Sin hangs over life like a dark, ominous cloud. It covers everything, and rains havoc down into our day-to-day existence. Sin is ruinous and destructive, killing all the flowers in the garden (remember the garden?).
Sin is a perennial nemesis to peace, production, and progress. Sin keeps us in a self-centered twist and prevents companionship with God. He is always our Father, of course, but sin makes Him unhappy with us...which can't be good.
Thank goodness we only sin occasionally (here we wink, for so we think). This distorted perception is actually a big part of the problem: Either we do not understand God's standards for our thoughts and behavior, or we are blind to our own patterns. The result? We don't recognize sin in ourselves.
So what is sin? Simply put, it's anything that displeases God. Knowing sin when we see it (meaning do it) is a matter of knowing God's standards. God's Word tells us what sin is, and how to spot it. The chapter titled, "Sin", p. 76 in Book 1, Studies on Getting Closer to God, gives several lists of sins, and provides a thorough discussion on how to deal with sin.
We tend to think of bars and loose sexual behavior, or murder, or bank robberies and embezzlement, or perhaps malicious gossip and envy...as sin. But there are a myriad of behaviors that fall under the category of sin...things we do repeatedly and don't even recognize as bad.
For example, anything that is done outside of faith is sin. There are many other instances of hard-to-see sins, but functioning without faith will do to illustrate. Faith is hard to maintain in our lives, because we are bombarded by the world, the devil, and the constant impulsiveness of our sinful natures. Any worry or doubt or self-dependency or questioning God's motives or even fear can quickly break our faith, which means we will be performing in ways "not of faith", and thus sinning. And we thought we were just being "normal".
The instant we sin, faith goes dark, love dries up, our understanding of Scripture morphs into confusion, and peace evaporates. This is because sin disrupts our companionship with God, and cuts off the flow of His power and peace into our lives. So, after we sin, we will only sin more, even if we display--for all the world to see--a certain respectable decorum.
There are two remedies for sin. The first is understanding Scripture, which--coupled with God's training--builds faith. Stronger faith then increases our resistance to sin, keeping us closer to God and His protection...from sin.
The second remedy is confession. 1st John 1 tells us that sin disrupts fellowship with God, and that--in order to sustain fellowship--we must admit we are sinners, identifying and honestly confessing our sins to God. This is God's condition for forgiveness for believers, and is based on the work of Christ on the cross, the same way that salvation is based on that work. This passage tells us that, if we confess the sins we can think of, He will forgive ALL our sins, even the ones we can't remember.
When we confess, fellowship is restored, grace arises, Scripture makes sense again, and faith is operational...until we sin again. Then we start over by confessing our sins once more. This is a constant process that will not slow down until we mature and develop our skills for accessing God's strength for overpowering sin.
You see, we do not get good standing before God by seeing ourselves as "good" (even if others affirm that we are). The only way to please God is by humbly acknowledging that we are "bad", realizing that we are helpless and hopeless without Him. Then He can work with us, and the Holy Spirit will produce His fruit through us (Gal. 5:22). But the improvement comes from Him and not from our feeble selves.
When we confess, we recognize the goodness, greatness, and mercy of God, and we admit that we are nothing without Him. The dots and their connections become clear, as we see here:
1) We all sin repeatedly.
2) Sin brings more sin, ending in corruption and immorality.
3) Sin breaks our fellowship with God and neutralizes His power in us.
4) Sin disrupts faith, leaving us helpless.
5) Sin disables spiritual perception and growth.
6) Confession gets sins forgiven and restores fellowship.
7) Fellowship opens up the flow of God's power into our lives, and His love into our hearts.
8) With fellowship, we can study and grow and ultimately beat sin.
Sin is our biggest problem. Don't try to beat it on your own. You don't have to. And what's more, you can't. Let God take care of sin...you have enough to worry about.
Sin is a perennial nemesis to peace, production, and progress. Sin keeps us in a self-centered twist and prevents companionship with God. He is always our Father, of course, but sin makes Him unhappy with us...which can't be good.
Thank goodness we only sin occasionally (here we wink, for so we think). This distorted perception is actually a big part of the problem: Either we do not understand God's standards for our thoughts and behavior, or we are blind to our own patterns. The result? We don't recognize sin in ourselves.
So what is sin? Simply put, it's anything that displeases God. Knowing sin when we see it (meaning do it) is a matter of knowing God's standards. God's Word tells us what sin is, and how to spot it. The chapter titled, "Sin", p. 76 in Book 1, Studies on Getting Closer to God, gives several lists of sins, and provides a thorough discussion on how to deal with sin.
We tend to think of bars and loose sexual behavior, or murder, or bank robberies and embezzlement, or perhaps malicious gossip and envy...as sin. But there are a myriad of behaviors that fall under the category of sin...things we do repeatedly and don't even recognize as bad.
For example, anything that is done outside of faith is sin. There are many other instances of hard-to-see sins, but functioning without faith will do to illustrate. Faith is hard to maintain in our lives, because we are bombarded by the world, the devil, and the constant impulsiveness of our sinful natures. Any worry or doubt or self-dependency or questioning God's motives or even fear can quickly break our faith, which means we will be performing in ways "not of faith", and thus sinning. And we thought we were just being "normal".
The instant we sin, faith goes dark, love dries up, our understanding of Scripture morphs into confusion, and peace evaporates. This is because sin disrupts our companionship with God, and cuts off the flow of His power and peace into our lives. So, after we sin, we will only sin more, even if we display--for all the world to see--a certain respectable decorum.
There are two remedies for sin. The first is understanding Scripture, which--coupled with God's training--builds faith. Stronger faith then increases our resistance to sin, keeping us closer to God and His protection...from sin.
The second remedy is confession. 1st John 1 tells us that sin disrupts fellowship with God, and that--in order to sustain fellowship--we must admit we are sinners, identifying and honestly confessing our sins to God. This is God's condition for forgiveness for believers, and is based on the work of Christ on the cross, the same way that salvation is based on that work. This passage tells us that, if we confess the sins we can think of, He will forgive ALL our sins, even the ones we can't remember.
When we confess, fellowship is restored, grace arises, Scripture makes sense again, and faith is operational...until we sin again. Then we start over by confessing our sins once more. This is a constant process that will not slow down until we mature and develop our skills for accessing God's strength for overpowering sin.
You see, we do not get good standing before God by seeing ourselves as "good" (even if others affirm that we are). The only way to please God is by humbly acknowledging that we are "bad", realizing that we are helpless and hopeless without Him. Then He can work with us, and the Holy Spirit will produce His fruit through us (Gal. 5:22). But the improvement comes from Him and not from our feeble selves.
When we confess, we recognize the goodness, greatness, and mercy of God, and we admit that we are nothing without Him. The dots and their connections become clear, as we see here:
1) We all sin repeatedly.
2) Sin brings more sin, ending in corruption and immorality.
3) Sin breaks our fellowship with God and neutralizes His power in us.
4) Sin disrupts faith, leaving us helpless.
5) Sin disables spiritual perception and growth.
6) Confession gets sins forgiven and restores fellowship.
7) Fellowship opens up the flow of God's power into our lives, and His love into our hearts.
8) With fellowship, we can study and grow and ultimately beat sin.
Sin is our biggest problem. Don't try to beat it on your own. You don't have to. And what's more, you can't. Let God take care of sin...you have enough to worry about.
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