The bible says that the Holy Spirit is in the world now convicting people of sin, righteousness and judgment. Guilt is undeniable. I know a lot of people who try to fight it or create complex systems so that they can deal with it. However, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t felt it. Sometimes when we are sharing the gospel with people you run across someone who claims that they live their life without regrets or that they simply don’t feel guilty for their actions. Usually we find out later in the conversation that the person needed to be able to say that so that they could support whatever philosophical position they were trying to use. When you dig into their real lives instead of the life they put up for the purpose of debate, you find that most people are deeply hurting inside. Usually this is because they are addicted in some form or another. This is the basic problem of the human condition: sin.

Sin is a sticky subject. First of all people don’t really want to talk about it because it reminds them of their guilt. Second, once you get people to start thinking about it, there are a lot of complexities that make it hard to wrap your mind around all the issues. One of the toughest questions to think about is, “why do people do things even when they know they are wrong?” We run into this everyday, and it is a never ending source of frustration. I don’t know a single person that will tell me that it is good to murder, yet somehow murders happen every day. On a more common level, pretty much everyone will say that it isn’t good to be prideful, yet I look around and see people posturing and striving so hard to validate their own image of themselves.

The simple answer is that everyone is addicted. I say the ’simple’ answer because saying that to an alcoholic at an AA meeting is a little bit useless. Addiction is a strange beast. We voluntarily chain ourselves to behaviors that we know are destructive. Then, when we want to quit we are surprised to find that the chains are much stronger than we assumed at first. I remember weeping on my couch at home on one occasion because I couldn’t stop sin that I knew was wrong. They say that the first step to freedom is admitting that you are trapped. That is easy enough to admit for the heroine addict, but it is a little bit harder to see the chains for a man trapped in pride or laziness.

The nature of sin is something that separates us from God. You can never come and meet face to face with someone if you spend all your time running away from him. Sin is active rebellion against God and what he wants for our lives. Again we face the fact that we are trapped by our own actions. We want to know God and his love and experience all the wonderful things that come from having a relationship with him, but we are unable to give up our rebellion against his throne. One of my favorite verses in Hosea says, “their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.” We want to return to the Lord and do the right things. We know that his commands are good and loving and we know that we want to follow him, but we are unable to do it all because we are addicted to our rebellion.

Fortunately there is hope. Hope is a thing that most addicts have given up long ago. When we try to wrestle with our addictions under our own power we fail time and time again. We begin to hate ourselves, and hope grows dimmer and dimmer. Eventually it is easier to give it up all together and simply believe that we will always be stuck in our addictions. It is easier to say that there is nothing to be done about it. This at least makes the guilt hurt less. This is like numbing an open wound that is still bleeding. You haven’t solved the problem, only made it easier to ignore for a while.

Our hope is a wonderful person that I have come to love desperately. I say desperately because I cling to him like a shipwrecked sailor clings to his life-saver. Without him I am back to square one having nothing but my pitiful heap of addictions. I say desperately because his life in me is the only thing I have. His name is Jesus.  His close friend and follower, John, had this to say about him, “you know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.” This is the way to freedom.

I love that word that John uses: ‘abides’. The life that comes from dwelling in him and having his life in you is the only way that we can be free from ourselves. At one point in the gospel of John, Jesus says some things that were not very seeker sensitive. The result was that a whole bunch of his disciples no longer followed him. Then Jesus turns to the twelve and asks whether they want to leave too. I love Peter’s response to this question, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter understood that he could not turn away from following Christ because there was nowhere else to go. When we have really looked at ourselves and the depth of our depravity apart from Christ, we know that there really is no option except to abide in him.