Sin

I hear a lot of complaints that we don’t hear much about sin anymore. If true, that’s too bad because sin is something we all have in common. I don’t want to be part of that problem, so today I would like to talk about sin.

The Supreme Court, Congress, the President, gays and straights, Christians, the saved and the unsaved, the churched and the unchurched, murderers, rapists, liars, slanderers, Muslims, blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, conservative and liberal Christians, TV preachers, porn addicts, sex addicts, drug addicts, the cool kids at school, soccer moms, Tiger fans….

The all have some things in common:

1. They don’t determine what is sin. God does that.

2. They all sin. Only God doesn’t do that.

It doesn’t help to try to “reclassify” some things as “not sin.” It doesn’t matter what we call it. Sin is sin. The good news is that God has provided a solution to sin. Those who repent, (that doesn’t mean they stop sinning. It means they turn away from it.)  recognize they are sinners and that they can’t do anything about it themselves, who turn to Christ and acknowledge that He defines sin and let Him deal with it in their lives become new creatures in Christ and the sin problem is solved. They still sin, but they don’t like it so much. They want to avoid it. They are forgiven for it. 

That’s the basics about sin. But there are some other “fun facts” about sin that deserve attention.

We love to compare sins. Surely some create more problems than others. A serial killer does more harm than a tax evader, but both sin. In fact, you could argue the tax evader is actually preventing problems but that’s a subject for another day.  All sin makes us worthy of hell and unworthy of heaven. So quit feeling better because other folks have committed and are committing “worse” sins. God doesn’t grade on the curve. 

We think some folks are good and some are bad…no matter how we judge that, they all sin. There is none good but God.

We think after we come to Christ we don’t sin. First of all I don’t know why anyone believes that. There certainly isn’t any evidence of that in what I have observed. It certainly isn’t true. I came to Christ years ago and still sin. I will say this. Once we are in Christ sin doesn’t have the victory over us. We don’t like sin. But we still do it. Some things we know are sin but we still struggle with. Other things Jesus hasn’t yet revealed to us as sin. You see Jesus is kind. He knows we couldn’t handle it if we were hit with all our sin at once. So he moves us from sin to sin. As we learn to deal with one; we are shown another.

We really don’t have time to worry about everyone else’s sin. We ALL have plenty enough of our own. Sometimes we seem to think that because we are forgiven, we don’t need to worry about our own sins and can bother folks about theirs. Not true. Jesus deals with us every day about our sin and cleaning up our lives. It’s a full time job; so quit focusing on everyone else.

Convicting folks of sin isn’t our job. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit and He’s very good at it and doesn’t need our help. Telling people about God’s solution to sin IS our job. Telling by showing is always better than telling by talking. So focus on dealing with the sin that remains in your life. Enjoy your time with Jesus as He helps you with that. Share with others how being In Him is so much better than trying to be good all by yourself. In so doing you will be following the great commission. That will make you very cool.

I feel that when we get to heaven we will be surprised by who is there. There will be some who publicly struggled with sin all their lives, but they were In Him. It just shouldn’t be any surprise that we find ourselves there. Sin has been conquered. There is a solution. It’s just not obvious to everyone.

I think I used the word “sin” about forty times. Hope that’s enough about sin. Maybe you should make copies of this and hand it out to folks every time they say that we don’t hear enough about sin. Ops. I think I just stumbled over the sin of pride. Better get back to work.

Be blessed.

Nick