Friday 13 March 2020

MAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH SIN AND WOMAN


Sounds a bit strange, isn’t it? Many consider sin to be an abstract moral principle; whereas woman is real and exists in her own right. But, I assure my readers that by the time they reach the end of this study, they would agree with me on points I intend to deal with here.

Let me tell my readers that sin also is a spirit (a spirit of harlotry) and exists in his own right. What’s more, he has a desire toward human beings which does not include men alone but also women. However, I will rather talk about man’s relationship with sin and woman for the sake of convenience. I hope my readers won’t mind it.

I would like to begin with Genesis 4:7 which says,

“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

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“Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”

This shows how sin relates to a man. It relates with him in the same way that a woman relates with her husband. Therefore, when man enters into relationship with him, he becomes one with sin, and the whole relationship develops into a ‘dark’ spiritual family and the dark spiritual family is part of a ‘dark’ society which already exists. Sin belongs to it.

It needs to be understood that every relationship involves a pact – it is bound by a pact. Those who enter into relationship must commit themselves to this pact. Therefore, a sinner is committed to a pact and abides by the rules and regulations which govern this pact in the ‘dark’ spiritual world. Similarly, those who enter into relationship with Jesus, abide by the conditions of the pact that binds relationship in the divine realm.

In the beginning this similarity between the curse that God put on Eve regarding the kind of relationship she was to have with Adam and the instruction He gave to Cain regarding the attitude he was to have toward sin, literally confused me. I just didn’t know about what to make of it. All I had was a vague feeling about the kind of relationship that a man could have with sin and woman.

Upon pondering for sometime over it, I realized that there were two kinds of relationship a man could have with a woman: 1. Husband and wife and 2. Man and whore. When a man becomes one with any woman who is not his wife, he enters into a relationship with a harlot. It is a man-harlot relationship.

There is a reason why when Paul talked about a husband-wife relationship, he could not but relate it to Christ’s relationship with the Church. The relation that Jesus has with His Church provides the model on which the husband-wife relationship is based. The second type of relationship is the illicit one and is modeled on the relationship between a sinner and sin. While the former is based on self-sacrifice, the latter on self-indulgence. One way leads in one direction, the other in diametrically opposite direction.

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“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

Jesus ruled by sacrificing Himself on the cross for His bride, the Church, which is the Body of Christ. In order to save His Body, Christ sacrificed His will, which would have led Him away from the cross had He chosen to be driven by it and not by His Father’s will. Had He walked away from the cross, we, the Church, His Body, would have perished beyond any possibility of reclamation. Therefore, He chose to subject His will to God’s (the Father’s) will, and went on to sacrifice Himself on the cross.

In the light of what Jesus did for His Body, what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:16-18 becomes quite clear. This is what he says: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.”

In the same chapter in verses 16-17, he says, “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For ‘the two,’ He says, ‘shall become one flesh.’ But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”

It is clear that the two relationships yield different results. The husband-wife relationship tends to produce this:

“Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.” (1 Timothy 2:15)

This simply means that even childbearing will not save her if they do not continue in faith, love and holiness, with self-control. Self-control demands self-sacrifice. We cannot control our ‘self’ without sacrificing it. The significance of her being saved in childbearing can be known from the salvation of the Body of Christ. Salvation, then, is the end-result. It’s out and out spiritual; therefore it is eternal, holy and real. 1 Corinthians 6:17 says,

“But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”

The physical relationship unites flesh and produces sin. It is out and out physical; therefore it is mortal, unholy and false. Consider the following verses from James 1:14-15:

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Please note that the desires that James is talking about here are not the desires of a person who faces temptation. He is talking about the desires of sin that, as St. Paul states in Romans 7, dwells in our body. This is very important to understand. Let me quote it here:

“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.”

The reason why this happens is given in verse 8:

“But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.”

Therefore our being driven by our desires is actually our being driven by the desires of sin. Our allowing ourselves to be led by our desires to do evil, is intercourse with sin whereby we become one entity, and that entity is sin. We do become sin by committing sin! It leads to the process of conception and childbearing. Childbearing in this process does not mean beginning of life; rather it marks the end of life.

It is important to understand how life and death are defined in two different realms which are opposed to each other. Sin was dead apart from the Law (Commandments). See Romans 7:8. When the Law came, sin revived. It is this revival of sin that was called the birth of sin. I repeat for good measure that the sin which is being birthed is our ‘self’ plus sin. It is we in relation to sin and sin in relation to us. This relationship unites us into one entity that now we know is sin.

The next stage in the development of this relationship is attaining to maturity by sin. When sin attains to maturity, it brings forth death. The process of sin attaining to maturity could be defined in the same way that Adam was led by Eve to see, touch and eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge which was forbidden by God.

Once becoming sin, it is necessary for us to die. It is the logical end of our relationship with sin. Do we now see how difficult it was for us to be saved? It required none other than God to save us from our hopeless condition.

And just consider what a marvelous solution He came up with in order to accomplish it! It was inconceivable for any human being right from Adam! It is one of God’s greatest divine mysteries which stand revealed to us in the person of Jesus. I believe this is something that nobody else can help us understand better except St. Paul. And this is what he has to say in Romans 8:3-4:

“For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
God sent Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin, not on account of the sinful man! Do we now understand what it meant for Jesus to come into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh? Surely, we cannot understand this without St. Paul who wrote thus in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

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That pastor had no answer to my question. He himself didn’t know how Jesus could become sin. I praise the Lord that He opened my eyes in due time to understand this divine mystery. I could see that Jesus never committed sin to the extent that He fully fulfilled the entire Law. Therefore, though in the likeness of sinful flesh, He remained above sin and lived in accordance to the Law of the Spirit. Sin could never rule Him.

He registered a decisive victory by condemning sin in His flesh on the cross. That’s how sin died. And that’s how we died; because we were sin. The likeness of the sinful flesh, that is, sin, was destroyed on the cross and along with it we also died. It was the likeness, the image, of sinful flesh that was destroyed. The likeness or the image and flesh are two different things.

It was in the likeness or the image that sin resided, not in the flesh. When Jesus’ body was destroyed on the cross, it was actually the image (of sin) that was destroyed. That is the reason why Jesus’ body did not perish in the grave but was rather glorified in the resurrection. Christ’s resurrected body represents the divine image that He restored to us.

When we saw sin, we came to know sin. When we came to know sin, we came to know what sin was like. When we came to know what sin was like, we changed into its likeness or its image. Similarly, when we, who are saved through faith in Jesus, shall see Him next time, we shall see Him as He is. We shall see what Jesus is like. When we shall see what He is like, we shall change into His likeness or His image and become like Him. Isn’t it great?

The sinful flesh did not affect Jesus’ deity in any way since He never became one with sin but remained united with the Father by strictly abiding by His (Father’s) will. This saved His flesh from seeing corruption in death. That’s how He destroyed sin on the cross and death in the grave. He totally annihilated the Kingdom of Satan with His resurrection. Hallelujah!

So the point is, Jesus became sin in a specific sense. His divine character remained intact at all times. Therein, essentially, lies our hope. Because His righteousness became our righteousness. It is because of being made right with God in this way that we became united with God. In this oneness with God lies the salvation of our mind, body and spirit. I would like to part with my readers with one last word: Consider the oneness with God!

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