Week 10—Monday 1 John 3:7-10
Week 10—MONDAY
SIN IS A CANCER
We have quoted the British psychiatrist who said, “Man is made for conversion.” This means that until people are converted, they are less than they can be, they are beside themselves. And yet people have the fear of conversion, lest it make them queer. A pastor said, “Call me a liar, abuse me, but don’t call me pious.” Piety and being less than you can be were synonymous. But a Christian conversion brings you back to the normal, according to the Norm, Jesus, and makes you truly natural.
We are made for change. A doctor who researched in cancer said that cancer cells are cells turned selfish; they refuse to serve the rest and demand that the rest serve them. They have broken the law of loving your neighbor as you love yourself and have loved themselves only. Hence, instead of being constructive they have become cancerous. Sin is a cancer in the personality, hence unnatural. This same doctor told me that there are layers of skin and the lowest layer is constantly dying into the second layer—it loses its life and finds it again. As long as this process of dying to live keeps up, the skin is healthy. But when the lowest layer begins to refuse to surrender its life to the second layer, and saves its life, it begins to die—the first sign of the skin getting old. Thereafter, it is on its way to death. The law of life is change upward, and when we refuse to change upward, decay and death set in.
Sin is an unnatural intrusion. And yet some think it natural. A passage is quoted: “Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). But note: “And so”—by following the desires of body and mind another nature, a false nature is built up. We produce the unnatural nature. God created us good.
Dear God, save us from building up a false nature and calling it natural. You have created every organ, every tissue, every nerve for yourself; and when they work in your way, they work—they are natural and harmonious and creative. Bring us back to yourself and hence to ourselves. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I sin I am not a person; I am less than a person.