GENESIS 4:7 - The Need to Master Sin

“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

The Need to Master Sin

All too often I find myself subconsciously treating sin like it's simply an inevitable byproduct of being a fallen creature rather than a conspiring entity "crouching at the door" that I must constantly battle.

This trickles downwards and manifests itself in the idea that so long as I'm sincere in my remorseful request for forgiveness, then the matter is resolved and I can move onto more active and important Christian duties - that God probably cares more about anyways - like Bible study, prayer, apologetics etc. On the contrary however, this verse is unmistakably clear when it comes to what God wants us to do: master it!

Short-Sightedness

It's easy to see the affects of murder but much harder to wrap our temporal minds around the harm of say, an impure thought, unless we consider it in the larger scope of its slippery degenerative effects, as the thought-provoking article What Sin Is & What Sin Does states: "Each sin makes the next one a bit easier. Over time, the conduct will become entirely acceptable, and we will sin without a qualm. Sin is addictive like a drug. As the addiction becomes stronger, the ideal depreciates until it is completely gone." After reading this I realized the sad truth of this statement as I reflected on the profound difference between how seriously I used to treat some sins which I can now barely blink an eye over.

A Losing Battle

We're told to battle against sin, but are then told that it's a battle we're bound to lose, now and for the rest of our lives. Is it any wonder we end up with blasé attitudes towards prevention and instead concentrate instead on forgiveness? C.S. Lewis offers great insight and encouragement on this matter in Mere Christianity (using the example of chastity):

"[...] many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question. one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."

(back to Genesis 4)