This essay was adapted from Chris Conyers’s talk on “Where do we start, in dealing with sin?” at our 19 May 2021 event. Watch or listen to his talk on our website.
Back when I was a university student, there was a young woman in my Bible Study group named Sarah.1 She would often share about her struggles with gossip. Before she’d become a Christian a couple of years earlier, it was just a part of her life. Gossip was how she related to people—how she felt included in the crowd. She loved gossip, but now that she was a Christian, she realised that gossiping was a really destructive behaviour that broke relationships. It was sinful. So her attitude to gossip began to change.
However, it was a slow and frustrating process for her, and she would often share with our group how much she was still struggling with it and how she’d keep falling into sin. We saw that she had changed, and yet the change was not yet complete.
I’m sure all of us who are Christians can relate to that in one way or another—perhaps not the gossip part, but Sarah’s experience. We’ve all had a particular sin we’ve wanted to change. Yet in spite of our time and efforts, we don’t feel like we’re ever going to get there. How do we even start dealing with our sin? Where do we begin?
Well, in order to figure that out, we need to know what it is to be a sinner. We need to figure out why we sin. We need to ask ourselves is “Who am I?” This is because until we understand who we are, we won’t understand why we sin. And if we don’t understand why we sin, we can’t grapple with how we’re going to deal with it.
Who we are
So who are we? Consider the famous words of the philosopher René Descartes, “I think, therefore I am”. He was actually talking about knowledge: “I think, therefore I know that I am”. Nevertheless, I think his words aptly describe a way in which many modern westerners like me think about ourselves: “I think, and therefore the way I think brings me into being as an individual”—“I think, therefore I am”.
We’re told from a young age, “You can be whatever you want to be”. One of the most important values in our culture is self-determination—that is, being able to make your own decisions, doing what you want to do, being who you want to be. We can do anything we want—as long as we’re not interfering with someone else’s choices to be who they want to be and do what they want to do. Our modern Western culture has this tendency to view each individual as being self-created. We bring ourselves into being: “I think, therefore I make myself into the person I want to be”.
I have just one minor quibble with this: it’s total codswallop! It’s just not true. It doesn’t make any sense. Think about it: how much time do we spend warning teenagers about the dangers of peer pressure? If they’re going to present themselves as unique individuals, created by and from their desires, then why does what other people do matter to them? Teens are all too conscious of the power of peer pressure: if everyone around them is doing something, they feel pressure to conform.
If who I am is purely a matter of my choices—choices that have come from my mind without worrying about the people around me—then we would expect soccer to be just as popular in Brazil as it is in India, and we would expect cricket to be just as popular in Brazil as it is in India. But it’s not! It seems, then, that the culture you grow up in—that is, what the people around you think and do—exerts this powerful influence that shapes who you are.
For example, teenagers like to express their individuality through what they wear. But what do they wear? Exactly the same thing all their friends are wearing! Or take parents: every parent seeks to parent their children in their own way. And yet every parent has had that moment when they find themselves saying or doing something with their children that their parents used to say or do with them.
I could go on and spend this whole article giving examples of how the behaviour of people around us shapes who we are and what we do. But the point is clear: we’re not individuals who create ourselves out of nothing. Instead, all of us become who we are in our relationships with other people. Who I am was shaped by my parents even before I had any inkling of self-awareness. It’s not just the genes they gave me; it’s their behaviour—the way they talked, what they did, and the things I heard, saw and experienced. All these taught me what’s possible for a human being to think, say and do.
Furthermore, it’s not just my parents; as I grew up, I was surrounded by grandparents, uncles and aunts, teachers and friends. Many people throughout my life—including those I barely remember—have shown me what a human being can do, say and think. That’s all had a profound impact and has made me who I am today. We are all individuals. We are all different. But we don’t become unique individuals through our own self-creation; we become who we are through our unique set of relationships.
Now, we make real choices in all of that. But the raw materials don’t just come out of our own minds; they come from the people around us. To put it simply, I didn’t create myself; I’m created by God. But the means through which God uses to create each one of us is other people—our parents and all the other people we’re in relationship with.
Living “Adamic” lives
This might seem like a really long introduction before we get onto talking about sin. But in order to understand our problem with sin, it’s really important to understand that we are who we are through relationship. This is because every single human on the planet follows one particular pattern—a pattern we’ve picked up from each other. Who we are comes from other people. But every one of those people—whether they’re important to us or just a passing acquaintance—is a sinner. Therefore, I’m a sinner. We’re all sinners. None of us has ever been in relationship with someone who wasn’t a sinner. And so, we come into being—we become individuals—in sin.
Theologians will sometimes refer to the “corruption” of human nature. Whatever we want to call it, every single one of us lives out this pattern of life just like Adam did in the Garden of Eden. We live out this pattern when we ignore God and act sinfully. Then, sooner or later, we die. That’s the universal human problem, and it stems from the fact that every single one of us has come into being apart from that direct relationship with God.
When Adam was in the Garden of Eden, he was in relationship with God. But everyone who’s ever been born since was born outside the garden—out of relationship with God and in relationship with sinful human beings. We read about this pattern Adam set and shares with the rest of us in Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one person [Adam] and death through sin, so also death came to all people because all sinned” (my translation). For the one man Adam, he sinned and the consequence was death. For the many, we all face death. Why? Because we all sin: all people sin, therefore all people die.
It’s important that we don’t get this connection wrong: it’s not that I commit a particular sin and that particular sin causes my death. If I tell a lie, I’m not going to drop dead on the spot. We know that from experience. But because I am a corrupted human being—because I live the way Adam lived—I’m the sort of person who will tell lies, and therefore, I will die. As we live apart from Christ, that’s the only pattern of human existence that is possible for us: sin followed by death.
Living “Christic” lives
I say “apart from Christ” because I’m primarily addressing people who know Christ. Those in Christ now live a second, alternative pattern of life: in Romans and 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul talks about Adam and Christ as being the patterns for other people who live “Adamic” and “Christic”2 lives (Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15). The same concept appears in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 4, where Paul talks about the “old self” and the “new self”. There’s an old pattern and a new pattern. Whereas the old pattern was one of sin leading inevitably to death, the new pattern is one of purposeful suffering in this life here and now. Just as the old pattern was set by Adam as he sinned and died, this is the pattern set by Christ. He lived a life of relative poverty and suffering, then was beaten, whipped, mocked and crucified, all for the sake of others. The pattern of following Christ is a pattern of suffering in the here and now. But just like in Christ’s life, when we live according to this pattern, it will lead to resurrection and eternal life. The new pattern is suffering now, leading to life and glory in the future.
When we think about suffering in this life, sometimes we can be quick to move from suffering to persecution—that is, the people who suffer for Christ are those who are thrown in jail, beaten and executed. That is genuine suffering, but it’s not the only form of suffering we experience as followers of Christ. It’s also the everyday illnesses and griefs of life that everybody experiences. It’s the decisions we make—for example, foregoing a good opportunity and turning down a job because the demands of that job would compromise your ability to care for your family. It’s running the kids program on a Sunday morning when the kids are really ratty yet again, it doesn’t feel like any of them are listening, you’re just tearing your hair out, and you find yourself envying your non-Christian friends, who are having a sleep-in and then going out for breakfast, and even your Christian friends, who are sitting in church, being fed by a great sermon and singing God’s praises, while you are here, grinding away in this little ministry that feel so weak. There’s suffering in that. It’s hard. Yet as we face these things while trusting in God and seeking the good of others, we follow the pattern of Christ. We’re suffering for him, in a small but very real way.
Another sort of suffering is refusing the desires of our hearts. Oscar Wilde famously said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it”.3 As Christians, however, we don’t want to yield to it. We shouldn’t. But continuing to refuse temptation can be really hard. We can suffer greatly. I’m not just talking about when we refuse that second piece of chocolate cake; I’m thinking, for example, of Christians who refuse relationships with non-Christians and remain single. That’s hard: there’s a suffering in that that is living out the pattern of Christ. But just as the old pattern of sin led to death, the new pattern of suffering and self-denial will lead to eternal life in the resurrection from the dead.
The first step to dealing with sin
So where do we start in dealing with our sin? Remember where I began: who we are comes about because of our relationships. If we want to live the new pattern, we will do so in a new set of relationships. Prime among these is our relationship with Christ. It sounds obvious, but if you want to deal with sin, you need to start with Jesus.
We have two different patterns—a pattern like Adam and a pattern like Christ—in effect, “Two ways to live”. As followers of Christ, we need to stop living as Adam lived and start living as Christ lived. In the language of John’s Gospel, “You need to be born again” (John 3:1-8): unless you’ve turned away from sin, and turned to Christ and put your trust in him as your Lord and saviour, you can’t even begin to deal with your sin. You might be able to deal with some symptoms of your sin—you might be able to reduce the harm you do in certain areas of life—but without trusting Jesus, you can’t deal with it—not really.
If you’re reading this and you don’t yet know Jesus, and you’re struggling with guilt or shame for some besetting sin that you just can’t seem to shake, please be assured: Jesus has taken away that guilt and shame. Jesus can deal with your sin. But you need to repent and follow him.
This is an important point as often society approaches the problem of sin in a way that seems helpful, but doesn’t actually address its root cause. Take domestic violence: often people will try to deal with it by calling for new laws or new counselling services. Those things might be helpful for reducing harm, but they’re not actually going to fix the underlying problem. If we want to fix the problem, we need to point people to Jesus.
Only one tool will ultimately allow us to deal with sin: the gospel. Only the gospel will change hearts. Only the gospel will change behaviour at the deepest level. Only by believing the gospel can we deal with our own sin effectively. Only by preaching the gospel can we deal with other people’s sin effectively. If we want to deal with sin, we need to be transformed from the old, Adamic way of living into the new, Christic way of living. And so, at the risk of making a point that seems too obvious, if we want to deal with our sin, we need Jesus as our Lord and saviour.
So how has God worked in you to deal with sin since you became a Christian? That is, how have you changed? Returning to my example of Sarah, she was tempted to despair over the fact that her problem with gossip hadn’t yet gone away. But for the rest of us, it was really amazing to see how far she’d come. We could see that God was, in fact, working in her life. The thing she used to love, she now hated. The thing she used to do all the time was now an occasional problem. Sure, she was still dealing with sin: the temptation to gossip was still a problem. But Christ was helping her live a Christic life. She had changed.
Endnotes
1 Not her real name.
2 “Christic” is just a word I’ve made up to sound like “Adamic”.
3 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, (London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1891), chapter 2.
