We hate sin. Each sin is why Christ had to go to the cross, it grieves the Holy Spirit within us, and our choice to sin hurts our relationship with our Heavenly Father. We hate sin, and we hate when the temptation to sin comes knocking. And yet despite our constant desire to give in to the lies of sin, there is hope.
When sin surprises us
Although we won’t fully escape sin on this side of Heaven, that doesn’t mean we’re victims. Each instance of sin is our own decision. More than that, every sinful action is often the result of several sinful compromises as we regularly give in to small temptations.
So often, we want to focus on not doing a certain action or holding a certain thought. It’s easy to find ourselves on the verge of getting angry, looking at porn, spending money we don’t have, or giving in to something we God we were done with. More often than not, we even find ourselves surprised that the temptation to sin has suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Yet when we understand why we sin, we can better understand why the temptation shows up so easily. Just as there’s no end to the sin we’re capable of, the list of reasons we sin is likewise too big for any one person to track. And yet despite the vast ways our hearts can love sin, Christ has revealed that there’s one simple solution for stopping temptation before it starts.
Feeding our sin
Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. (Romans 13:13-14)
The weight of these words is significant. Paul starts with an easy distinction between Christ-honoring behavior and the things we’re tempted to do. After that, He tells us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” but notice how He contrasts that. What does it mean to make “provision for the flesh,” and why is this important?
The word “provision” is a loving term. It’s the same idea as providing for something like a mother bird might provides for her babies. It’s the idea of nurture, protection, and making sure something can survive.
If we want to kill our temptation, it’s not enough to just have the willpower to resist it when it arrives. Anyone who’s honest can attest to how futile that is. The only way to resist sin is through the power of Christ, and we often find ourselves too in love with sin to desire Christ more.
Instead, we must realize that we’re always sustaining something with everything we do, think, and desire. We make a thousand decisions that seem meaningless, yet so often those little choices are feeding our sin nature. We rationalize, excuse, and justify the things we do because it doesn’t seem like a big deal, and then feel completely baffled when temptation beats us over the heads. Those small compromises don’t exist in a vacuum, but instead will always have bigger effects later.
I’d like to apply this to a very common exmaple in our culture. Even if this doesn’t apply to you, apply it to your worldview as you evaluate your own temptation.
Sexual temptation
In our highly-sexualized culture, men and women are bombarded with the temptation toward sexual sin. Many deal with things from lusting after a coworker, looking at porn, or giving in to the physical or emotional actions that belong to their current (or future) spouse. There’s no doubt that it’s one of the greatest personal issues facing Christians today.
Yet, as always, one single sin isn’t our issue. So often we’re tempted toward sexual sin because of several minor compromises we’ve made, and sometimes these compromises don’t even seem related to sexual desire at all. Here are a few ways we do this:
- The most common way we fall into sexual sin is when we watch TV shows with people we’re sexually attracted to, and we continue looking instead of turning it off and removing that temptation
- We skip our prayer and Bible reading, lessening the importance of Christ in our hearts and depriving ourselves of an encounter with our holy God
- Physical or emotional satisfaction becomes a main focus, and we start convincing ourselves that we’ll be more fulfilled if we have someone who can meet our needs
- We often put ourselves in situations where we can easily give in to a sin we know we struggle with, whether it’s being alone with our phone or a person we’re attracted to
- We don’t confess and repent of our sin, even if it’s not related to sexual temptation, and so we minimize the wretchedness and regularity of our own sinfulness
On and on this list could go, but the result will always be the same. By making these small compromises, by feeding our sin nature and giving it an opportunity to thrive, we race away from the cross and go straight toward the deceptive arms of sin.
Lust is never content to sit in our hearts. Distance from God won’t result in us spontaneously loving Him more. If we aren’t feeding our relationship with Christ, we’re feeding our love of sin.
Not even table scraps
We may think we’re fine as long as we don’t throw open the door to sin, but instead leave that door cracked just enough to let us enjoy the world without going “too far.” Throughout the Old and New Testament, God is very clear about one thing: we cannot possibly glorify Him while loving sin. Even enjoying it a little bit is never enough, but it will always be our first step towards something worse.
Falling in to sin is always farther than we ever want to go. Yet we never go from a state of “God, I never want to commit that sin again” to “I love this sin!” Instead, we justify and excuse smaller sins, grow accustomed to them, and suddenly the next step doesn’t seem as horrible as it once did. By giving in to smaller sins, those huge sins suddenly don’t seem nearly as big and impossible as they once did.
This is what it means to give provision to our flesh. We feed our temptations, even if only in small ways, keeping them alive and ready to grow whenever we so desire. And we will, inevitably, desire for them to grow. We may keep certain temptations on life support for years, but as long as we sustain them in small ways they will always come back for us.
Instead of just coping with our temptation, trying to impossibly balance a life of serving Christ alongside giving in to what our wicked hearts crave, we need to kill temptation. We need to take it out back with a gun and shovel. At least, that what Christ says.
If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. (Matthew 5:29)
Sin is an extreme liar. It promises us so much, yet delivers nothing but death. Something that can so radically pull us away from Jesus Christ demands equally radical choices to remove it from our lives. We don’t just casually stop sinning – our sinful lusts are so ingrained in our hearts that they require intentional, absolute choices to remove them.
What will we deprive?
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. (Romans 13:14)
In everything we do, we’re serving Christ or ourselves. We’re either sacrificing our sinful desires to glorify the one who matters most, or we’re compromising the things of God for things we think matter more. When we provide for the flesh, we must balance it by also depriving our spiritual walk with Christ.
Instead, we’re told to “put on Christ.” We’re told to make Him ultimate and find our utmost satisfaction in Him. Doing that, as we see in this verse, is the complete opposite of providing for our flesh.
God calls us to completely reject the sinful things of the world for a reason. It’s not because He wants us to be miserable, but because He wants us to have true joy and satisfaction. He knows that these small compromises we make will grow and grow. He knows that by giving a little provision to our flesh, our temptation only lies dormant until we’re ready to feed it more and more.
If we want to kill temptation before it starts, we must cut off its support. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can only truly love Christ by identifying the things in our lives that tempt us. It’s not about being strong enough to resist them but recognizing how weak we are and how desperately we need our Savior. We can be free of so much temptation, but only when we love Christ enough to completely cut off whatever feeds it.
No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
