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May 12, 2013 |
| Sin Personified | ||
We tend to think of sin as either a verb or a noun. As a verb it might be a sentence like "He sinned when he did that". As a noun it might be "He had been carrying around that sin for a long time." But the Bible sometimes talks about sin in another way, as a person or perhaps an animal.
An example from today could be your car. If it fails you at a critical time and cause you to miss something important, you might say "my car hates me." By saying this you would be personifying your car – that is, attributing human attributes to it.
In this lesson we will look at some verses that talk about sin this way and see what we can learn from them.
The first verse we will look at comes early in the Bible and comes from the mouth of God. Cain and Able have brought sacrifices to God. But Cain has brought an unacceptable sacrifice to God and now he is angry because it was rejected. From Genesis 4 we have this.
6 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it."
Notice how sin is personified as an it, an animal or a person, something that can crouch at a door, something that has a desire. (When I hear this I sometimes think of Gollum from Lord of the Rings
What does sin desire?
What must be your response to sin?
Does God say you can banish sin and never see it again?
Paul uses this personification of sin frequently in Romans 6 and 7. In fact one of the references is very like the Genesis 4 reference above. This comes from Romans 6
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
The word "reign" here means exactly the same thing as "rule" in the Genesis verse. The one who rules is the king, the one who reigns. And we also see the word "desires" used again as it was in Genesis. So Paul is making the same point as God did in Genesis but just saying it in the reverse. He is saying "do not let sin rule over you" by which he means that you must rule over sin, because there must be a ruler.
We'll look at the same verse from a different translation now and we'll add a couple verses to it to get more of the context in what Paul is saying.
11 In this way also consider yourselves that you are dead to sin and that you are living to God in Our Lord Yeshua The Messiah.
12 Sin shall not therefore reign in your dead body so that you shall obey its desires,
13 Neither shall you present your members as weapons of evil for sin, but present yourselves to God as people who are alive from the dead and your members shall be weapons for the righteousness of God.1
Paul's point is that we should think of ourselves as dead to sin. Again he is using this personified sin in his description. By dead he means unresponsive; if you poke something dead with a stick it isn't going to respond. So even though sin may entice, beguile, charm, appeal, attract, or whatever, it fails to provoke a response. Those things that would have appealed to us and that we would have done when we were alive to sin we now reject and do not respond to as though we are dead to the enticements of sin.
Instead we are now alive to God, through the Messiah, so that his desires rule in our bodies.
But sin is not gone. It hangs around poking us with that stick trying to find a soft spot, a spot that we will respond to.
Having said that our "dead" bodies should be unresponsive to sin, Paul goes on to say that the parts of our bodies, the arms, legs, tongue, and so on should not be weapons that sin can use against others. Instead they should be weapons of righteousness. (Perhaps thinking of a Zombie would help - a zombie is going to do what a zombie does … but that's kind of nasty)
Notice something very important here that is not stated explicitly … choice. We have the freedom to choose who rules in our lives. We can choose to be as though dead to sin or alive to sin.
Earlier in chapter 6 of Romans, when Paul first began using this personified sin in his description, we find these verses.
6 For we know that our old person was crucified with him, that the body of sin would be destroyed, that we shall not again serve sin.
7 For whoever is dead has been freed from sin.
Our bodies are sinful in nature. They have wrongful desires and out of control desires that sin is only too happy to feed and to use to rule over us. Paul is saying that the person that we were, that old person with that body, having gone through crucifixion with the Messiah, that body has died.
He is speaking metaphorically of course, but in verse 7 he uses a real-life example. He says that whoever has died is free from sin and this is true. Those who have physically died, that is, those in the afterlife are no longer enticed by sin. Sin is only interested in those who are alive. Once they have physically died they are of no value to sin.
So Paul is saying that what is true in the physical sense should be true in the spiritual sense. Once we have died with the Messiah our dead bodies are freed from sin and no longer serve sin.
Paul continues to use this personified sin in his examples and discussion in Romans 6.
16 Do you not know, that to whomever you give yourselves up to serve in bondage, his Servants you are, whom you obey, whether you listen to sin or to righteousness?
When he says "listen to" here his context is the relationship of master and slave. So when he speaks of a slave listening it would be better understood as a slave hearing and obeying the instructions of his master. Again we see Paul depicting sin as a person, in this case as a master commanding his slave. And again his point is choice, a choice of masters, sin or righteousness.
Later on in chapter 6 Paul says this
23 But the product of sin is death and the gift of God is eternal life in Our Lord Yeshua The Messiah.
This translation uses "product" instead of the more common "wages." There is very little difference but I think product is a little better. A wage indicates that there is an agreement between an employer and employee and the wage is what the employee expects to be paid when the work is done. Very few sinners would say that they expect to die because of the life that they live. To say that would be an admission that there is sin, a God, and an afterlife. The word product instead infers that death is produced whether the sinner is aware of it or not.
This verse contains an interesting and important distinction. We understand that sin can only produce death, separation from God. Again we are talking about that personified sin who commands his slaves but only produces death. But note that Paul does not say that righteousness produces eternal life. We know that eternal life is a gift from God, not something earned or deserved.
Next in chapter 7 we find sin personified again in the lead up to one of the great theological discourses.
7 What therefore shall we say? Is The Written Law sin? God forbid! But I would not have learned sin except by The Written Law, for I would not have known lust, if The Written Law had not said, "Do not lust."
8 In this commandment sin found for itself an occasion and developed in me every lust, for without The Written Law, sin was dead.
9 But I was alive without The Written Law at first, but when the commandment came, sin lived, and I died.
10 And I found that commandment of life to be for death.
11 For sin, in the occasion that it found for itself, seduced me by the commandment, and killed me with it.
12 The Written Law therefore is holy and the commandment is holy, just and good.
13 Was the good therefore death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear to be sin, perfected death in me by the means of the good, that sin would be all the more condemned by the commandment.
14 For we know that The Written Law is spiritual but I am carnal and I am sold to sin.
Verse 7 uses sin as a noun but the rest of the passage uses the personified sin that we have been talking about.
In Verse 8 Paul says that sin itself was dead in him until he came to know the law and what was wrong. Then sin was able to use that knowledge of wrong to cause Paul to do what was wrong and thereby kill him. Therefore the law, which was intended to bring life by condemning sin, because of the weakness of the flesh to sin, became a law of death.
We've seen Paul make extensive use of personified sin and we saw God use it in Genesis. But these are just a few of many places where either sin or its parallel "iniquity" is personified. Here are a few more examples.2
Psalm 65 3 Sins prevailed against me, you covered our transgressions.
Proverbs 13 6 Righteousness will guard the ones of integrity, but sin will overthrow the wicked.
John 8 34 Yeshua said to them: "Timeless truth I speak to you: Whoever commits sin is a servant of sin."
Hebrew 3 13 But inquire of yourselves every day, until the day that is called today, lest anyone of you should be hardened by the deception of sin.
Personifying sin is a literary device used by various authors to emphasize the nature of sin. By describing sin this way they show that it lies crouched and waiting to pounce. It is a master to slaves but produces nothing but death. It is a deceiver and a killer. It is a conqueror.
But what sin is to us is our choice. We can be a slave to sin or we can be dead to sin and thereby free from it.
1 Aramaic NT
2 http://jmsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Sin-as-Conqueror.pdf