The Sin Bay, What Does The Bible Say About Pirating Software?

Last year Microsoft made $13.7 billion. Big budget movies like Transformers 3 and Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince made $300 million each. The music industry made $10.4 billion. With all these people getting rich, what is wrong with downloading software, movies, and music from illegal pirating websites? If I download a copy of Microsoft Office will Bill Gates go hungry?

There is no question that pirating software (making copies of illegally or legally obtained media in your possession for further distribution regardless of financial gain) is against Federal Law. But many have convinced themselves that pirating music, movies, and software for personal use is not a violation of the law.  Some also reason that the law is overly restrictive and senseless and have decided that they will not obey it.  Even more are compelled by their sense of need for whatever they are stealing that they ignore their conscience and take whatever they want.

Of course whatever your reason for stealing intellectual property, it is still stealing.  Exodus 20:15 clearly says "You shall not steal." Stealing is taking the property of another without permission. When you make or receive a copy of any intellectual property that you have not properly paid for you are taking from the creator of that property the right to receive compensation.  This is the textbook definition of stealing.

Our opinions o f whether or not copyright law is right or wrong is irrelevant.  The fact is that it is the law and we are admonished in Scripture to "be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient" (Titus 3:1). Pirating software is illegal in the United States and whether or not we agree with this law or not Scripture instructs us to submit to these laws. Paul tells us in Romans 13:1 “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” (Romans 13:1) Paul is saying that we obey the authorities because they receive their authority from God alone.

 What really drives the pirating community is greed. Christians and non-Christians alike have convinced themselves that their need for a song, movie, or software title far outweighs whatever God has to say on the subject.  They have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.” (Romans 1:25) God has spoken in regards to stealing and obeying the authorities but some have exchanged that knowledge for the lie that it isn't stealing, or they are not hurting anyone, or that God doesn't care about pirating, or these industries are ripping us off and deserve it.

Of course these are all excuses that allow us to keep doing what we know is wrong. We are good at justifying our sin.  However, God desires that we would simply repent of our sin and turn to Him.  Do you really need that song, movie, or program that badly?  Is separating yourself from God worth it?  If you are pirating software, music, or movies delete them today and commit to live above reproach in this area of your life.

Out of the Wreck, I Arise

 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? -Romans 8:35

"If we desire our faith to be strengthened, we should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened." -George Mueller

God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says—“I will be with him in trouble.” It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man’s life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We are “more than conquerors in all these things.” Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.
 

“Shall tribulation …?” Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may—exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you.
 
“Shall anguish …?”—can God’s love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
 

“Shall famine …?”—can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?
 

Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God’s character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it—the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.
 

Chambers, O. (1993). My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the year (NIV edition.). Westwood, NJ: Barbour and Co.

Getting a Hold On Grace

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ” -Romans 5:1–3, NIV

"Just as the sinner's despair of any hope from himself is the first prerequisite of a sound conversion, so the loss of all confidence in himself is the first essential in the believer's growth in grace." -A.W.Pink

The concept of grace is defined as God’s active involvement on behalf of his people. In the New Testament Divine grace becomes embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, who demonstrates visibly the dynamic nature of God’s grace and fulfills in his ministry of redemption the old covenant promises relative to God’s gracious dealings with humanity (Jn 1:14, 17).
 
God’s grace manifested in Jesus Christ makes it possible for God to forgive sinners and to gather them in the church, the new covenant community. During his ministry, Jesus repeatedly pronounced the words of forgiveness on a great number of sinners and ministered God’s mercy to a variety of desperate human needs. Through teachings such as the father’s forgiveness of the prodigal son and the search for the lost sheep, Jesus made it clear that he had come to seek and save those who were lost. But ultimately it was his redemptive death on the cross that opened wide the gate of salvation for repentant sinners to find access to God’s forgiving and restorative grace. 

This simple truth is formulated in the doctrine of justification by faith through grace (Rom 3:23; Ti 3:7). According to this teaching, God’s gracious provision of the substitutionary death of Christ enables him to pronounce a verdict of “just” or “not guilty” on repentant sinners and to include them in his eternal purposes. As a result, they enter into the realm of God’s gracious activity, which enables them to implement the process of individual sanctification in cooperation with the Holy Spirit.

God’s grace manifested in Jesus Christ also makes it possible for God to bestow on believers undeserved benefits that enrich their lives and unite them together in the church, the body of Christ. Their acceptance on the basis of grace endows them with a new status as children of God, members of the household of God, so that they relate to him as to their heavenly Father (Gal 4:4–6). Consequently, they become members of a community where race, class, and sex distinctions are irrelevant, since they all became equal inheritors of God’s age-long promise to Abraham of universal blessing. In order to enrich their individual lives and to assure the usefulness of their participation in the life of the new community, the Holy Spirit graciously energizes believers with a variety of gifts for the performance of ministries designed to benefit the church (Rom 12:6–8). 
 
Finally, God’s grace manifested in Jesus Christ makes it possible for God to cause believers to reflect his grace in their character and relationships. The uncompromising condition for receiving God’s grace is humility (Jas 4:6; 1 Pt 5:5). Such humility in relation to God enables believers to practice humility in regard to other people. From a position of grace, they can set aside selfishness and conceit in order to treat others with deference (Phil 2:3–4) in an attitude of mutual servanthood (Eph 5:21), and in a spirit of mutual forgiveness (Mt 18:23–35) so that even their communication can exhibit divine grace (Col 4:6). Since the grace of Jesus Christ constitutes the existential context of the lives and relationships of believers, they are exhorted not to pervert the grace of God into ungodly practice (Jude 1:4) but instead to grow in the grace of the Lord (2 Pt 3:18).

The essential meaning of grace in the Bible refers to God’s disposition to exercise goodwill toward his creatures. This favorable disposition of God finds its supreme expression in Jesus Christ. By its very definition, this grace is rendered fully accessible to all humans with no other precondition than a repentant desire to receive it (Ti 2:11–12). As a result, the human condition of alienation from God and from his purposes becomes replaced with access to the otherwise unapproachable majesty of God represented by a throne, so that his grace may become available to meet human need (Heb 4:16). The tragic alternative to receiving God’s grace is to remain in hopeless alienation or to pursue sterile attempts to merit God’s favor through human efforts doomed to futility (Rom 1:21). God’s unconditional acceptance of sinners may be conditioned only by their rejection of his acceptance.

Because Christ represents the fulfillment, the embodiment, and the dispenser of divine grace, the early Christians freely referred to God’s grace as “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This grace was conceived as being so basic and so pervasive to their individual lives and to the existence of their communities of faith that they naturally coupled the traditional greeting of shalom (“peace”) with a reference to the grace of Jesus Christ. This is the reason for the repetition of numerous variations on the basic greeting formula found in almost every book of the NT, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all” (2 Thes 3:18).
 
Elwell, W. A., & Comfort, P. W. (2001). Tyndale Bible dictionary. Tyndale reference library (551). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.