I was cleaning my house recently, and as I was cleaning, I was bemoaning the fact that I had only cleaned it yesterday, and yet today, here I am again, back at it, cleaning the same floor, the same dish, the same rug, making the same bed, and dusting the same furniture. You would think that after the scrubbing I gave the house yesterday, that the cleaning would have lasted longer than one day. I was exhausted yesterday, but felt extremely fulfilled, believing that finally my house was clean… until I looked up at the ceiling, and realized that there was a cobweb or two I had missed, and I looked in the closet, and realized there were boxes of dust-laden junk in there that I still needed to go through, and I opened a drawer in my cabinet, and realized there was junk in there that needed organizing… just when I thought I was through!
I sighed, and just sank back down on the couch… “can’t I just have a moment of victory” I thought? Just ONE time when the entire house was completely clean, perfect, and without a spot or wrinkle anywhere?
I then began to contemplate how much like housework is my own spiritual life.
You see, housekeeping in my heart is a lot of work too. I must spend a lot of time in prayer… figuratively dusting, wiping, polishing, and throwing out things in my life every day. Every day, I must deal with the dust that has settled on my heart from yesterday… the word spoken that was hurtful, the thought that passed my mind, and I allowed it to rest there, the desire in my heart to have something that doesn’t belong to me… and on the list goes. It never seems to end!
Each day though, I go through the rooms of my heart, and try to clean, polish, eradicate, and move around the dust, dirt and grime that has settled since yesterday, and as I finish praying, I can feel confident that I’ve completely cleaned the “house of my heart”. I may feel confident that I can leave from here today, and I won’t have to come back and clean this room again.
Alas, though… for as soon as I leave my time of prayer, that thought that I thought I had banished forever, pounces back and props itself up in my mind… bringing with it then a new challenge. This challenge presents itself possibly as I meet someone in the grocery store who pushes in front of me in the line, and I feel sudden anger at this injustice, even as I had just prayed moments before, and thought I had eradicated all anger and malice from my heart!
How can this be?
Let’s look at another aspect of this for just a moment. Peter speaks in Acts 2:38 and says “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the REMISSION of your sins.”
Let’s take a look at the word “remission”, and what it means in the English language… http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/remission
re•mis•sion
noun \ri-ˈmi-shən\
: a period of time during a serious illness when the patient's health improves
: the act of reducing or canceling the amount of money that you owe
: the reduction of a prison sentence
And now, let’s look at the Greek word for remission:
Cognate: 859 áphesis (from 863 /aphíēmi, "send away, forgive" ) – properly, "something sent away"; i.e. remission ("forgiveness"), releasing someone from obligation or debt. See 863 (aphiēmi).
So the remission of sins essentially means this “sending away and releasing our obligation or debt” of sin.
Now, I’ve always thought that remission of sins essentially meant that the sin was eradicated or done away with. Apparently not so. The translations of remission essentially mean that the sin has been released from our debt, and we owe no more obligation because of that sin. It does not say that the sin would never tempt or bother us again, it just means that sin has been released from our debt. If that were the case, then the scripture would read “eradication” or “destruction” of sin.. but it doesn’t, it reads… remission.
With the understanding of the word remission, now let’s look at a practical example of remission in our lives today.
We all know of someone who has cancer that has been told that their cancer is in “remission”. This means that the cancer has been beat back, sent away, and is gone for the present time. However, does this mean that the cancer will never, ever, ever return? NO, of course not. It means simply that right now, the cancer is gone, and not currently a problem. However, the cancer patient knows that this means the cancer is dormant, and could return at any time.
In a sense though, the patient knows that cancer is never gone, and unfortunately, most of us can all relate or know of someone in whom the cancer was in remission, yet it does return, pops out of remission, for a variety of reasons, and many times after being in remission for a while, sadly claims its victim in the final battle.
This is not a pretty picture of sin at all, but I think sin needs to be understood using this illustration. There is a reason that the apostles taught that sin is in remission. It is gone, and shoved far away, beat down, and supposed to be lying dormant, as long as we allow the Spirit of Christ to REIGN in our lives. However, at any given time, should we let down our guard, and not allow the Spirit of Christ to reign in our lives, that dormant sin that had been in remission, can rise up again to torture, torment, and wreak havoc with our lives.
Thus, the only cure and the only remedy to keep sin in remission is the constant application of blood of Christ, and by allowing the Spirit of Christ to reign within us.
We must be aware, and cognizant of the fact that sin has not yet been destroyed… not yet. That final day of reckoning with sin is coming and will take place when we stand before the White Throne Judgment, when satan and all his imps are cast into their eternal destiny, and then sin finally will be destroyed, forever.
That day has not yet come.
Sin is in remission, it is beat back, and victory is around the corner, but we cannot relax and think that our enemy of sin won’t come back to haunt and terrorize us ever again.
Because THAT is the lie that satan wants us to believe. He wants us to forget about the dormancy of sin, and seeing our relaxation (failing to read the Word, pray, and allow the Spirit of Christ to reign in us), then sin pounces on us when our guard is down, then we are taken unawares, and captured again by the effect of sin… and if that sin is not dealt with, put into remission… we stand to lose the final battle against sin.
This is truth, pure and simple. We are waging a constant battle against sin... even those who claim to be the most spiritual of those among us… and none of us will be victors until we have gained eternity! Jesus Christ is the only perfect man, and the ONLY human to have completely attained victory over sin…. Yet. But there is coming a day when we will receive new and incorruptible bodies whereby we will be made into His image… then and only then will we have achieved complete victory over sin!
Now, with this understanding of sin, you can see why sin is so much like housework. Those of us who have the responsibility of housework in our homes, understand that while you can accomplish much in one day, and feel like the job is done, in reality we know that tomorrow, the very same job awaits us. Just as housework is never done, so the battle with sin will never be done, until we have reached eternity. The enemy would have us to think that once we beat it into submission once, that the job is done, and in believing that lie, we let down our guard, while he pounces on us in a weak moment, and destroys all that we have worked so hard for.
So, if we begin to understand that sin is something we must constantly be on guard against, fight against, and keep in remission, as much as possible, then we can and will win this battle! The Spirit of Christ living within us is well able to pinpoint, and discern sin that creeps into our lives just like tiny specks of dust and dirt creep into our homes. We can clean our house until it shines, but even in that shine, there is an imperfection waiting somewhere that we have missed.
We must strive for perfection which is living above perpetual, continuing sin, yet at the same time we must acknowledge that until the day we are changed from corruptible to incorruptible, we will wage this war with sin, our flesh, and satan.
We must be willing to die out to sin, to the natures of our flesh, to the lusts that reach out to us each day from this body of death we dwell in, and EACH DAY, every moment, every hour of the day, we must be cognizant, and aware of the battle that we are in!
So the next time you are doing housework, and you feel like you have thoroughly cleaned your house from top to bottom, it is spic and span clean in every way… can you can say that indeed you have cleaned out each and every closet, every single bare inch of floor in that house, that every single inch of wall space, and cabinet space has been cleaned, and that dust has been completely removed and eradicated from your house, never to return? I think not!
Housework is never, ever done! Because even if a dish is clean today, tomorrow it will be dirty again. A cobweb may be banished today, but the spider may come back in the middle of the night, and spin his web again. A closet may be cleaned out today, but tomorrow someone may throw a whole new pile of junk into it. The floor may be clean after you scrub it, but in a moment your son may walk through the door with muddy boots, oblivious to the fact that you just scrubbed it, and alas, it is dirty again!
Spiritually looking at this, we may wage a battle, and feel victorious because one spiritual closet sin has been cleaned, yet all the while we know there are five other closet sins in our spiritual house which haven’t been dealt with yet.
Such is the battle with sin! We are fools if we think we have completely overcome this war with sin! Yes, we may win some battles against it! Addictions may have been eradicated, sins may have been exposed and expelled from our lives… but beware, our greatest enemy within, our flesh… never stops seeking and looking for an opportunity to rise up again, out of remission, and attack us again, unaware! Yes, we may win battles, but our flesh seeks to win the war.
Our only hope is this…. allowing the Spirit of Christ moment by moment access to our deepest heart secrets, and allow Jesus and His Word to seek out, pinpoint, and deal with the sin in our heart each and every day. This is the only way we can we ever have any hope at all of winning the final war on sin!
Be aware that you will battle sin on new levels every single day! You may have won the battle yesterday, but there is a new one waiting for you today! You may have asked forgiveness for the ugly thoughts you thought while someone cut before you in line at the grocery store, but just wait… tomorrow you may find out a friend has stabbed you in the back, told lies on you, and hurt you deeply… what are you going to do then? Are you going to say, well… I’ve already dealt with ugly thoughts in my head, I’m not going to deal with them again today? Will that work?
NO! It won’t. We have got to deal with flesh/sin on an ongoing, daily, moment by moment basis, and constantly put them under the blood with the Spirit of Christ each moment of the day.
Remember, sin IS like housework. It is not going away. It will be here tomorrow, just as it is today.
The difference is your awareness of that sin, and how you deal with it.