Hello, everybody. I want to tell you a little bit about the product you are now staring in wonderment at, which must look strangely to you like a CD. Well, it is a CD. But before you think I’ve embarked on a singing career, please read the following. I’ll start at the sort-of beginning.

In 1996 I traveled to Newport News, Virginia, at the invitation of Pastor Robert Allen to deliver a series of talks on the subject of sin. Why did Pastor Allen want me? I was a noted expert on the subject—yeah. In truth, I had discovered something remarkable in God’s Word concerning "slaves of sin." Ever hear the phrase? It’s a scriptural one, but dangerously misused by those dedicated to the task of damning other human beings (to hell, preferably) who smoke, drink, miss church, or buy lottery tickets.

I thought, Something must be wrong here. These people who are condemning other people seem just as rotten themselves, only worse. They seem just as enslaved to "something" as their more overtly-flawed counterparts. Naturally, I searched the scriptures for answers. And there, in the book of Romans, I saw it—two simple verses from Romans, chapter six. In verse 18, Paul declared the Romans to be "freed from sin, " but then, oddly, in the very next verse, he stated: "As a man am I saying this, because of the infirmity of your flesh."

Do you see? In the same breath, Paul declared the Romans freed from sin and infirm in the flesh. This hit me like a two-hundred pound hailstone. To Paul, being freed from sin had nothing to do with how much or how little one sinned. The Romans were freed from sin and sinning simultaneously. The unavoidable conclusion was: Freedom from sin was an objective fact, not a subjective condition based on behavior. Thus, this corollary: Being a slave of sin had nothing necessarily to do with one’s deeds, but with one’s disposition. In other words, the phrase "slave of sin" included not only those who indulged their flesh, but those who constantly strove to fix it. A slave of sin was focused on sin—one way or another!

Mother Theresa was just as much a slave of sin as Adolph Hitler.

Oh, man.

This information changed my life—not eventually, but at once. Sin no longer had hold of me. I’m not saying I never sinned again, but that sin no longer had hold of me; please appreciate the difference. I was free of my imperfections, even while in their midst. This gave me an amazing new peace. I now had mature understanding of Jesus’ opinion of me, and because of this, my imperfections lost their power. By allowing myself to be imperfect, and by believing the testimony of Christ through Paul, that I was—even in the midst of my flaws—freed from sin, all guilt fell away. Did this make me want to sin more? No! The revelation had such a calming effect on my psyche that I wanted to sin less. This is quite possibly the ultimate paradox. It is also quite probably the most underappreciated truth in scripture.