Our Sin–God’s Love

Scripture

But God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

~Romans 5:8, NRSV

Quote

Call no man worthless for whom Christ died.

~Muretus

As evangelicals, we believe God loves all people even though all have sinned and fall exceedingly short of the perfect standard we see in Christ. I think about sin a lot but it’s mostly my sin that I dwell on. All sin is antichrist. There is no such thing as a good sin. All sin is destructive in nature. Some sins  are more destructive than others. I hate cigarettes, the smoke will give me an immediate headache and I do appreciate friends respecting me enough not to smoke in my presence. Yet the truth of the matter is that drugs and that includes alcohol are far more harmful than tobacco. Our society says that alcohol is a disease not a sin. If it is a disease, why do they label bottles and cans.

Sin has far greater consequences than lung cancer or a pickled liver. Sin alienates us from God because sin produces guilt and shame. The only remedy for sin is Jesus. Technically, sin cannot be forgiven, it must be judged and this is exactly what happened on the cross. Jesus literally became sin for us. He, the holy One, took our sins upon His own body so that when He died on the cross, sin died with Him.

Jesus not only suffered the judgment our sins deserved; He gives us the desire and the will to overcome sin. If the desire to overcome sin in not in you then Christ is not in you. The key to saying no to sin is to understand the price that Jesus paid for our forgiveness: Sin got judgment and we got forgiveness. We should want nothing to do with the cause of Jesus death and it was sin. We should value our life in relationship to the price Jesus paid for our redemption.

Retired Veteran with a Smart Wife

Early one morning, an elderly retired veteran just finished a piece of artwork he had been working on and yelled to his wife, “Honey! Come see what I created! It’s an abstract panorama, depicting the seven years of the Obama administration!”

She yelled back, “Flush the toilet Bob, and come eat your breakfast.”