By Mary Carothers

On a coast-to-coast flight I was reading a Christian novel. The main character was hunting – in order to destroy – a beast that was terrorizing people in a local town. After wounding it, he approached the beast to finish the job. But as he drew near, he found himself drawn to it. He even began to make excuses for its behavior in his mind. Standing beside it, he finally realized that he actually loved this evil creature. Sound weird?

I thought so too, until I realized the creature represented sin. I was still confused, until it suddenly dawned on me that all too often, we love a particular sin in our life and – just like the man in the novel – we make excuses for the sin and try to justify ourselves.

For example, if we feel unloved and unappreciated in our marriage, we can easily try to justify adultery. Or, if we have a financial need and are unable to earn a decent salary, we can be tempted to steal. How about wrong attitudes? The enemy of our souls makes it all too easy for us to harbor resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness or envy.

In the novel, the beast that represented sin could not kill its victim until the particular sin they indulged had control of the person. When they no longer fought against the sin, but rather embraced it, the beast then had them in its power. At that point, the beast could destroy its victim whenever it chose to do so.

I couldn’t help thinking what an incredible example that was of the devil, who comes to us with but one purpose – to kill, to steal and to destroy. Jesus called him the father of lies. As such, he tries to deceive us into not believing and obeying God!

I began to cry out to the Lord to show me any sin in my life that I love, and to help me hate the sin as He hates it.

As these thoughts came flooding into my understanding, scriptures also came to mind. Here are some of them.

   Do not give the devil a foothold (Ephesians 4:27).

   The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

   We know that anyone born of God does not (deliberately and knowingly) practice committing sin, but the one who was begotten of God carefully watches over and protects him… (I John 5:18).

   Do you not know that if you continually surrender yourselves to anyone to do his will, you are slaves of him whom you obey, whether that be to sin, which leads to death… (Romans 6:16).

   …let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up; and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us (Hebrews 12:1 TLB).

   But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do (I Peter 1:15).

   Greater is he who is in you (Jesus) than he (the devil) who is in the world (I John 4:4).

(Reprint from August 1996)