Church bulletin
Why doesn’t God just take away my desire for sin? Life would be so much easier. It gets tiring dealing with temptation. As much as God hates sin, it nevertheless serves His purposes. One day sin will be finally and fully dealt with but until then the sovereign God uses it to accomplish good ends.
Sin magnifies the love of God. It is easy to love the lovely; it is easy to love when love is reciprocated. But God loved us when we were dead in trespasses and sins; even as believers we are spiritually repugnant. This makes His love all the more wondrous. Our love is drawn out of us because we find something attractive in the object we love. God doesn’t love us because of what we are; He loves us in spite of what we are.
Sin causes us to rely on God. As strange as it seems, it is sin that drives us to God. Because we sin we need His forgiveness; we need His wisdom; we need His strength; we need His assurance. In our unconverted state sin kept us from God, now that we have been enlightened sin brings us to Him confessing our needs. Furthermore, as recipients of God’s abundant grace, sin brings us to Him in praise and adoration.
Sin makes us long for deliverance. The manifold consequences of sin remind us that this world is not our home. Every day we are confronted with our moral failures; every contemptible thing we dislike in others is true of us. If we loath our sinfulness (and we should) we will also long for the day when we will be rid of it. We will long for that state of perfection whereby we can give complete devotion to Christ without the disruption of sin.
Sin helps to mature those who strive against it. Hardship is necessary for growth in the natural and so it is in the spiritual. Resisting temptation is the iron pumping component of the spiritual work-out. Without resistance we would be weak and lethargic. Self-control is not just an aspect of godliness it is the soil of godliness; self-control is the action of resisting and striving against sin. It is the way of maturity.
Should we therefore see sin as a blessing? Of course not; Christ died because we are sinners. We are however reminded through sin that God is always in control and outworking His own will and purpose. What the devil uses for evil, God uses for good.