Natethoughts

I once heard a well known Christian teacher say ” behind every sin is a lie that I’m believing”. Although this sounds new and profound, it struck me as fundamentally inconsistent with scripture, heres why: If this was true, then every time I sin it takes the blame off of me and my inherent sinful nature as outlined in scripture (Romans 7), and places it on the lie, or the person who told me the lie. This makes me out to be not a perpetrator who has sinned against God, but a victim who was taken advantage of, and if this was the case, would we need Jesus to be crucified as our atonement suffering the wrath of God that was intended for us? No, we can just identify the lie we are believing and fix it. This is salvation through behavior modification. The problem with this is it leaves out the fact that our every sin demands a payment, either we pay for it, or we accept Christ’s payment on our behalf. I can tell you from personal experience that when I sin, I’m not believing a lie, it’s pretty intentional and no amount of self help steps or advice on how to live a clean lifestyle can forgive me or atone for that sin, only faith in Christ shed blood can do this. Paul said it best:

²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

   So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature^[d] a slave to the law of sin.