Understanding The Newspaper

Sin ruled over all people and brought them to death.   Romans 5:21

The final outcome of the tyranny of sin over the human race is death. The final destination to which the hijacker “sin” takes us is death. The outcome of sin’s hostile invasion of our lives and the end result of being bound in sin is death.

When death comes, it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re traveling first-class, business, or economy. At the point of death, it makes no difference whether you were a pauper on the streets of Calcutta or Princess Diana in Paris. There is nothing any of us can do about it. It may seem like some of us are able to cheat death for a while, but death eventually takes us all. Its tyranny is cruel and relentless.

Paul’s teaching about the rule of sin helps us to understand the newspaper. We read and hear about school shootings, military takeovers, drug cartels, broken homes, and financial fraud, and we say to ourselves, This is not how things are supposed to be. So, why is the world like this?

God’s answer is, “You’re right. This is not how the world should be, and the reason it’s like this is that it has been invaded by an enemy. You are living under a tyranny. Sin reigns.”

If sin were simply a choice, we could all choose to have happy homes, strong families, peaceful nations, and contented hearts. But sin is a power, and that’s why our dreams are always beyond our reach.

This doesn’t mean that we’re all as bad as we could be or that the world is as bad as it could be. God is gracious in restraining some of the worst effects of sin. But it does mean that we cannot get free from this power. While we can all avoid some sin, none of us can avoid all sin.

The fact that sin is a power helps me to understand myself. I find these lines from DC Talk’s “In the Light” very insightful: “What’s going on inside of me? I despise my own behavior.” Have you ever felt like that? We’re often a mystery to ourselves, and the only explanation of that mystery is that sin is a power.

For further reading, see 1 John 3