Recycling Sin
By Grant Gaines
Recycling is an interesting concept if you really think about it. In efforts to “save the planet,” we choose certain pieces of our waste to be recycled back as a new product so we won’t use more natural resources. What started out as a cardboard box that helped you move all of your nasty old shoes last year can be recycled to hold the tasty pizza that you eat a year later. Gross!
Don’t get me wrong, recycling is great, but the concept just weirds me out a bit. Something that once started as one thing gets “reincarnated” as something else. But no matter how you dress up that piece of cardboard over the years-whether it’s as a shoe box, a pizza box, or a moving box-it’s still a piece of cardboard at the end of the day. You can change its size, its color, or even its purpose, but the truth of the matter is that the same cardboard that was originally created is still going to be there unless you destroy it completely and start with new material.
The same could be said about sin. Over the years you can dress up your same sin pattern with different words such as “struggles” or “battles” but at the end of the day, a sin is still a sin if you leave it unaddressed. Just ask Samson.
If you grew up in the church at all, you likely remember learning all about Samson. He was the muscular, mighty, and magnificent hero that rescued Israel from her enemies. But what you more than likely didn’t learn about in great detail while attending Sunday school, was Samson’s habitual lust for women. Sure, you learned about Delilah but I’m guessing that your teacher didn’t focus a whole lot on Samson’s first wife before Delilah(Judges 14) or his visit to the prostitute (Judges 16:1-3), did they?
But now that we have the benefit of time and maturity on our side, it’s pretty clear to see that Samson could control his strength but he couldn’t control his desires. Nowhere is this more evident than in two short little verses at the end of Judges 15 and the beginning of Judges 16-“Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines. One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went to spend the night with her,” (Judges 15:20-16:1, NIV).
After knowing Samson’s backstory you’re probably not too surprised to read that Samson sold his character for a night of lustful pleasure, but I want you to notice the timing of this event. The text tells us that Samson had ruled Israel for twenty years to this point (Judges 15:20). This twenty year period of leadership came after Samson struggled with lust with his first wife (who was a citizen of Israel’s #1 enemies-the Philistine-at the time). This means that Samson had to be at least in his mid-thirties by the time Judges 16 opens up by first telling us that Samson slept with a prostitute.
A lot can change in twenty years. Just consider that twenty years ago there was no iPhones or social media websites. Schools still said the pledge of allegiance and marriage was still reserved for one man and one woman for a lifetime. MTV still played music and TV consisted of more than just “reality.” Twenty years is a really long time.
But apparently twenty years wasn’t enough time for Samson to shake his bad habit of following his lustful desires wherever they wanted him to go. Samson had been recycling his sin for twenty years hoping they would go away, but lo and behold, the sin came back. Twenty years earlier, Samson was in a bad relationship with an ungodly woman in a foreign country. Twenty years later, there Samson is again, falling once more for another bad woman who had bad intentions.
What’s the moral of the story? Time doesn’t heal everything. Time can change a lot in culture, your family, and technology, but unaddressed sin won’t ever go away with time. In fact, if this story is any indication of what can happen when we allow sin to remain in our lives, it appears that sin will actually grow and take over every part of the body like a deadly cancer.
Samson started out as a young man who fell for a cute girl only to be addicted to sex and women twenty years later. Sin will grow if you let it.
But we don’t have to let sin rule, reign, or remain in our lives if we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts. Galatians 5:24 (NIV) very clearly states that, “Those who belong to Christ have crucified their sinful nature along with its passions and desires.” 1 John 3:4-6 tells us that we don’t have to continue in our sin because Jesus died to set us free from its bondage.
But here’s the key to walking in freedom from those nagging sins: bringing them into the light. 1 John 1:8-10 (NIV) says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”
Hide your sins and you not only lie to God, but to yourself. Bring them into the light by confessing them to God and others and you’ll be on the road to being set free from their powerful grip by the only One who defeated sin-Jesus. It’s that simple, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. If it was as easy as simply “confessing” or verbally addressing a sin, that would be one thing. But that’s not what these verses are talking about. Rather, what 1 John 1:8-10 is instructing us to do is to not only verbally confess our sins but to turn away from, or to “repent,” from those sins by leaving them behind and walking in the ways of the Lord.
So let me ask you a question, are there any sins in your life that you’ve been “recycling” for a long period of time? Have you had enough of those sins? Why don’t you let today be the day that you shake free from those sins and walk in the freedom that Christ offers us through confession and repentance.
Don’t be like Samson-don’t let 5, 10, or 20 years of your life pass by while still struggling with the same sin when the pathway to freedom is right in front of you. Choose victory today. Choose life today. Choose freedom today.
What do you need to be freed from?
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©Grant Gaines 2013
