One way to look at sin is like lice. If you have ever had a child come home with lice you know what I mean. It seems the public schools have a lice season every few years and you hear about half empty classrooms and whole families who are dealing with the little pest.
Our daughter got lice when she was about 3. We let a homeless mom and her daughter live with us for about a month and our daughter was left with lice. We learned from people the different ways to kill the lice and eggs besides using the pesticides they sell at stores. My wife went through our daughters hair everyday for about 6 weeks with a nit picking comb, pulling out any eggs and bugs she could find until she didn’t see anything for about a week. You also have to take care of furniture and bedding, vacuuming and cleaning. We found that if you put the bedding in the dryer each day it would kill the lice with the heat, so that was a daily task.
Now, like sin, lice seems to go unnoticed for some time, then at the most inopportune time it rears its ugly head. People become untouchable or contaminated when they are found to be with lice. Lice like sin, then multiplies and multiplies. If you don’t let someone point it out or allow another to remove them, then you will remain in that state. When someone with sin in their life only gets angry at someone who points out the sin, then they will continue in that sin. Much like lice will not go away without someone else to take them out.
How you get lice can also come from similar conditions to how you “get” sin. You have to be around it, close to it, or involved in it, for it to take. Much of the sin people fall into, comes into their life because they went over to it and involved themselves in that sin, it just didn’t happen to come to you. Like drugs, most of the time you have to go to a party or someones house that you know is involved in that drug before you are surrounded and then taken into the drug’s world. If we make a point to keep ourselves away from situations that involve sin, then we do good avoiding that sin. To me the sins we get caught up into are ones we make the personal choice to seek out. (I am not saying that every sin in our lives is obvious, but the sins that are considered “big” in our society, those ones that are most referred to in the news or even from the pulpit.)
So, how do we deal with sin? First, swallow your pride, or just kick pride out. Pride keeps us in sin, keeps us from going to God and keeps us on defense, defending our actions instead of admitting our guilt. Once we get past pride, we also have to deal with fear. Fear of what others think of us, fear of the consequences, fear of fear itself. :~) These are things of our flesh, the core of our resistance to God and His saving Grace.
Next, we repent or turn from our sinful ways. This isn’t always easy, in fact, this is hard. We have to make a daily and even a moment to moment decision to turn from what we did do to what God wants us to do. His grace is sufficient and Love covers a multitude of sins, let Him do the work in you and enjoy the peace and freedom He offers by the blood of His son Jesus. Like the lice scenario, if you return to where you got the lice to begin with, chances are you will get them again. Don’t go back! Flee! RUN!!!
Then remain on guard. Now, I don’t think you should dwell on the past, the things that you did, the sin the hurt you, but don’t forget them as well. Remember that you are weak and that you have strength in Christ. Sometimes you have to change friends, and usually you find that those friends weren’t friends at all. And when that sin is out of your life don’t judge those in that sin, remember how you felt when you were shackled with the sin.
As a Christian or believer in Christ you are free from sin. Sin no longer has power over you unless you give it the power. Sin that we take on as a believer is like picking up the shackles and holding onto them, the shackles may not be locked on your wrists, but you hold them as if they were.