Sin looks to consume you, and it will hunger for your life as long as you live. Its like a predator laying in wait for a moment to strike. It will lure you with desire until it has grown to maturity, and when it has consumed you you will die. That's pretty obvious though isn't it? When a beast consumes you, then you die. I would be dead too, if a lion consumed me; so it is with sin, its design is to kill us. These three are our true enemies: temptation, sin and death, and the three of them are allies. They are a house of evil that stand together. None of them are of the lord, and in the end they will pass away to be blotted out from our very memories forever and ever. Praise be to the king of kings.
The kingdom of God is like a war; God is the army saving us from captivity, and the walls of our prison are temptation, sin, and death. They separate us from him. And its a well defended fortress with centuries of ancestral sin as its guards, except the archers do not aim out at God, whom can not be defeated. The archers fire inward at us; keeping us stolen by fear and shame. The foundation is sin and the mortar is desire but the wall is death. The crowning architectural achievement of the enemy is this wall of death; for Satan could not have made it himself. The enemy is not a child made in the image of God, and therefore he can not create things. Only creators can create and so he must use us to construct our own prisons. This is why Satan is the tempter; he provides us with the materials needed for his designs; this is temptation. Like an evil blueprint for death we look over it and make plans to destroy ourselves. Sin is the work of our hands and the finished product is death. Satan makes death through us by tempting us to sin; it is for this reason that sin's main goal for all times is to bring about death on the children of God. How then are we saved from this horrible cycle? The army of the lord bashes down the wall of death and then he turns our tools to good. Instead if building up the wall we are trained to tare it down. We are given the tools of deconstruction, dispossession, selflessness, and love.
Death is a force but God's love is demanding as the grave. On the third day Jesus rose to life and tore down the wall. Death could not hold him from God's love. Now sin is like a starving bear searching for a soul to eat, but death has been turned against it. One died for all so all have died. To take up your cross is to die to yourself, and dying to your self is the end of Sin. Who have rest from sin? The dead. So we who are living give our selves over to death that sin might be swallowed up in victory, starved and abandoned. Sin's goal is now our greatest weapon. Now only temptation remains; Satan's last foot hold. Cling fast to the holy spirit. Those who are led by the spirit find the path to life, and it is a guide to all truth.
So put to death the old self and be born again, not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husbands will, but born of God; and God is spirit.
Sin is hungry but among the camp of God's people it only finds the food we give it.
