Don't Tempt Me

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak.”

-- Matthew 26:41

    

If you’re a current or former smoker, no one has to tell you how hard it is to quit the habit. As the great humorist Mark Twain once put it, “To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I have done it a thousand times.”

The same thing goes for Christ-followers when it comes to sin and temptation.

Even though we’ve accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior — and asked him for forgiveness and received it — we still tend to fall back into those same bad habits that we thought were left behind.

What’s the problem? Doesn’t the Bible tell us that becoming a Christ-follower makes us a new creation?

Indeed it does. But let’s remember that our transformation is a work in progress that runs on God’s timetable. That often means little by little, day after day. What’s more, the pathway along our faith-journey is narrow, twisting and full of unexpected hairpin curves. And when we don’t keep our eyes on the destination, we can end up in a ditch.

But this doesn’t mean we’re failures. As a matter of fact, Jesus told his disciples to expect bumps and potholes in the road. "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come,” Christ said. “But woe to that person through whom they come.”

Let’s also consider a life-lesson taught by the apostle Paul — the Christ-follower who wrote much of the New Testament. In his 2,000-year-old lament that still rings true to modern-day readers, Paul complains that he continues to do the very things he despises. And at the same time, he fails to do the things he knows he should accomplish. So here’s the obvious question: If one of history’s greatest Christians had so many problems with sin and temptation, what hope is there for us?

Paul’s struggles were nothing less than spiritual warfare — the same ugly conflict that we all fight every day in one way or another. But he has some good news for us:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

This means we’re free from sin’s power, and we don’t have to accept its dominance in our lives. Therefore, the answer to sin and temptation comes down to our trust and dependence on Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. When we slip up and give in to sin, we can freely ask for help and forgiveness from Christ, the one who has already paid the ultimate price for all our mistakes and shortcomings — past, present and future.