Laughing at Lions
Last summer our family visited the Columbus Zoo. With our double-stroller packed high, we trekked through each region of the almost 600-acre facility. When we made it into the Heart of Africa, we stood by the glass pane as lionesses sprawled mere inches from our faces. My children rushed forward to touch the glass next to the magnificent creatures.
As I watched my children that day, I couldn’t help but marvel at how strange the picture before me was. My children have never known the lion that hunts and destroys. They don’t understand that the funny animal behind the glass has sent villagers fleeing from their homes. They giggle at the paw spread out on the windowpane, not comprehending this same claw could rip them apart.
The Bible tells us Satan is like a roaring lion. He is looking to devour. Yet I wonder if we are like children, giggling in the face of the beast, complacent to the sin he uses to destroy? We crouch closer, laughing at his antics, far too comfortable with the glass before our fingers, as sin slowly and almost imperceptibly creeps its way in and deceives us.
DECEIVED BY THE GLASS
Just like my children, who have spent their lives viewing great beasts in the safety of a zoo, we can find ourselves normalizing sin. We miss the danger because it’s always been there. So we try to attribute sin our personality. “I’m just really nosy.” “I don’t deal well with change.”
We baptize these sins with a number or set of letters on a personality scale or claim them like a family heirloom we were destined to receive. We’ve held them close our whole lives. And in doing so, we remain blind to their real danger.
“Just because we’ve grown up next to a lion doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s a kitten.”
More often than not, the sins we hold with complacency are what Jerry Bridges calls “respectable sins.” Selfishness, anger, manipulation, complaining—we grow up with them. They seem safe. These sins take on a myriad of forms and blind us to their true reality.
But just because we’ve grown up next to a lion doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s a kitten. God doesn’t differentiate between big or small sins. James tells us whoever fails in one point of the law is accountable for the whole of it (Jas. 2:10). And the price for sin is death (Rom. 3:23).
For those in Christ, Jesus paid that price on the cross. But we cannot pretend that he suffered less for the sins we are used to. Each sin matters before the Lord, and if we are purposefully ignoring a sin he has brought to our attention merely because it feels like a character trait, we are blind to the reality of the sin before us.
MISJUDGING THE BITE
Another temptation in how we view our sin is our misjudging of the consequences. The gospel has made all the difference for the Christian. We now are seen not by our own works, but by the righteous work of Christ in our place. Forgiveness is granted. But as Paul warned, we should not continue in sin, so that grace may abound (Rom. 6:2).
We are new creatures now—dead to sin and alive in Christ. Yes, we will always struggle with sin. We will always find it in our hearts when we look. But a complacency that purposefully calls upon the safety net of grace is like a child running towards an uncaged lion.
“Forgiveness is granted. But as Paul warned, we should not continue in sin, so that grace may abound.”
Even as forgiven children of Christ, the bite of sin is painful. Of course there will be forgiveness for the repentant, but painful consequences will follow the sin we misjudged. Even Moses, the leader of God’s people, suffered the consequence of being kept from the Promised Land. Though he pleaded with God to reconsider, he was rebuked (Deut. 3:23–26). David similarly experienced the cleansing and restoration of the Lord for his actions with Bathsheba, but he endured the painful loss of a child, as well as the stain of sin that trickled down his family line.
Sometimes we miss the severity of the consequences behind the glass. Cheap grace or false ideas of biblical restoration can cause us to look warmly on sins that can wound for a lifetime.
We need to be reminded of the real danger. We need the warnings of faithful friends and the work of the Spirit through his Word to show us how we are missing the true bite of sin.
LOOK TO GOD
So how do we change? How do we, as John Owen said, kill sin so it won’t kill us? First, we need an entirely new perspective. We won’t find it by turning inward and analyzing our every motive or beating ourselves with guilt over every false step.
For a new perspective, we must turn our eyes to God, for in him we find holiness far too great for man to behold with human eyes (Ex. 33:19–23). With our eyes on him, we glimpse his mighty and righteous acts throughout history for his people. We hear to the words of Isaiah, who proclaimed death upon himself at the sight of the Lord (Is. 6:5). We see Uzzah, who was struck dead for trying to keep the Ark of the Covenant from hitting the ground. As R.C. Sproul commented, Uzzah’s sin was believing his hands were cleaner than the dirt below.
When we look up at God’s holiness, we will see that the hands we thought were pretty clean are indeed filthy. We will see how that “small sin” of seeking out good gossip or of gloating in our cynicism is really rebellion in the sight of the Lord. As we look at the light of Christ, the Holy Spirit exposes our deeds for what they truly are (John 3:20).
Yet when we see who God truly is, we see his Son’s perfect obedience and atonement for our sins. This is the hope of the gospel, and it drives us to worship.
PRAY FOR CHANGE
Secondly, as we seek to change our hearts about the sins we have grown accustomed to, we can pray. We can ask the Lord to search our hearts and try them (Ps. 139:23–24). Any heart change will always be the work of the Spirit and not our own. We can and should make boundaries and set up accountability, but ultimately the agent of change in our lives will always be the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18).
We can’t strong-arm sin all by ourselves. We must depend on the Spirit. We might wake up each day ready to fight, but we must acknowledge the battle is the Lord’s.
May we pray for the Spirit’s work to prick us to see the sins we are blind to. May we pray that he would use his Word to correct and reprove us (Heb. 4:12). We can join the psalmist in crying out for God to teach us, give us understanding of his law, and to lead us to walk in his commandments (Ps. 119:33–35). It is the Lord’s will for us to be holy (1 Thess. 4:3), and as we cry out in prayer for this he will grant it (John 15:7).
Sometimes progress will be slow, other times it may come more easily. Some sins we will struggle with our whole lives. But God will bring his sanctification to completion (Phil. 1:6), and in the meantime he gives us forgiveness, grace, and patient renewal towards the image of Christ.
THE PATIENT WORK OF SANCTIFICATION
Let’s stop laughing at lions. The price is steep and the consequences are deep when we shrug off our sin. Let’s lift up our eyes to his holiness. Let our prayers for his correction and refining be upon our lips each day. The great news is the defeat of sin is not up to our meager hands. Our holy, righteous, and magnificent God is doing his patient work of sanctification in our lives. He who calls you is faithful; he will keep working, even in those sins you can’t see quite clearly yet (1 Thess. 5:24).
Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Morning by Morning and Fathom magazine. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.