Sin Is a Whore and We Are Her Lovers

I’m a slave.
You’re a slave.
Humans were created to serve. It’s our natural state⸺being in servitude (or slavery) to another thing. In the garden, Adam and Eve were in a servant-to-master relationship with God. They took care of his creation and worked the ground and in turn he provided for them and loved them as a true master should. They were beautifully in bondage to the Painter of galaxies. Their chains were forged of ignorance and affection. In essence, they did not chose to be servants to God, but were naturally so. But God desired more than this, and so he placed a temptation in the form of a beautiful tree in the middle of this paradise. He put this test in front of them, to see whether they would remain slaves to him or if they would forget about their Maker in the heavy smoke of desire and gratification.
And forget him they did. For they did not love him yet. Love is an action, love is a choice, the greatest one a person can make. It says I chose you over all. Over all. They were slaves to God but they did not love him. They liked him well enough I’m sure, but how could they love him when he was all they knew? Love is not ignorant. It is the exact opposite. Affection can be ignorant, for it says “I like you because of this, this, and this.” Love says “You are mine, and I am your’s, despite all that hinders.”
Affection is open and free.
Love is binding and closed.
And so when they ate of the fruit they exercised the most beautiful and dangerous gift our Heavenly Father gave us⸺free will.
And in one bite they chose their lover, in one decision they cut their bonds with their Creator, in one act they sealed their fate. Before they were slaves to the Father of Lights, now they were slaves to the Father of Lies. You see, every choice we make is binding, just as love is binding, because love for something is involved in every choice. We cannot make a choice without some sort of bondage. When you chose to eat pizza instead of rice crispies, you are bound to eating pizza for as long as you continue to make that choice. You are choosing pizza over all else as long as you continue to eat it.
So when the first humans made their first choice, they became bound by it. You cannot have two masters⸺you cannot have two gods. They had rejected the great Lover himself and chosen the great Abuser. They had broken the chains that bound them to the Great I Am, and became chained to sin, the great I was.
So it was that the entire human race became bound to sin, slaves to gratification of the flesh and all of its desires.
Everyone chooses this slavery, it is a bondage of choice. No one is forced into sin, we chose it. If we look at it in the same lenses that we might chose a partner we could easily make the connection and say if we chose sin over everything else, we are in fact lovers of sin.
No one continues to sin if they do not desire it. Sin is always a choice, always a conscious decision to chose evil over good. When we sin we desire it; we become its lover for however brief an encounter, and then it leaves us outside its door feeling numb and hollow. But we chase it, we do, again and again, like a drug addict always searching for that next high. Sin is a drug, and we are its addicts. Sin is a whore, and we are her lovers. Sin is a god, and we are its worshipers.
Sin is a master, and we are its slaves.
But wait. Something’s off here, something in the language just doesn’t quite sit well with me. What is it?
What?
Oh yeah. We WERE slaves to sin. Not any longer. Someone set us free.
So there’s this man, you see. A man who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, lived a perfect life, and then was brutally slaughtered. Why?
For you.
For me.
See, that man wasn’t just a man. He was God, the same God that walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. The same one that placed a tree within the garden to test their loyalty to him. He was the Great I Am, the One who always one, the beautiful, uncreated one. He was the first master of mankind. And he wanted his servants back. And so he made a way, by paying the price for all of his lost servants.
I want us to understand something for second here. He took EVERY sin upon his shoulders. We can’t quite comprehend that nor do we fully understand what it means so I’m going to use repulsive language to hopefully help us to grasp a piece of what happened. In 2 Corinthians the most horrific piece of scripture is laid out for us. In it it says that Jesus became sin.
BECAME.
It’s a state of being.
If I become a rabbit, I am one.
So when Jesus, the Holy Son of God, took sin, he BECAME it.
He became a slanderer.
A murderer.
A rapist.
A sex-addict.
A porn addict.
A druggie.
A liar.
An adulterer.
An alcoholic.
Selfish.
Conceited.
Hateful.
Passive.
Lazy.
Boastful.
Depressed.
Self-loathing.
Violent.
Abusive.
Every single sin of the past, present, and future was on him, as if he had committed them. God couldn’t even look at his son, he was so marred with the filth of the darkness. In that hour of the most tortuous agony ever known to man, Jesus cries out to God, asking why his Heavenly Father had forsaken him.
Forsaken him.
Perhaps the tears of blood in the garden weren’t wept over the oncoming physical pain he would have to endure but the foreknowledge of being forsaken by his father, for the first time in eternity. But something beautiful happened when Christ was forsaken. We were accepted. We were all given a key to unlock the chains that bound us to the darkness and sin. It is a key painted red with the blood of the perfect Son of God, He who formed the mountains and drew up the waters for the sea. After accepting his gift of grace we can unlock our chains with this key. Bam. The chains are gone.
Gone.
We are no longer slaves to sin.
But we’re humans. We were designed to always be serving someone or something. Therefore in his everlasting love and mercy God designed that when we break off the chains to sin and the Prince of Darkness he lovingly chains us to righteousness, and we become slaves unto God.
That means we no longer have to serve the darkness, give in to temptations of the flesh, and the pleasures of the world. We are completely and utterly free. Christ didn’t die so that we could become free a little bit at a time, and eventually become fully free in heaven. It says we were crucified with him.
Crucified.
Dead.
It’s no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. Christ. Would Christ have to slowly overcome sin a little bit at a time? Our old self is dead, so if you see it showing up more than it should, chances are you’re dragging that corpse around because you don’t want to let it go.
Often times I think we make sin too much of a monster, too powerful. It has lost it’s power. It has no grip on you and me any longer. So if I give in to temptation and sin, it’s not because I can’t escape it, or am stuck in it, or mastered by it. Rather, it’s because I desired it more than the love of the Father of Lights, pursued it, and fell at it’s feet, where my former chains to it lie, and grabbed them tightly, and kissed them dearly like a forgotten lover. Then after I realize what I’ve done, I cry out to my master with unrelenting arrogance. “God!” I cry, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to, but I’m just so stuck in this sin! I don’t know how to get out of it! I’m just chained to it!”
And then God whispers, “No, you’re chained to me.”
There’s a terrible picture popular in Christianity that somehow we must focus on getting rid of our sin before focusing on pursuing God. Let me as clear as I can. Whatever sin you think you have, you don’t.
That’s scripture and if you want to argue the point to make yourself feel better, go right ahead. When Jesus bled upon that cross, he paid the whole price for all of our sin, meaning it’s washed away, God has forgotten about it, and whatever sin problem you think you have isn’t a problem of sin, but rather a lack of love for Him who died for it. Christ has already taken care of your sin. You have it no longer. Every time you’re tempted to go back to it, you have a clear choice. Love God or love sin. Be in the light or be in the darkness. Christ has chained you to righteousness, so if you feel like you’re chained to sin know that it’s only because you want it and are grabbing ahold of those broken chains. So many times we think, “How am I ever supposed to get free from this sin?” when really what we’re asking is, “How am I ever supposed to enjoy God more than this sin?”
Instead of asking God to free you from your sin, ask him to help you to fall in love with him more. You know he will gladly do so, and in concentrating on being chained to your loving master you will forget about the love you shared for sin and darkness.
Remember, every time we sin, it’s us stretching out our hands as far as we can from the chains that bind us to righteousness and grabbing ahold of our old chains. Every time we sin, it’s not because we can’t help our earthly impulses, it’s because we can’t let go of a dead and rotting corpse that used to mean so much to us.
The chains are gone.
Freedom is found in the service of the Savior.
The Darkness is left behind in the relentless pursuit of the Light.

“If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

“For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

“What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”