I do not mean to incite a brother or a sister to sin I ask the question to expose the truth which I hope will help those who are stuck in sinful patterns.
I write to born again Christians, those who love the Lord Jesus and have received His Spirit into their hearts. Yet even though they have come to the Lord still find that old patterns of sin sneak up on them and capture them again.
In those times the natural thing to do is to assume that you cannot be a true Christian if you have “sinned” again. But this is not the truth! You have been born again, you are a new creation in Christ Jesus, old things have passed away, all things have been made new! What happened that caused you to fall again? And this alludes to my provocative title above which asks the question- “What is the best way to fall into sin?”
The simple answer is this: Try very hard not to sin.
Yes your eyes do not deceive you. Please do not leave this page just yet, let me explain.
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Rome he spelled out exactly what I am sharing here because he too suffered like we all do. Paul wrote about his experience and battle with sin as a Christian believer in Jesus.
You see Paul had a big problem with coveting. We are not told what he coveted(LUSTED AFTER), it could have been anything or anyone as the Law of Moses suggests in Exodus 20.
Exo 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” NASB
But try as he might Paul simply could not stop coveting! And he discovered that his trying was the problem.
You see, as a religious Pharisee Saul(Paul) was very zealous at keeping God’s law. In fact he was so zealous that he claimed that ‘according to the righteousness which is in Gods law he was blameless’.
Php 3:5 “…….as to the Law, a Pharisee;
Php 3:6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. NASB
The Law said ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’…why that’s easy isn’t it? Just obey it and don’t disobey it, right? Simple! Off you go then and try.
That was the Old Covenant way of living my friend. It depended upon you to keep your promise to live a holy life. It depended upon your will power. It depended upon your strength. And if you failed to keep the Law even in one little point, you were guilty of breaking the whole law.
Now there is nothing wrong with God’s Law, the problem is with us. We are mortals and are simply not able to fulfill the Law alone. Listen to Paul describe his struggle to stop coveting.
Rom 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”
Rom 7:8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.
Rom 7:9 I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;
Rom 7:10 and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me;
Rom 7:11 for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. NASB
The commandment “Thou shalt not covet” appears to us to be shouting: “TRY HARD NOT TO COVET!!! DO NOT COVET!! DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN NOT TO COVET!!!”
It is this trying of ours to obey the Law that sin uses as an opportunity to rule over you and I once again. Sin produced in Paul coveting of every kind because he was trying hard to obey the Law. What!?? Yes it is so. Why is it so? Not because I say so, but because God said so.
Rom 7:9 my paraphrase: When the commandment came—when I begin to try to be good—when I begin to try not to sin—sin becomes alive–revived–and I die!
That is why I say that the best way to fall into sin is to try hard not to sin.
Before Paul shared this wonderful struggle he had….he told us some great truths. He used the analogy of a marriage. The woman was married to Mr. Sin….but then Mr Sin died she was set free from union with him. Now she is free to marry Mr Jesus!! The Man with no sin!
Rom 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
Rom 7:5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
Rom 7:6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
Trying to obey God seems noble, but until we come to discover who we are joined with and who we are no longer joined with we shall continue to have this up and down battle with sin. Believers in Jesus are not under any obligation to the Law of Moses because we died to it and it died to us. We are set free from the Law so as to marry Jesus in a union of two people becoming one person!The moment we start to try to keep the Law we revive sin so that it will slay us yet again. When we try to not sin, we set aside the grace of God which is ONLY found by faith in the NEW PERSON that we have become in Jesus. And so we fall again into sin.
But get up and declare that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus because God has made it so. 2 Co 5:21
Declare that you died with Christ and have been raised up in Him and He in you. You no longer live but Jesus lives in you…and the life you now live in the flesh you live by the faith of Jesus who lives in you! If you rest in that revelation of who you are and who He is in you, you shall bear fruit unto Father. Stop trying and rest in His victory and His new creation that you have become.
