How to Hate Sin—Part 1

Hate

I’ve been beaten, tossed like a ship in the ocean, battered by storm waves.
Thank God I haven’t sunk. Kept afloat by the buoyancy of the water, His grace, and sustaining love–despite my imperfections, my ‘titanic-ness,’ my insufficiency, my weakness, my stubbornness, my addictions, and my…nature, I guess.

Am I a lover of sin, it’s taste, it’s excitement, how it makes me feel, it’s pull, it’s attraction, or is it just my weakness, my bent, my allowance to repetition? He said, ‘go and sin no more’ but yet I still did. And with each time isn’t it the easier to do it, the harder to stop, to reverse the tide, or to avoid the snare? What does it take to hate sin? What does it take to run from it, shun it, avoid it, remove it, or develop a callousness towards it?

I sure don’t love it, but it ‘loves’ me and I am like a pity party. A reed in the wind. A succor to punishment.

I call out this day, ‘Jesus, not today.’ Don’t let me slip. Don’t let me fall. Pull me up. Take me into your bosom. Your shelter. Cover me. Protect me. Wash me with your blood once again. Help me to hate sin. Help me to love You! To cling to You. To never leave your presence. Never leave your grip. Never stray from your side. Forgive me once again and help me to truly love you and keep your commands.

This is my prayer. Amen

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References

Romans 7:15-20, NIV

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

2 Corinthians 5:14-20, NIV

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

John 3-16, NIV

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”