Jake is seventeen and loves Jesus more than anything. Last year he started a Bible study at his school and is now playing drums on his youth group’s praise team. But lately he’s started to have doubts. When he was saved, he was assured that the gospel would transform him. But Jake still sees sin invading his life and has started to believe that real Christians don’t struggle as much as he does. Maybe, he wonders, I’m not even saved.
Alyssa has the night all planned out. She and her best friend will borrow her parents’ car (with their permission, of course), go for pizza, and then attend the movie they’ve wanted to see forever. But today at church her mom informs her of different plans. A missionary couple is spending one night with them, and she wants Alyssa at home to help serve. Stung with a rush of frustration, Alyssa lashes out at her mother before spinning on her heels and storming off. The couple in the pew behind her laughs it off. The man shoots an embarrassed smile at Alyssa’s mom. “That’s teenagers for you,” he says.
Peter is thirteen and walked into church last Sunday in a great mood. Rain drummed the roof as he joined a group of men by the coffee table. An usher peered out the window and squinted. “I hate the rain.” A second man agreed. “I know, right? Church attendance will be down; the building will be drafty. I bet the attic will leak too.” Peter frowned. They were right. He chimed in—
Bianca’s dad is a pastor, and she loves the God her father teaches about as passionately as he does. But two months ago, a friend from school showed her some inappropriate pictures on her phone. Bianca liked what she saw, but she tried to suppress the feeling and never told her parents. Pornography is only a sin for guys, right? She still didn’t tell her parents when she started looking up the pictures herself. Now she’s paralyzed by shame but is convinced her parents would never understand.
Dealing with Sin Today
When we’re told the gospel will transform us, that’s true. Following Jesus does mean everything changes. Your life gets flipped on its head and you walk in a new direction with new motives and desires—
But as Jesus-followers, we also have a command and a responsibility to hate the smaller sins, the sins even Christians have started to expect from teenagers, the sins that have become so regular they’re pushed under the carpet and practically laughed off. To do that, we first need to recognize them as sin. And this is where we often get blinded.
The man who laughed off Alyssa’s frustration and venting didn’t realize she had blatantly dishonored her mom. The men who complained to Peter about the weather didn’t realize they were discontent with what God had given them. The church that won’t talk about female lust doesn’t realize they’re isolating Bianca. When we’re embarrassed to share the gospel we’re embarrassed of Jesus. When we love to share someone’s “news” we don’t realize that we’re gossiping. When we fudge the truth to make a story seem more exciting we don’t realize that we’re lying. When we’re insecure we don’t realize that we’re ungrateful to God. When we worry about our futures we don’t realize that we’re choosing not to trust God.
These kinds of expected and “ordinary” sins are threatening roadblocks for the Christian. They can ease into blind spots and wedge their way into the cracks of our lives to flourish unseen and alive. They’ll have poisonous effects on us if they remain unfought. That’s why John Owen said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”1
We Are Saved from Sin (aka: Justification)
But the only reason we can kill sin, and the only reason we can have victory over these everyday sins is because Christ had the ultimate victory over sin. Because of him we are declared righteous in God’s sight. This is called justification. At a single moment in time Jesus took our sin—
In his book, Christian Beliefs, Wayne Grudem explained justification like this: “The sins of those justified are considered forgiven because God considers their sins as belonging to Christ, and Christ already paid the penalty for those sins. But not only does God consider those sins as belonging to Christ, he also considers Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us.”2
There are two tangible (and awesome) results of justification I want to show you. The first is that there is no longer condemnation for us (Rom. 8:1). There once was a day we were condemned, doomed, sentenced to hell. It’s what our sin deserved and was the appropriate punishment we warranted. But then in an extravagant display of grace, God removed his judgment from us.
In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan paints a real-life picture of what this looks like. He imagines those under condemnation living in a party city called the City of Destruction. It’s a happening place, fast paced and reckless, but the whole place lies under the weight of coming judgment. When someone is saved, Bunyan has them immediately flee the City of Destruction. This mirrors the truth that when we’re saved, condemnation is once and for all forever removed from us—
A second benefit of justification is that there is no more guilt for us. This is a truth deeply relieving to me. I’m one of those people who holds onto guilt longer than I should, and it’s an oppressive burden to bear. It feels like a backpack of rocks glued to my shoulders, dragging me down. This is why justification is such good, good news. Because Jesus took care of our sin, we are set free from guilt’s burden. When we hold onto it, we actually minimize what he did on the cross and demonstrate a lack of trust in God’s power to forgive. He became our sin (2 Cor. 5:21). When we say that we deserve to feel guilty, it’s like we’re saying that his work wasn’t enough.
Granted, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel grieved about our sin. It’s healthy and holy to feel sadness over our disobedience. This sadness isn’t just mushy emotionalism but genuine shame. We messed up, we did wrong, we sinned against holy God, and that is serious. But when our sin has been dealt with, when we’ve repented, we are irrevocably forgiven and no longer have to feel lasting guilt.
Wayne Grudem adds, “Christ took the place of guilt that we all deserved so that we could take the place of acceptance we all long for.”3 Justification means we are free from condemnation and guilt and now are fully, thoroughly, wonderfully, one hundred percent unconditionally accepted in God’s sight as his children (Rom. 8:15). Instead of being God’s enemies, we are his family. We are adopted. We are loved. We are free.
We Are Saved to Pursue Holiness (aka: Sanctification)
But even though Jesus-followers are justified, we still wrestle with sin. That’s why it’s hard not to get discouraged sometimes. There are moments when I feel like Jake. I look a little closer at my life, and I’m overwhelmed by how sinful I still am. That’s how I felt the other day when I scrolled through my social media pages. I saw pictures, read statuses, and skimmed tweets, and slowly a prick of self-righteousness started to grow. I would never post or retweet that. I would never laugh at that video or share that song. What was wrong with them?
And then it hit me: What was wrong with me? My self-righteousness puffed me up with pride, hardened my heart, and had me pointing my finger at everyone else’s sin instead of dealing with my own. Then I was discouraged. I’m trying to follow Jesus, but shouldn’t I be better?
That’s why the reality of sanctification is so encouraging. Sanctification refers to the process of Christians becoming more holy as the Spirit of God works in their hearts to make them more like Jesus. It’s encouraging because it means that I am better. I’m more like Jesus today than I was five years ago. And, even better, God will continue to transform me more and more into his image for the rest of my life. I will be more like Jesus next year than I am today.
Sanctification is a life-long process, but it’s a spectacular process. It’s a winding road and an adventure. Every single day God is sanctifying us. As we live for him, we get to grow. It’s different than justification in that, while we had no part in being justified (that was all God), we do have a part in our sanctification.
Don’t mistake me—
So let’s get practical. How do we pursue holiness? How do we fight sin and get victory over it? You, Jake, Bianca, Peter, Alyssa, and I need help. We’re teenagers who love Jesus and want to live like him. How do we do that? Here is what I’ve been learning.
Feed on the Word
First and most important, we need to have hearts tethered to the Word of God (John 17:17). It’s impossible to know what sin is if we don’t know what God says. Jesus gives us a perfect example of this when the Devil tempted him in the wilderness. “And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”’” (Matt. 4:3–4). God’s Word is what we need to grow as Jesus-followers, to survive in this world, to fight temptation, and to obey our King. It teaches us what sin is, convicts us of it, and yet also encourages us in the battle against it.
This afternoon I was meditating on Psalm 119 and thinking about the author’s desperate dependency on God’s Word. It was all sufficient for him. He memorized it, read it, spoke it, obeyed it, thought about it, was sustained by it, and lived and breathed it. Reading this psalm made me ache to share the psalmist’s passion. But I had to remind myself that his fierce reliance on God’s Word didn’t strike him one day out of the blue like magic lightning. It came from soaking in the Word day in and day out.
Let’s do that too. Let’s get in Scripture often, every day, and let’s read all of it, even the parts that seem boring or irrelevant. The more you read the Bible, the more you’ll see God’s holiness and your sin. It’s like a mirror reflecting who you really are, revealing your true identity. It’s like a magnifying glass scrutinizing your sin, making it large print before you and bringing you to conviction. And it’s like a map pointing you in the right direction, showing you how to turn from error and where to go from here. God’s Word rubs a yellow highlighter over our sin, but it doesn’t just leave us alone after that. It sets us up for a future of fighting sin and loving God more.
Keep the Word in front of you then. An easy way to do that is to put up Bible verses around your house. When I got my first big jewelry box as a preteen, I tucked a card with Proverbs 31:30 in front of it: “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” I remember Mom writing out Ephesians 4:29 on the white board in our family dining room: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
There’s a reason Paul calls God’s Word the “sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17). It is our greatest weapon to fight sin. Reading and knowing it gives us power to see the sin in our lives, turn from temptation, choose obedience, delight ourselves in God, and steel our hearts against sin’s threat.
Hate Sin
But I have a confession to make: as much as I can find sin in my life, it’s tempting for me to downplay it. When I see it, I want to make it seem like it’s not as bad as it really is, because I see myself as better than I actually am. I convince myself that it’s not like it’s a big deal, like it’s a big sin. I mean, I didn’t kill anyone. I just snapped at Dad. Or I just gave a second-best effort or shared an embarrassing story about that guy none of us like anyway. Come on, everyone does that. While I love to find sin in others, I tend to minimize my own sin.
That’s because I fail to see the root of my sin. I don’t realize that it is really no small thing. It’s actually moral insurrection against my King. It’s a demonstration that I don’t trust, believe, or love God enough to obey him. Sin is at the root of everything bad in our lives. Every single time we sin—
Not only that, but it’s something that has destructive consequences. We deserve hell because of this sin, because of our rebellion against a perfect and just God. Because of this sin, Jesus went to the cross.
Furthermore, our sin has real-world consequences. Our relationships start to suffer. We worry more. We pray less. Our desire to read God’s Word fades. Church becomes boring. We start to feel like God is distant. Sin attempts to ruin us. That is why we should hate it.
To help us understand its severity, think about what we’re really saying when we sin. At the beginning of the chapter Peter complained about the weather. Translation: “God, I don’t like what you’ve given me, and I think I know better than you.” “I worry about my future.” Translation: “God, I don’t trust you or believe that you’re in control.” You’ve been wasting time on social media. Translation: “My pleasure is more important than performing the tasks God has given me.”
When we understand how bad sin is—
Repent (a Lot)
Even though God justified us we still sin every day, and that means we still have to repent. Oswald Chambers says that the bedrock of Christianity is repentance. Burk Parsons says that there’s no such thing as an unrepentant Christian. Repentance is needed for us to grow as Jesus-followers.
The first step in repentance is finding the sin in our lives and recognizing it as sin. This happened for me with insecurity. I have been insecure as long as I can remember. When I was younger I decided that I didn’t like my ears. They were too big and therefore must never be shown. I wouldn’t style my hair in ballerina buns or tuck it behind my ears. It was quite the travesty when I got the role of a cheerleader in my sixth grade church musical and I was required to have a high ponytail. The thought that I would have to stand in front of the entire congregation with my ginormous ears flapping in the fan breeze was horrifying.
Eventually I got over my ears. But insecurity still remained a common narrative woven throughout my life. I came to believe it was normal. Every teenager dealt with it, so it had to be okay. Sure, it felt horrible, but I never realized that those beliefs of inferiority were direct beliefs of ingratitude to God. I was discontent with how God had made me—
My repentance involved actively turning away from this specific sin, confessing to God that I had broken his law, that I had been ungrateful, and that I had been dissatisfied with him. Then I asked for his forgiveness. What was so glorious is that I got it. When we acknowledge that God has the authority to forgive our sin, he will (1 John 1:9).
But I still get insecure, and so I need to keep repenting. Repentance is ongoing, an everyday thing—
I’ve never seen anybody take repentance as seriously as the Puritans. In a book of prayers called The Valley of Vision, there is a whole section of their prayers of confession and repentance (under the solemn heading of “Penitence and Deprecation”). These are written by men who were struck by a deep-seated revulsion of their sin and a twin realization of their helplessness and dependency upon God.
These men prayed things like, “Eternal Father, Thou art good beyond all thought, but I am vile, wretched, miserable, blind.”4 They confessed, “O Lord, no day of my life has passed that has not proved me guilty in thy sight.”5 They said, “Low as I am as a creature, I am lower as a sinner, I have trampled thy law times without number; sin’s deformity is stamped upon me, darkens my brow, touches me with corruptions.”6 And as much as they understood their sinfulness and despised it, they wanted to pursue holiness anew. “Lord Jesus, give me a deeper repentance, a horror of sin, a dread of its approach.”7 Could that be said of you and me?
Be Accountable to People Who Love You
In his wisdom, God has given us people to help us fight against sin. We need churches to provide pastors and teachers and mentors to point us to Scripture and help us, like rehab centers for recovering sinners. We need accountability partners. We especially need our parents to hold us accountable. And to do that, we need to talk to them about our sin and confess it. Remember Bianca? She’s dealing with pornography alone, eaten up with guilt but too ashamed to tell anyone. Her first step to living a guilt-free life is to go to God. Then she needs to go to her parents.
My mom and I meet once a week. Sometimes we read a book together and discuss it at these meetings, sometimes not. They are essentially opportunities for accountability. We talk about life, what I’m struggling with, what I’m encouraged by. Without fail she always asks me how my devotions and prayer life are going. Often she asks me one-line questions to probe into how I’m really doing—
Accountability means having someone love you enough to help you fight against sin. In a lot of cases that will be your parents, but it might not be. It might be an older member from your church or your pastor or a teacher. Accountability to them means having the kind of long and uncomfortable talks the world makes fun of. It means being open and vulnerable. It means awkwardness, but it also means freedom.
Pursuing holiness without accountability is like walking down a narrow road sandwiched between two deep ditches. It would be impossibly easy to fall astray without the guidance of accountability’s guardrails.
Be Humble
Jon Bloom wrote that the “greatest enemy of our souls is the pathologically selfish pride at the core of our fallen nature.”8 If pride is at the root of all sin, humility must be the fundamental antidote. Christians hear a lot about humility, but we don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about what it actually looks like. What does being humble mean in the real world?
Humility is understanding our littleness and God’s bigness. Jonathan Edwards once said, “The saints in glory are so much employed in praise, because they are perfect in humility, and have so great a sense of the infinite distance between them and God.”9 There’s no three quick steps or six fast tips to get it. The Bible presents it as a lifelong pursuit. It’s more than self-deprecation or a few nice actions; it’s a pervasive heart attitude. Peter tells young people to clothe ourselves with humility, “for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5).
Humility is surrendering the daily acts of pride in our lives—
Humility is the intentional recognition that glorifying God is more important and joy-inducing than glorifying myself. It’s also the accompanying action that reflects the praise back to him. It’s not merely thinking a certain way; it’s living like it.
Humility results in gratitude. We reject our natural dissatisfaction with circumstances and embrace a heart that thanks God for what he’s given us. Humility results in words spoken kindly. Instead of anger, we know we are undeserving of grace and so choose to extend charity to others in our speech. Humility results in peace. We know that we’re not in control, and so we push away worry and anxiety and thrust everything at God’s feet. Humility always results in prayer. We know that we can do nothing in our own power and strength, and so we rely on God.
Following Jesus in humility means stepping out of the spotlight and redirecting it to the One who deserves it. And that is the greatest sin killer of all.
You Are Not Alone
Yet even as we pursue holiness, teenagers who follow Jesus can still feel like they’re battling alone. We’re told the gospel will change our lives, but we still fight against sin every day. It’s tempting to feel isolated and lonely, like we’re the only Christian teenagers in the whole world trying to obey him. But there is a truth bursting with hope for us today: God is with us.
The Holy Spirit dwells inside us and is the One who changes our hearts, making us desire to feed on God’s Word more, hate sin more, repent more, be held accountable more, and grow humbler. As we pursue holiness, the Spirit is the one who grants us that holiness. It comes little by little, day by day, and it can sometimes feel like slow going—
The End of the Stories
While we’re at the end of this chapter, we’re only at the beginning of our stories. Justification is where it starts, but sanctification is a journey we’re on for the rest of our lives. We—
The gospel changes everything in our lives. Jake now knows he’s justified and is in awe that God is working in him to make him more like Jesus. Alyssa has realized that, despite the difficulty of honoring her parents with joy, God has commanded it of her and he will help her do it. Peter walked into church this Sunday, and it was raining again—
God is working in the lives of the Jakes, the Alyssas, the Peters, and the Biancas. He’s working in my life. And he’s working in yours. If you are saved, you will grow. The God of heaven and earth has promised that, and he has promised to help you every step of the way. And this God doesn’t break his promises.
• • •
Our Sin—
1. What are some “ordinary” or “expected” sins you struggle with, and what steps can you take to root them out?
2. Who do you have (or who could you have) in your life who will hold you accountable? What fears do you have about being held accountable? What encourages you about being held accountable?
3. What part does gratitude play in the fight against sin?