The story of the Prodigal Son illustrates the fact that “you are not a Christian if you enjoy sin.” Mike McKinley writes,
The son’s turnaround began when he saw the reality of his sin clearly. He realized what a fool he had been, how offensive behavior and attitudes were, and how ratty the pleasures of sin were in comparison to the joys of his father’s home. In Jesus’s words, “He came to himself”—he came to his senses.
Since a Christian is dead to sin and alive to Christ, when he does sin, he finds that it doesn’t suit him. He cannot be comfortable living in it. Although sin may provide him with a moment of pleasure and enjoyment, he is later plagued with feelings of regret, disappointment, and shame. If a true follower of Jesus is snared in sin, he will eventually have a moment like the Prodigal son, had in the pigsty where he comes to hate his sin. He does not grow in an ever-increasing love for sin, but as time goes by, he hates it.
—Mike McKinley, Am I Really a Christian? (Crossway, 2011), 70.
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