Sin and the Gospel

3 John 2
Beloved, in regard to all things I pray that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.

In a previous post I outlined one of the main reasons for the existence of pain, how it alerts us to the fact that something is wrong, that change is required. I also pointed out from the Scripture how God is a good God who wants to bless us. I began to show that God begins by working with us to put our soul - that is our mind, will and emotions in order so that He can then fulfil His desire to prosper us in all things. The chief root problem we face is SIN, which is the rejection of God, the rejection of his loving authority, which is motivated by the idolization of SELF. We want to look at God's solution for sin and the problems that flow from it, but first its important to have a more thorough understanding of the nature of sin and what makes it so very wrong.

Sin is anything in which we violate the commandment to love God with all we've got, and to love our neighbour as ourself. I think all would agree that the world would be better if all people loved others as much as themselves. To break this commandment of love or any of the other commandments that flow from it - such as the Ten Commandments - is sin. The ways people despise others, reject people, hurt them, cheat them and fail to help them when they need it are all a reflection of the ugliness of sin. God is against sin not only because it hurts Him. He is against it because it hurts people, including the sinner.

How does sin express itself? It does so in many ways, and many of these ways are revealed in the Bible. Some things are sins that are done, other things are sins because we should have done them and have not done them.

Murder is a serious sin, but Jesus taught that you can murder in your heart just by hating a person. Adultery is a sin, since it destroys the love relationship of marriage - but Jesus taught that just looking at a woman to lust for her is adultery in the heart. To reject God's Word is sin, to refuse to consider it and believe it is sin, to be ungrateful for all God has provided is sin, to be proud and independent of God is sin, to worship anything apart from the true God is sin, to envy, to hate, to lie, to steal, to cheat people - all this is sin. To dishonor God, to fail to give time and money to God, to neglect the poor, to dishonor parents and to be greedy for possessions - all this is sin. All of this things are wrong. God says they are wrong and our consciences if they are still working tell us they are wrong. A truly good God, a truly righteous God, cannot accept sin.

Unless sin is dealt with a person can never be re-united with God.

Sin is an extremely serious problem. According to the Bible, sin can never be forgiven except for a blood sacrifice. If a persons sins are not forgiven, they will be cut off from God and all His blessings forever. In the Old Testament, the blood of innocent lambs, goats and bulls was shed to cover the sin of the people of God and enable God to deal mercifully with them. However, this was not God's final solution for sin. Otherwise we would still need to be sacrificing animals in order to approach God.

For hundreds of years the chosen people of God, the people of Israel,  waited for their promised Messiah - God's anointed man who would set them free. Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah, but He was not exactly what they were expecting. They were expecting someone to free them from the occupying Roman army, but Jesus came to set people free firstly from their most serious problem - sin. What good is it to enjoy political and economic freedom for a few years if for all eternity your sin destroys you? God's priority in sending a Messiah was to rescue people from their sins. Along with that, God broke the power of sin's curse for all who will come to God in faith and meet His conditions for deliverance.

According to God's law sin requires the death penalty. That is why animals were formerly sacrificed. It was their life in exchange for the life of the sinner. What surprised everyone was that God's strategy for finally defeating sin was not firstly in some display of supernatural power, but rather in BECOMING THE SACRIFICE to pay for sin. The death penalty must be executed for your sin. The good news for you is that it was executed on Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was nailed to a wooden cross by Romans at the instigation of the religious leaders of the day, and died the death of a worthless criminal in your place.

Get your free registration and log in to view entire article