"When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you. But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." (Deuteronomy 7:1-6)While there is grace when we sin, there is not grace for sin. God has extended His grace to us to forgive us when we sin against Him, but He does not want is to remain in our sin. The grace of God has not appeared to excuse us of our sins but rather to teach us how to walk free from our sins. "For the grace of God has appeared , bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age." (Titus 2:11-12)
God warned Israel that they were not to make covenants with the enemies of God; those who sought to inhabit the land that God was giving to them. Instead, they were to embark on a systematic campaign to eradicate the enemies of God from the land and to destroy the remembrance of them and their sinful ways from the face of the earth. In order to live holy in the Promised Land, they could not afford to live with mixture; part holy and part sinful.
The same is true for us with regards to our sin. We cannot afford to tolerate or excuse our sin. Our sin is not to be coddled or indulged rather it is to be overcome and defeated. There is no truce or detente with sin, there is only victory or defeat. We cannot wink at our sin, we must be serious about removing it from our lives. In Romans 8:13 Paul tells us to "put to death the deeds of the flesh." This is the attitude we must have. At times it may even mean destroying our idols; the places and ways we make room for sin in our lives.
Sin is not our friend, it is not a welcomed companion, rather it is the source of many of our hurts and broken relationships. Only by confessing our sin can we receive forgiveness for our sin, and only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we walk free from our sin. Let us choose to walk free.
"But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts." (Romans 13:14)David Robison
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