The Malignancy of Sin
Do you not know that a little leaven
leavens the whole lump of dough?
1 Corinthians 5:6
Sin is as deadly as it is deceptive. It is man’s innate inability to conform to the moral character and desires of God. John says, “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), which is not only a failure to obey God’s moral law, but also living as if it does not exist. It is a violation of the foremost commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37, cf. v. 38). It is portrayed in Scripture as “the deeds of the flesh” and it includes things like, “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these . . . those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-21).
The apostle Paul makes it clear that when sin becomes acceptable, it will completely permeate and pervert a church like “a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (1 Cor. 5:6). The metastasizing corruption of sin in individuals and institutions can also be likened to cancer, a disease in which abnormal cells are able to hide from the immune system and multiply out of control, invading not only nearby tissues, but also traveling to distant parts of the body to form new tumors. Like the disease, moral cancer is never satisfied until every cell in every organ is destroyed. And for the unsaved, it has penetrated and corrupted the whole of their being (Isa. 1:6; Eph. 4:17-19), including their body (Rom. 8:10), their mind (Rom. 8:6; 1 Cor. 2:14; 4:4; Titus 1:15), their will (John 8:34; Jer. 13:23; Rom. 7:18), and their heart (Jer. 17:9). And in our culture today we witness the insatiable appetite of sin’s unrestrained invasion.
The demands of the LGBTQIA+ sexual anarchists are a case in point. It’s not enough for people to accept them, even tolerate them; their goal is for everyone to celebrate their lifestyle—something authentic Christians will never do. The forbidden perversion of homosexuality (Lev. 18:22, 29; 20:13; Rom. 1:26; 1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10) ignited God’s judgment upon ancient Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities (Gen. 14:8; cf. Jude 7), when “the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” (Gen. 19:24). Even Lot was “oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men” in Sodom, “for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds” (2 Peter 2:7, 8). The heart of every Christian should likewise feel tormented by the rampant immorality that now defines our culture and is now being promoted in apostate churches that are Christian in name only.
Fortunately, as Christians, we are not left without resource, “for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (2 Cor. 10:4). The church is in desperate need of men who are bold and discerning—men devoted to preaching the gospel and helping believers obey Paul’s exhortation recorded in Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.” Men who are “able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9). May this be our passion and priority as wield the most powerful weapon on earth, “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17).
© COPYRIGHT NOTICE 2023 BY DAVID HARRELL AND SHEPHERD’S FIRE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
