What a great week this was! The passionate fire I've had for Christ continued to grow and He blessed me with great times with old friends along with fun times with new friends. But even when I'm at one of the highest, happiest points in my life, I still slip and fall constantly.
So here's what I have to say about sin.
Every human does it, no matter how perfect or right with God they seem. But everyone knows that. Everyone also is (hopefully) aware that because Jesus died on the cross for us, our sins are forgiven by our merciful Creator so that we may spend eternity in Heaven. That's the plain black and white truth. But there are some grey areas...
Many believers, including myself, often get thoughts in their head like "well if my sins are all already forgiven, then why not just sin all I want?" Or "If Jesus is going to love me no matter what, why make the effort to do the right thing?" The most often-occurring thought that slips into my head about sin is "Look at that person; he/she sins way worse and more often than I do so I'm really not that bad."
These thoughts are put in our heads by the enemy so we will refrain from submitting our life completely to God and doing good works in His name. But here's the truth and some scripture to prove it:
Yes, God did send Jesus to pay the price for our wickedness which means that when we die we are ensured a room in His House, no matter what we do. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23
And yes, God does love us regardless of the good or bad works we do. "But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." Psalm 86:15
These two facts mean that we don't have to go through life worrying whether we're going to make it to heaven or not. We are free from the constant stress of trying to do enough good works so we can make it to Heaven and trying to refrain from doing bad works so we can avoid Hell. Some may interpret this freedom as being able to do whatever they want without punishment. But what an insult that is! God gave us the greatest gift of all time, eternal life with Him and we did NOTHING to deserve it. It's like being on the "naughty list" and getting everything you could ever want from Santa. To go out and sin againt the Lord just because you know you're unpunished is to take the most precious gift you could ever imagine for granted. To sin just because you can is to insult the cross. Don't get me wrong, it is human nature to sin and my point isn't that you've insulted the cross if you have ever sinned. My point is that if we repetitively commit the same sin and don't attempt to refrain from it just because we know that we will go to Heaven no matter what, we are taking God's grace for granted. The fact is that every follower of God is going to sin and struggle and give into temptation, but the more we fall in love with God the bigger our desire grows to be more like Him and to turn away from sin.
This brings me to my second point: Comparing sin. I am going to be vulnerable here and admit that this is one of my biggest struggles as a Christian. When I feel guilty about my sin, I attempt to make myself feel better by looking at the people around me who sin more often or worse than I do. I read recently in a devotional that "We judge ourselves from a horizontal stance when we should be judging ourselves from a vertical one." Sin is a personal thing. When we stand at the gates of Heaven, our Father is not going to compare us to those who were around us. He's going to look at the way we lived our own lives. If God has that mindset then we should too. Some people will sin more than us and some will sin less, but we ALL fall short of the glory of God. When we stop judging ourselves from this horizontal stance and judge from a vertical one instead, we realize that we could never be as perfect as Jesus, but that's who we should strive to be like.
My challenges for myself this week are:
to rejoice in God's grace, but never take it for granted.
to be free from worry and guilt when I do sin, but constantly try to turn away from it.
to not be content with myself when I look at the way people around me sin, but to look at the way Jesus acts and try to harder and harder to be more like Him.
Please join me and challenge yourself too. Have a blessed week! :)
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." Romans 3:23-24
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