would bar the door to all publicans with their confessions of present sins.
But I would most heartily disagree that that is what Jesus had in mind at all. The publican doesn’t represent the very lowest level of relationship with God.
On the contrary.
He represents the very highest.
God be merciful to me a sinner is not the confession of the least of the justified. It is the height of confession for the very greatest of the justified. Listen to Paul:
Surely Paul is referring his former sinful self... Isn’t he?
Nope. “Am” is the present tense Greek word eimi, meaning “the first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist (used only when emphatic).” It’s the same word that Jesus uses when He says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58).
Jesus isn’t saying, I used to be God. And Paul isn’t saying, I used to be chief of sinners.
Jesus is saying, I am God. And Paul is saying, I am, right now, in my own eyes, chief, protos, “foremost,” of sinners. I’m number one. Among sinners.
Paul says that there is a war raging between his body and his mind. You preachers of “repentance from sins before forgiveness,” do you not have that same war going on in your mind bringing you into captivity?
Paul cries out, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Not, O wretched man that I was, who has already delivered me from what used to be the body of that death?
You preachers of repentance from sins: do you not cry out with him?
To put these words into a past tense would be to render them absurd. Do you think Paul is saying, I used to see a law in my members, and it used to war against my mind and it used to bring me into captivity to the law of sin that used to be in my members. O wretched man that I was! Who was it that delivered me from the body of that death that I no longer have?
Say what?
The preachers of “repentance of sins before forgiveness” are always willing to tell you “I used to be chief of sinners,” but never, “I am chief of sinners now.” They’re too busy assuring you and their fellow Pharisees that they are chief among the righteous. “O wretched man that I was,” they are eager to tell you. “But, thanks be to God, because I have repented, I am, thankfully, no more.”
Listen very carefully: when you cease to smite your breast and cry, “God be merciful to me, a sinner,” you cease to go down to your house justified. And the moment you begin to say, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are,” you go down to your house condemned.
Who’s the biggest sinner you know? Right now. Think hard. If it’s not you, you don’t know what Paul knew. Paul was the biggest sinner that Paul knew. That saying, Paul insists, is faith-filled and worthy of utter welcome and approval.
Christ came into the world to save whom? According to Paul, only sinners.
Do you know who would most welcome your confession as a superior sinner? Yeah. That’s right: all those inferior sinners around you who need the super-abounding grace of God that you got for your abounding sin.
Do you not know that your love for God is totally dependent on your view of yourself as a sinner? Jesus said this:
Little sins, little forgiveness. Little forgiveness, little love.
“Well, do I need to go out and sin some more to become a great sinner?” you may ask.
God forbid! You are already far more successful than you give yourself credit for! You are far too humble in your many achievements. You are already at the very top of the ladder of success in that particular field. And as soon as you let the law shine its light on you, you’ll see what everybody else is already aware of: when it comes to sin, you’re a real winner! When it comes to sin, it’s like you win the mega-lotto every day!
Growing in grace necessitates a growing sense not of your righteousness, but of your sinfulness. Some people have the strange notion that the closer they stand to Jesus, the more everyone will recognize that they look like Him. As if the goal of God is that they and Christ, standing beside each other, would be virtually indistinguishable.
But if sanctification is the process of separating you unto God by His word, then the closer you stand to Christ, the more you’ll see you look nothing like Him. Ask any cleaning lady. The more light, the more visible the dirt becomes, not the less. The goal is to be able, with conviction, to confess that you look nothing like Him at all. The goal is to see yourself as chief of sinners in your world. The goal is your confession of complete and utter unrighteousness. That’s real sanctification.
Go up to the temple again. Look at the two men who are praying there. Listen to the one on the right; the one who is enumerating all his righteousnesses, just like the preachers of “repentance before forgiveness” do.
Then look at the one on the left. The one who is enumerating nothing but his sins. If being sanctified is being separated unto His word, and if this is the one that Jesus sends home justified, then you tell me: which of the two is really sanctified?
Make it your goal to be able to say with Paul to the sinners around you, “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And I exceed you in sin more than you can possibly imagine. And I exceed you in grace only because I exceed you in sin.” And that very confession, worthy of all acceptation, will change the world.
And before we move on from the subject of sin, let me give you two brief examples of why I am such a stickler for correct definitions, and why you should be as well.
The first concerns the simple word “now.” Hebrews 11:1 says, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I can’t tell you how many sincere and exuberant sermons I’ve heard through the years, especially by the “word of faith preachers,” who have insisted that faith is “in the now,” “in the present,” not later, but now. The problem with that interpretation lies in the fact that the word translated now in this passage has nothing to do with time. It’s actually the Greek word deh, which simply means “but” or “and.” The Greek word meaning “now,” as in “at this moment in time,” would be the word nun. The verse should be read to mean, “And faith is the substance of things hoped for…” Not “now,” but simply “and.” Sorry about that. Those were great sermons, no doubt, but misguided nonetheless.
But the second example has much more bearing on our present subject. Paul declares, Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? (Romans 6:16)
“See!” say the exuberant preachers of repentance from sins before forgiveness. “If you give in to sin, you’re the servant of sin.” But the problem with that interpretation is that the Greek word translated yield in this passage, paristemi, doesn’t mean “to capitulate,” to “give in,” as they tell you it does. Rather, it means “to stand beside so as to recommend; to exhibit, to proffer, to substantiate, to assist.” To proffer means “to offer for approval.”
Paul is saying that if you continue to stand beside sin to recommend it to others, you have become sin’s willing servant. Picture the used-car salesman, standing beside the car saying, “Ain’t she a beauty!” The word obey in the same verse means “to obey willingly,” not obedience by compulsion. He uses the same word when he says, Children, obey your parents.
This is the same Paul who laments:
Unlike the preachers of repentance from sins before forgiveness, Paul allows us to see what his spiritual life is really like. It’s a constant war with the hated and unwanted law of sin which is in my members.
Those who would try to convince you that this is not the normal Christian life are themselves the most despicable of hypocrites. The normal Christian life is one in which I do what I don’t want to do, and do not what I do want to do. I am constantly held in the tension of being between two worlds: the one in which I am now, captive in the body of this death, and the one to which I am going by the sure promise of Him who loves me even while I am in the body of this death.
And while I am here, doing that which is against my will, I cry out, exactly like the publican in the temple, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” And like Paul, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
I do not stand beside sin so as to recommend it. I do not proffer sin to others with my approval or for their approval. I am not sin’s “willing servant.” I am a man in a prison, not of his own making, and not by his own will. But in a prison, nevertheless.
But freedom is coming. And until it arrives, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
The very next verse, Romans 8:1, says:
In this case, the word now is not the word deh, but the word nun. Right now, presently, at this very moment, while I am still in this vile body of sin, doing that which I do not want to do, there is no condemnation. None. In my present wretched and sinful state, He imputes His own righteousness. It is His righteousness, not mine. It is His glory, not mine. It is His wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. It is none of mine.
And that’s why Paul declares,
Don’t let anyone tell you that God rejects you because of your sins.
Those who would tell you that God rejects sinners because of their sins are themselves, like the self-exalting Pharisee in the temple, the only ones who will be rejected in the end, because with what measure they measure, they will be measured again. You who know you are sinners, and hate it, keep smiting your breast. And you who know you are sinners, and hate it, keep saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
And you’ll keep going down to your house justified. Just like the publican. And just like Paul.