How Sin Wins—It’s an Inside Job
Pastors who know the Word better than most of us, who have served the Lord more effectively than most of us, are in the headlines today because of their moral failure.
When these stories broke, we were stunned … then sad, supremely sad… and are still bewildered…
How can this happen?
That’s a question more emotionally-driven than one seeking an actual answer. This is especially true if the fallen pastor was one we really admired.
As time passes and shoot-from-the-hip-opinions arrive, we find ourselves still not ready to process intellectually.
At which time our mind is engaged, we find these opinions, whether critical or compassionate, not particularly helpful, true though each may be. We need a better answer. A more specific answer. An answer detailing exactly what happened.
Given the situation we’re assessing, the range of possible answers narrow. Were we to speak more broadly about how sin wins, we would have to address how society sanitizes sin, how the university shovels mounds of obfuscations to minimize its existence, how, contrary to popular opinion, Satan is real, judgment is real, hell is real. But none of that would apply to our fallen pastor. He knows all that. So we have to start at another place.
Was this pastor looking for an affair? Was he scanning each crowd for that sparkling eye flashing interest in him as a man? No, that’s not the way it happened.
It began innocently enough. On his part: a godly goal, a desire to minister, real needs being met, gratitude felt—both ways.
F.B Meyer, the London pastor from the previous century, spoke of these beginnings as: “a tiny seed, borne on the breeze, floating through the air,” finding lodging in some crevice of the heart even though the soil was scanty.
There was no evil intent. There was no awareness of an affair in the making.
But in time that seed kept its foothold, Meyer said, “until it had sunk down its tiny roots, and gathered strength enough to split the rock” where it had landed.
C.S. Lewis spoke of how numbing and imperceptible sin can be as it leads us to destruction, “Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
J.C. Riles observed:
We are too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself to us in its true colors saying, “I am your deadly enemy and I want to ruin your life forever in hell.” Oh no! Sin comes to us like Judas, with a kiss; and like Joab, with outstretched hand and flattering words. The forbidden fruit seemed good and desirable to Eve; yet it cast her out of Eden. The walking idly on the palace roof seemed harmless enough to David; yet it ended in adultery and murder. Sin rarely seems sin at first beginnings.
That little spark may have flared ever so briefly, but there was no fire.
Sin hides.
But then comes that day when a transition occurs. The one in whom the bad seed has lodged, knowingly decides to ignore whatever is going on. Conscience isn’t muted yet. Deception isn’t intended. There is simply this decision not to think about it, whether it be good or bad.
This pastor is a busy man. That helps to divert his attention.
He is also a gifted man. That helps the compartmentalization that will slowly develop, as does the fact that his history up to the present merits the praises others give.
His life seems the same. Nothing bad has been conceived, much less acted upon. The pleasure he faintly felt had no evil designs. He really doesn’t know what it is. And the fatal mistake starting to take place is, he doesn’t want to know.
The Bible says to eschew evil. One could wish this was an onomatopoeic word, eschew as in sneeze. If only sin could be vacated that way!
But this word really means to reject, to refuse, to renounce. Choosing to be passive and just not think about it, comes up short.
Without intent or forethought, the pastor sees this lady again; his normal schedule provides the setting. A more favorable impression results; each time this is so.
Eventually, the time comes when he does start to think of her. Random thoughts at first. Not deliberate ones, not enticing ones, not continuing ones. Satan is playing the long game.
Has the pastor made any mistakes yet?
Yes, he has.
Though he may lack awareness, God would have furnished that had he voiced the scriptural invitation, “Search my heart, O God, and see if there be any wickedness in me.” Did not the Bible say we are to guard our heart with all diligence? All diligence!
That’s an assignment that shouldn’t be set aside just because we’re busy. True, the believer has a new heart, but the flesh still exists, and it's just itching to get off the sidelines and back into the game!
Carelessly ignoring that fact, the good pastor ventures forth with clueless confidence—a TV interview here, a big crowd there—he’s enjoying his life after that breakthrough he sought and got, just as those in the Promised Land enjoyed their lives.
However, the Promised Land can be lost, and historically it was lost.
Given more time, more opportunity, wrong thoughts—more gray than black—start to surface, and are welcomed. Before all this is over, someone will ask, what were you thinking? That concern should have kicked in at precisely this point. The hook is in!
A tardy turning away from conscience, the decision to put the alarm on snooze and focus later—won’t work! Permission has just been given for activity to begin in the inner chambers, where images and desires are produced in the theater of the mind.
The compromise that alternately permits God and Satan to participate in one’s life lacks the diligence demanded for a protected heart.
The affections of the heart must constantly be set, with riveting focus and preoccupying meditation, on “things above” (Colossians 3:1). Anything less than this makes the battle far more difficult and chances for success dangerously diminished.
In the next encounter and the next, evidence confirms something less than honorable is starting to show, though at this stage it’s more bud than bloom.
Nevertheless, it’s there, and the pastor knows it’s there.
Maturity will confirm, and many years of experience will testify, that the easiest time to defeat temptation is in the beginning. But if for one reason or another this doesn’t happen, if the door to temptation isn’t slammed shut, temptation will gain a momentum exceedingly difficult to stop.
Delay in matters like these only makes it worse!
Thomas Watson described what often happens: “The sinner thinks there is danger in sin, but there is also delight, and the danger does not terrify him as much as the delight bewitches him.”
Deception only increases when we put a small frame on the picture, thereby failing to see the big picture. By looking at isolated deeds and not overall designs, we allow ourselves to take one step and then another, with little thought about where the road we are walking is taking us.
Had godly thinking been the goal, the kind of insights Susannah Wesley passed on to her sons would have surfaced. Speaking of how to discern sin, she said, “Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind, that to you is sin.”
Should one go beyond the point where discernment detects sin by welcoming further contemplation of that sin, defeat is at hand! What happens in the inner chambers, in the realm of images and desires, is determinative.
Thoughts run far ahead of deeds at this point. A.W. Tozer added: “It is doubtful whether any sin is ever committed until it first incubates in the thoughts long enough to stir the feelings and predispose the will toward it favorably.”
Referring to this heart we ought to protect, Scripture says, “… out of it are the issues of life.” This means that the quality of our inner life, whatever it is, will eventually manifest! And when it does, forces that direct, determine, and drive will have been successfully launched.
At one stage, true enough, we are in control. At another stage, however, these forces take over. And when they do—when attitude becomes action, and one action sets up further actions—the seed sown eventually comes to harvest, whereupon consequences bear down more harshly than we ever imagined! At which point, we do have “issues”—issues that label us, limit us, deprive us, and burden us. The conflict within has gained control.
The twelfth-century writer, Bernard of Clairvaux, described this disastrous momentum:
The first steps in sin are taken apprehensively and no blow falls from the dreaded judgment of God. Pleasure in sin has been experienced. Sin is repeated and the pleasure grows. Old desires revive, conscience is dulled, habit tightens its grasp. The unfortunate man sinks into the evil depths, is tangled in his vices and is swept into the whirlpool of sinful longings while his reason and the fear of God are forgotten.
The power of sin to hurt and hold increases with every repetition. John Murray warned, “Sin does not change its character as sin because the person in whom it dwells and by whom it is committed is a believer.”
Be it in a believer’s life or in an unbeliever’s life, the predictable pattern that follows is this: First, we allow sin to exist, then we allow it to expand, and finally we allow it to expel the very blessings from God that make life worth living.
F.B. Meyer, the British pastor and author, wrote these sobering words about the outcome of sin. “It cannot be too deeply pondered by the wrongdoer, whether he be a child of God or not, that sin carries in itself the seed of its own fatal penalty.”
There’s no need for God to rise and fling a thunderbolt of judgment, sin’s destruction will come as a matter of course.
Given this fast acceleration into danger and all that it forebodes, it is imperative to immediately reverse course. This may not be easy, because, like a drunk in detox, the misery of being cut off from that which is rapidly destroying is not a welcome prospect. The sweat, the chills, the shaking, the terrible torment the body has to suffer.
Samuel Johnson once observed, “The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
Sin is addictive! A compromise here, a clever cover-up there … you know, little things, ordinary things—from which a chain was being fashioned.
James tells us “... and sin when it is finished ....” Let’s stop there as we ask the question, just one sin? No, if sin has its way, it’s not going to be just one sin. One sin will beget another, then another, and another, until that sin becomes a habit. And when propelled further, this habit will become a character; and that character—once sin has run its course and the toehold has become a stronghold—will become a damnable destiny.
Galatians 6:7 declares “... whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” These words—communicating certainty, exactness, proportion—have become an axiom for the ages, offering no caveats, contingencies, or exceptions!
For the saved person this sowing means a deterioration of life God meant to be abundant. It is to be labeled a disgrace.
A.B. Simpson sounded a warning that needs to be both heard and heeded: “Oh! Let us beware how we tolerate a single sin, how we leave an enemy in the land, how we make terms with any forbidden thing, how we enter into alliances with the world, or let its spirit touch our fondest affections.”
Looking back to those days when integrity was in place and Jesus was dear, the fallen pastor can only acknowledge that his eyes dimmed because he distanced himself from the light and retreated to the shadows where sin could find cover.
It didn’t happen all at once, but it did happen.
Important to note here: Satan didn’t do this to him; and neither did the demons who were off harassing other people.
It was an inside job.
Temptation tolerated became sin indulged. That's what happened.
