Sin Is Cancer.

I vividly remember that hot summer day when I was riding my bike back and forth on the sidewalk between two fire hydrants on our street. Somehow, something went wrong. I ended up on the ground with my bike on top of me and I got an extremely nasty scrape up my leg. I walked inside, my leg throbbing and stinging, and my mom cleaned it up and put a band-aid on it. In a matter of minutes it stopped hurting, and in a matter of weeks it was completely healed.

For so long I have viewed my sin like this. It’s something that hurts really bad and I need God to clean it up and put a band-aid on it, and it is in a process of healing until I go to be with him in heaven.

If that were true, then I believe in a pretty lame gospel. I wouldn’t need the Great Physician. I wouldn’t need a Savior. But the reality of my situation is so much more severe than this.

Sin is not a scrape. It is not something that merely stings and needs a band-aid to cover it up. It is not something that will easily heal over time.

The reality is that sin is cancer. It takes over your whole body, demanding to destroy and kill everything. It is not something that can be left alone to heal on its own. No, it grows. It builds. It is like an avalanche, eradicating everything in its wake.

This cancer analogy has particularly stuck with me because I’ve watched my brother suffer through leukemia. I remember him being bed-ridden because he was in so much pain that he couldn’t move. Cancer took control of his body and sucked the life out of him more and more every day.

God’s Word tells us that from the moment we had life in this universe, we were already dead. We were born into sin. Cancer had full control of us.

Christ is the cure for our cancer. The beauty of the gospel is that in God’s eyes, we are completely healthy because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus on our behalf. He sees us as perfect and righteous, not having a single cancer cell in our body.

The war is won, but the battle is not over. We can have assurance that we will be completely free from this cancer in the end, but for now, we have to live with it.

It festers in our bodies. It is constantly there, permeating every decision and action. It kind of sucks, right?

If we refuse to fight the battle against sin, it will grow and take control of us. It is possible for us to be completely righteous in God’s eyes but still indulging in all sorts of sin. Obviously, God does not want this. He desires for us to fight.

For so long, I thought that the main reason God wants us to fight against sin is so that we can become more like Christ and reflect Him to other people. While this is true, I’ve come to realize that God doesn’t primarily want us to be rid of sin for the purpose of evangelism, but he wants us to be rid of sin because it is killing us. Our Father can’t stand to watch his children indulge in something that is bringing death and destruction to them.

He has provided the weapons to fight. He has provided the power to fight. He has placed the ultimate, assured, final victory in sight.

The question is: Do we really hate our cancer enough to wage war against it? Will we acknowledge that it is killing us? Will we wake up and realize that God has given us the cure and the power to overcome it? Will we fight?

 "For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him." Romans 8:13-17