Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” John 8:34 (NIV)
When Jesus talks about “everyone who sins,” that includes all of us. Why? Because by nature all of us are slaves to sin.
Jesus is not saying that sinning makes you a slave. He is saying that your slavery makes you sin. Our sinning is the evidence of our slavery, and it is universal.
The principle is not “If you do the wrong things you will get trapped by them.” It is “because you are trapped, you will do the wrong things.” We are not sinners because we choose to sin. We choose to sin because we are sinners.
We sin because we want to. The reason we want to sin is that, by nature, sin resides in our hearts. Sin is not just near us, it is in us. You can see why this is such a sensitive subject. It goes to the heart of who we are and what it is that we need to be saved from.
We would all like to think that sin is a dark force outside of us, and that we have the ability to say “no” to it. We understand that we’re fallen beings, and so sometimes we will get it wrong, but we want to believe that when we come to our senses we have the ability to get it right.
React to the statement: “Sin is a dark force outside of me, and I have the ability to say ‘no’ to it.”