“We sin because we believe a lie about what will make use happy.” John Mark Comer
I’ve been thinking a lot about sin lately, specifically, why I sin. Ever thought about that… why you sin? I’ve never met someone who thought themselves to be perfect (i.e., without sin), but I’ve not met a ton of people who could articulate well ‘why’ they sin.
Sinners sin… I’ve heard that one before, but I’m not sure that’s all that helpful. It’s in our DNA… well, if that means we are born with a sinful nature I would agree, but I’m not sure that gets to ‘why’ we sin either. I can’t help but sin… well, I don’t agree with that but again, that doesn’t help anyone understand the ‘why’ behind sin.
HAPPINESS.
It’s safe to say everyone everywhere in all places at all times wants to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, in fact, I think happiness is good thing from God for us. But herein lies a major problem; we don’t live in a ‘happy’ world.
The world has been tainted and marred by sin. In fact, there is not one element in God’s AMAZING creation that has not been affected by sin. But despite the reality of our broken sin-saturated world, the one thing that remains a constant is our deep desire to be happy.
Maybe this will be hard to believe, but God wants you to be happy. And when I say ‘happy’, I don’t mean a fake plastic smile painted on your face. The happiness that is from God for us is FULL and COMPLETE.
Happiness is what Jesus was talking about in the ‘Beatitudes’ in Matthew 5. When Jesus says, “Blessed are…” and then list off the different ways we would be blessed, well, another way to translate ‘blessed’ is ‘happy.’
Point being… GOD CARES ABOUT YOUR HAPPINESS.
Now, back to the WHY of sin.
We want to be happy… that’s a good thing. But sin tricks and/or deceives us into thinking that happiness will be found apart from God and His perfect plans and purposes for us.
So WHY do we sin?
Well, one way to think about it is like this…
We sin because we want to be happy and rather than look to God for the happiness He wants to give us (blessing), we turn instead to lesser things hoping to receive that which God desires to give us.
Are there other reasons we sin? Yes, of course. But for me, understanding the ‘why’ behind my sin is helping me be on guard against sin. I’ve not arrived, in fact, I have a really long way to go, but by understanding that the why of sin has so much to do with happiness, well, when confronted with sin, there's a choice... a decision to be made:
Will I choose to be happy in God, or something else?
And maybe to state the obvious, there is no happiness (blessing) apart from God… and that unfortunately is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over and over again.
