How to end our own civil war

“The evil are trapped by their own sinful acts; they are caught in the net of their own sin.” (Prov. 5:22)
 
In a passage like this we should think of sin in personal terms. In this verse, picture the sinful act as a person laying out a trap for the unwary who happen to pass by. What this amounts to is an inner spiritual civil war in which the sinful acts of a person become the sinners’ own enemies. People sin and then find themselves caught in the net of their own actions.
      A sinful act is not some isolated thing that a person does. It always has consequences. This helps build an even more complex net that continues to entangle and imprison the sinner. We do it to ourselves. In a certain way we are our own worst enemy. Until we understand the deceptive nature of sin’s opposition to righteousness, there is little hope to escape the trap. For the uninformed, sin appears to be something they happen to do now and then. It is separate, without personal consequences, not something intrinsically involved in who we are. Granted, this is as gloomy subject, but until we discover the nature and source of sin, we will never understand how it can be rendered impotent.
      Here is the biblical picture. It began with Adam and Eve’s decision to disobey God. The result was an alienation from God that became the determining factor in human nature. Created in God’s image, but at odds with our Creator. As a result history became an extended narrative on our propensity to act contrary to God’s will. It is not that people do things that are wrong, but that wrongness is part of who we are. Any attempt to formulate a righteous world is doomed to failure unless this point is understood. Society’s answer is to correct what we do, but the right answer is to correct who we are. And that, of course, is where biblical truth is rightly understood as the only successful answer. God entered his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ. A perfect life was climaxed with a sacrificial death followed by a victorious resurrection. Now a righteous God announces to his wayward children that by faith they can return to that rich and rewarding relationship that was his intention for us. Nothing short of Spiritual renewal – and I capitalize the word because nothing but the Holy Spirit can provide the necessary power – can overcome our tendency to sin. Restoration and renewal is the result of taking God at his word.
      We began with the picture of mankind ensnared by their own native tendency to do what is wrong. I don’t mean to say that people don’t do good things, only that, apart from God, sin remains in control. The forces of evil allow us to appear to be on the bright side of life but, if Christian theology is correct, the world is infected by sin and only faith in Christ can offer the transforming power for recovery and renewal.