Thank God for Sin!

I believe that everything has redeeming qualities and characteristics, including such things as Satan and sin.

This is not to say that sin, Satan, and evil can be redeemed. No, all I am saying is that God, in His wisdom and grace, can even use such things as sin and Satan to help accomplish our redemption. It would not be too much to say that God can use sin, Satan, and evil as tools of redemption, even—dare I say it?—as means of grace.

What? Satan and sin as means of grace?

Yes.

Discussion about Satan will have to wait for another time, so let’s us just consider how sin is a blessing, a means of grace, and why we can thank God for sin.

Sin does something for us that nothing else in the entire world can: sin reminds us that we are not good. That we are not perfect. That we too, are dependent upon the infinite grace of God.

Sin frees us from the tyranny of self-righteousness, the desire to “measure up,” and shows us the futility of trying to become “good enough” for God. Sin mocks our foolish attempts, and scorns our feeble grip on Godliness, as time and time again, it strips us of any pretense that we have finally “arrived.”

Sin holds a mirror up to our soul and shows us how black it is.

So sin, too, is god’s grace to us in our fallen state. As much as we despise the evil in the world and in our own lives, think of the horror of being in a fallen state, but without sin. If we were in our fallen condition because of the sin of Adam, but we ourselves never sinned, we might not ever know that we were eternally separated from God! We would go through life thinking everything was okay, only to die and find out how wrong we were. If it weren’t for actual sin in our life that we can see and feel the effects of, we would call the Holy Spirit a liar when He tries to convict us of sin.

This is why, even today, people who claim to be without sin are in a worse condition than those who think that God could never forgive them their many sins. This, in fact, is what Jesus taught in the Gospels when He said that sinners, tax-collectors, and prostitutes were closer to the Kingdom of God than were the Scribes, Pharisees, and teachers of the Law. Today, we could say that drug dealers, prostitutes, and gang bangers are closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than are many pastors, seminary professors, and Christian leaders.

As believers in Jesus, we have this odd task of trying to keep ourselves from sin, while all the while becoming ever-more sensitive to the raging storms of sin that we constantly find ourselves engaged in. As we try to restrain sin, the ever-present sin keeps us near God’s throne of grace.

So thank God for sin! In the process of trying to destroy us, sin has saved us from the part of ourselves that is truly trying to destroy us.