“Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” -James 1:14-15 NLT
Fun topic today…sin! You don’t want to talk about it? Or even think about it? I get it, because sin has become a bad, dirty word. People would rather believe it doesn’t exist (or is somehow a man-made construct) rather than think about it might apply to them. I mean how small-minded it is to believe that a loving God would punish someone who is just doing what feels right to them?!
Well…is that really the truth? Let’s talk it out.
Look, sin is not an easy subject to discuss but it is absolutely necessary and… surprisingly full of good news, more than you might think!
Let’s start by boiling it down: what is sin anyhow? Sin is a fancy word for separation from God. It can look like greed, lust, gossip, pride, jealousy, hatred, anger, envy, idolatry and more (Galatians 5:19-21 provides quite a list of sins).
Scripture tells us we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s plan for our life (Romans 3:23-24). Whether you have given your life to Christ or not, we all start out as sinners and on an even playing field! I sin, you sin, we all sin. And as much as we might want to deny it, we all know in our heart of hearts that this is true.
On any given day, many of the thoughts that go through my head are NOT pretty! My thoughts can be SO selfish and so all about me. But I’m a pretty good person, right?! At the end of the day, most of us think that we are pretty good, and yet, our thoughts, actions, etc. likely indicate otherwise.
But that’s not all, I wish it was just my thoughts — it’s also the words that come out of my mouth that hurt the people closest to me that I love…oh my friends, THAT is indeed sin. In James 3:9-10 it says “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” Ouch!
Yes, it should not be…but it is. As it says in James 1:15 “…when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” That’s crazy…but think about that for a minute…sin brings death. When we sin, we separate ourselves more from God and sow a little bit of death into our lives. Honestly, that both humbles and kinda scares me, and makes me want to live a more sinless, holier life.
You can certainly go ahead and deny sin at your own peril, but believing it doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. And it doesn’t make the consequences of participating in sin any less real.
I’ve heard it said- Sin will take you farther than you want to go; it will keep you longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you were willing to pay.*
If that doesn’t send chills up your spine, I don’t know what will!
That sounds like hell on Earth, and that’s exactly what it is my friends. This sounds like the way addiction and other unhealthy dependencies function. It’s all good and fun at first, seemingly harmless or even enjoyable, but then reaches a point where it’s no longer fun and becomes incredibly difficult to stop. There’s always a price to pay in the end.
But here’s the upside: if we don’t try to understand and recognize sin in our lives, then we will never grasp just how wide, and long and deep God’s love is for any of us. And this is the good news!!
God’s intolerance of sin in our lives is in part because He is just. But the other part is wrapped in compassion because He knows us, loves us, and wants what’s best for us. Jesus came to save us from our sin and showed us by His actions how He dealt with sin. And here’s a hint, Jesus didn’t walk up to people telling them they were horrible sinners that were all going to hell.
Not real sure why some people of “faith” think that’s the best way to draw anyone to Jesus…? If He didn’t speak that way, then why should we?
If you remember the story of the woman at the well in John’s gospel, the 4th chapter, Jesus met and talked with her in the heat of the day. First she was surprised that a Jewish man would talk to her, after all, she was a Samaritan, and also woman of ill repute who was shunned by her community for her sinful lifestyle. You see, she had been married 5 times and now was living with a new boyfriend. That’s pretty astounding, even by today’s standards. In a Bible Study on John, my pastor Colie pointed out: Jesus came, sat, and talked with her…saw her in her sinful state and loved her anyhow.
He wanted better for her than the life she was living where she was so ashamed she had to get water during the heat of the day when nobody else was around. So He offered her Himself – living water. His compassion for the hard life she was living broke through to her. His love rescued her out of the depths of where her choices had taken her.
When no one in society wanted anything to do with her – Jesus took a longer route to meet with her. It says he “had to go to through Samaria” which is not the shortest route, but basically taking long way around —- just to have an encounter with her.
That’s what Jesus does…He goes to where we are to find us in our need. I really believe if we could fully understand the depth of God’s love for us, we’d turn from everything that is not satisfying us. All the while, the devil continues his smear campaign against God and time and time again, we stumble and fall prey to his lies: “God let you down. God doesn’t hear. Worse yet, God doesn’t care. God is punishing you. You’ll never be good enough for God to love you!”
But nothing could be farther from the truth. So take a minute to sit down and get some truth into you today and ask God how to rightly see the situations in your life that maybe aren’t pleasing to Him. The Bible is the best source to go to find out what God thinks and wants for us and what our response should be to His unending love.
But don’t take my word for it, study it out for yourselves in the scriptures I have referenced below and so many more.
Jesus simply & lovingly showed the woman at the well that her life of sin wasn’t working and instead of condemning her, He offered her a better way. My friends, if today you are tired and weary of the way it has been, know this…that there IS something more, something better! Jesus is THAT better thing and the living water that you and I both need, especially in a world that can be so dry and lacking. I encourage you today to look at sin in view of God’s mercy and love for you.
Scripture references:
-Galatians 5:19-21 NLT
When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
-Romans 3:23-24 NLT
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.
-James 3:8-10 ESV
…but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
-John 10:10 NIV
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
-Ephesians 3:14-19 ESV
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
-1 Timothy 2:3-6 NIV
This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.
-John 4:1-28 NIV
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John — although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
-John 8:1-11 NIV
But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
* I researched and am not sure who is the originator of this quote. It seems most folks think it was Baptist pastor Adrian Rogers
#BigDeal #goodnews #sins #sinisfunforaseason #GodsLove #ChristianLife
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