My Kairos Prison Ministry brothers and I, who visit with inmates and have fellowship with them, have freedoms because we are on the outside that they do not have since they are on the inside. But—just like them on the inside—we are confined by walls. Just like them, we are confined by the walls of our sin.
Yes, we can walk out our front doors, get in our cars, and drive up into the mountains in order to walk miles through a forest and listen to birds sing. They can’t do that.
But I tell you, readers, we may drive back to our houses and park our cars and walk back in through our front doors and find ourselves confined by the walls of our sin.
Inside our houses there may be relationship problems with our wives or our children that are persistent. There may be a health problem that frightens us. There may be a financial problem that wears us down. There may be a work problem we have no knowledge how to fix. There may be an addiction problem that forces us to act in a way that is disrespectful of God.
Inside our houses, inside that wide world that appears to be open and free to us, we are confined by the walls of our sin.
WHY ARE WE CONFINED BY THE WALLS OF OUR SIN?
We Christians know that Satan exists. He’s why we are confined by the walls of our sin. Satan has existed since the Garden of Eden, and he will exist until he is thrown down in fire by Jesus at the end of the world. His purpose is to create pain and discord and hatred—and then, having been successful, to create even more pain and discord and hatred—among all of the people.
Ultimately he seeks to overthrow God Himself. He wants to BE God.
He cannot overthrow God because God wins. He cannot BE God because God already IS…and because God wins. But in the meantime, Satan can make us writhe with pain and misery and make us blast out at one another in sin-filled ways.
Satan’s power is formidable. But ultimately he is a loser.
All he can provide is hatred and fear and pain. Hatred and fear and pain LOSE in the face of what the Christian Trinity provides, which is love and forgiveness and peace.
So why are we confined by the walls of our sin?
Because there is—and there will be—a struggle within us to do good when we are enticed by Satan to do bad.
Until we find salvation in Christ Jesus, we feel an URGENCY to do bad. It is an URGENCY to hurt—either other people, or ourselves, or God Himself. When we do find salvation in Christ Jesus, immediately our URGENCY disappears.
We still sin—I DO—but our URGENCY to sin disappears.
We are still confined by the walls of our sin—but we are safer, as saved people, within those walls than we were before we were saved.