Sin.
That’s such an ugly word isn’t it?
Most of us know what that word implies, we know that it signals wrongdoing and we know when someone calls us a sinner that it's not a compliment. Growing up in the church meant that the word sin was very familiar to me even if I didn’t fully understand its meaning or its implications. However, my familiarity with the term didn’t lend itself to a deeper understanding of the role sin plays in this life and God’s perspective on it. I struggled my whole teenage life with the idea of sin. My experience in the church wasn’t always great, in fact it was pretty awful, so that made it even more difficult for me to reconcile my sin with a loving God and His mercy, surrounded by seemingly merciless people. You see, I didn’t understand how God could love me as much as He said, if I was truly as sinful as everyone else was saying because they took sin really seriously. I also had trouble understanding God’s wrath and why He sent sinners to hell. I mean, if God hates sin as much as it states in scripture and I’m a sinner…doesn’t that mean that He hates me? Does all His love just disappear in the presence of sin?
All of a sudden, every step I took both good and bad, had some sort of eternal significance and that was too much pressure for a depressed teen. I held the weight of my soul in my hands and it was too heavy a burden to bear. So I gave up. After reading about all the different sins found in scripture and coming to the conclusion that I’ve committed almost every single one, I gave up. "What’s the point? We are born with a sinful nature, so why even try? I’m going to sin in some way shape or form over the next 50 years, perfection is impossible, so I give up. I’ll just live however I want and if God hates me, He hates me. I’d rather He didn’t but obviously, living a sinless life is impossible so… it is what it is."
As an older and wiser Christian, I completely understand why people find sin such a hard pill to swallow. I get why people change the way they see God or seek out other religions. I understand why it’s easier to believe that God doesn’t exist than to experience a loving God who hates you or a vengeful God who hates you. People's frustration and rejection of the gospel probably doesn't even have anything to do with an inability to see themselves as sinful or an unwillingness to admit they've sinned at some point in their life, it’s the impossibility of living a sinless life subject to a holy God and having to suffer the inevitable consequences that most likely scares people.
But there is Hope.
You see, God really does love you. In fact, everything He does stems from His love for you. He cannot operate outside of Love because it is His very substance. HE IS LOVE and His justice, His anger, His…everything must come from a place of love. What does that mean? It means that God’s anger isn’t petty like ours. It’s the same anger that a father shows when his child is running around in the street or putting themselves in harm’s way. It’s not coming from a malicious vindictive place, it’s coming from a place of love and not wanting His children to experience pain or hurt. This is the character of God. So as you look through scripture and you read about God’s anger and His wrath, put those stories in perspective with the character of God and who He says He is because then you’ll start to understand why He does what He does and you’ll begin to see the Bible for the love letter to humanity that it really is.
But what about sin?
Well, first of all let’s just establish that sin is not created by God. Sin entered the world because of the decisions made by Adam and Eve, the first man and woman to ever exist, in the very beginning. (If you’re not familiar with the story, I would encourage you to read it. You can find it in Genesis chapters 1-3) Some people think that God created sin when He crafted free will and gave Adam and Eve the direction to not eat from the forbidden tree. However, I wholly disagree. God gave us free will because He wanted to have real relationships with us. He wanted real love to exist between Him and His creation not some forced reality, not robotic servitude, and the only way to make that happen is to make sure that the choice goes both ways. So God creates man with free will.
Now, the ability to choose between right and wrong doesn’t equal the inevitability of wrongdoing especially if every need and desire is already being met as it was in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve resided. Just like, we all have the ability to choose murder, we can choose to kill another human being, to steal, to cheat but that doesn’t mean that it is inevitable, that we will eventually at some point in our lives choose to do those things. Having the capacity for wrongdoing doesn’t mean that we are destined to live that out, it just means we have a choice. So when God gave Adam and Eve a choice, He wasn't creating sin or creating evil or making wrongdoing inevitable, He was breathing true love into existence.
So then where does sin come from?
Sin is a reality of the world we live in. It started when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s instruction and eat the forbidden fruit. That one act of disobedience, separated them from the presence of God both in this life and in eternity.
To clarify, God and sin are in direct opposition to one another, they cannot exist in the same place which is why they cannot exist at the same time in the human heart. This is why God hates sin so much. Not just because sin is evil and it corrupts the human heart but because it separates us from God in this life and in eternity and that has some serious implications.
What about Hell?
Let’s take it back to the Old Testament really quick just to uncover some Biblical truths about Hell and God’s intention for mankind. In Ezekiel 28:11-19 we read about the King of Tyre. Now, there was an actual historical figure who was the king of Tyre but this particular passage is not talking about the physical king of Tyre, it is talking about Satan. Tyre was known as a hub of immorality and sinfulness so to call Satan the king of Tyre was an accurate depiction. This story we find in Ezekial paints the picture of Satan’s fall from God’s presence. Satan, or Lucifer as he was called, was an angel/heavenly being highly favored by God and given great power and authority but he became prideful and sinned against God. He sinned in his own heart and from him all evil and sinfulness and wrongdoing stems. He is the father of lies, the origin of evil for it was from his darkened heart that every perverse thought flowed forth (sounds like the beginning of a Tolkien novel right?). Lucifer was cast out of heaven along with those whose hearts were darkened by his influence and Hell is Lucifer’s destiny.
Now, there is something you must understand about Hell, it was not created for human beings. Mankind was never meant to set foot in that place. Hell is literally the only place in eternity where God’s presence is not and God did not intend for us to be outside of His presence. In the Bible, the presence of God is described as a life-giving presence, it is described as a place of rest, comfort, joy, strength, goodness. Every good thing we experience in this life is literally because God has not abandoned us because if He had, there would be no goodness at all and no capacity for goodness in the human heart. All the love and happiness and positivity we experience in this life, even justice and morality are the fingerprints of God. So just imagine a place where God doesn’t exist, imagine if morality, justice, love, goodness and everything I’ve just described is absent. Not as if it was there and then it left but rather a place that has been completely untouched by all of those things. That is hell and it was created for the Devil and his angels not for you and I. It is not God’s justice for the world, it is His wrath poured out on Lucifer and evil.
Do people go to hell?
To be honest with you, I don’t have all the answers and I won’t pretend that I know exactly how eternity works but there is a reason that God sent Jesus to die for us. There is a reason God is so adamant that we come to know Him and we leave sinfulness behind. If God and sin cannot exist in the human heart at the same time then a human being that dies with unrepentant sin (i.e. sin not covered by the blood of Jesus) in their heart would remain separated from the presence of God as much in death as in life. They would not be able to experience the presence of God in eternity and as we know, the only place where God’s presence is absent in eternity…is hell.
God doesn’t send you to hell, He doesn’t simply hate you and decide that Hell is where you belong. As a matter of fact, He loves you so much He sent His son, Jesus, to live the sinless life you and I could never live and suffer the consequences of our sin so that we don’t have to. Let me try to break this down for you without all the Christian and religious lingo.
Let’s say you’ve committed a crime, in fact, you’ve committed multiple crimes and you are now sitting in a court room waiting for your sentence. You are the accused and the person accusing you is Satan. He is the prosecution coming to take you down. He revels in the idea that God will be separated from His child for the rest of eternity and He is so excited to deliver your sentence. Now God, God is the judge. He is required to serve justice no matter what, even if it’s His child standing in front of Him and today, it is. The judge must uphold the law and Satan knows that.
So, you’re sitting in this courtroom and the prosecution (Satan) starts reading this list of every sin you’ve ever committed, everything you’ve ever done wrong, every bad thought you’ve ever had. The list goes on and on and on…and the judge has eyes set on you the whole time. After the prosecution finishes reading the list, the judge asks you if you have a defense for all these crimes the prosecution is saying you’ve committed but you know that you don’t. So you get up out of your chair and you start shouting and pleading with the judge “I didn’t mean to!” “I was only a kid!” “It was just a white lie!” “I’m so so sorry!” “Please, don’t let them take me away!” and you get on your knees and you cry and beg and plead for mercy. The judge (God) is crying with you, He’s on His knees with you, holding you in His arms, telling you that He’s so sorry but He can’t do anything. He’s telling you He loves you as tears stream down His face and the bailiff rips you out of His hold.
The judge returns to His seat, anger and rage flowing from Him as He stares into the smug face of the prosecuting attorney. And now it’s time for sentencing. The judge turns to you and with tears in His eyes He lifts the gavel and says “On all counts of sin and wrongdoing, the defendant…my beloved child, has been found guilty. The sentence…” He sobs, choking on the words, “…is death. For all eternity.” And the gavel falls. It’s probably only been two seconds but everything happens so fast and yet all in slow motion. Officers of the law come in through a side door with cuffs in their hands ready to arrest you and take you away. The judge gets up from His chair and starts running towards you, reaching for you, screaming out for you as they begin to drag you away. Off to the side, you see the prosecuting attorney… smiling, watching the whole scene unfold and you realize this is it, it’s over for you, there’s no hope of--
-- the doors to the courtroom swing open.
It’s the judge’s son.
What is He doing there? The judge’s son runs straight to you, yanks you out of the officer’s arms and shouts “I did it!” “It was me, I committed all of those crimes. I’m guilty. Take me instead!” The courtroom falls silent and the judge looks at His son and then looks to you. He looks at his son, then you…looks back to His son who nods His head and then He looks back at you.
The prosecution hates the judge’s son because he represents mercy and grace that supersedes the law and so without hesitation the prosecuting attorney shouts, “we accept the substitution!” and within a few seconds the handcuffs on your wrists are removed and the officers are shuffling the judge’s son out of the courtroom. You know you are the one responsible for all of those crimes. The judge knows it. The prosecution knows it. The whole courtroom knows this substitution is absurd and yet, you are free.
This is what Jesus did for you. This is the story of salvation. It’s why Christian’s bug people all the time about coming to church and reading the Bible and getting to know God because the sacrifice has already been made. Jesus has already done this for you, whether you believe in Him or not, whether you accept Him or not, it’s already done. How awful would it be if it was all for nothing? He died the death that was owed to you, He paid for the sentence that was given to you for what YOU did wrong, He took your place, you should know that. You should know that you are a sinner and that means you are separated from God but Jesus, Jesus changed that. Don’t let the sacrifice He made for your life be one made in vain. You have been given freedom, you have been saved, the choice is now yours. Will you choose to honor that sacrifice and use that freedom as it was intended? Or will you continue to commit crime after crime never acknowledging what Jesus did for you and eventually, suffer a fate you’ve already been rescued from?
It’s your choice.
Sin, without a doubt, affects your relationship with God and your ability to be in His presence (both in this life and the next) but it doesn’t change how much He loves you. Whether you choose Him or not, He already chose you and He will always love you.
I hope you find encouragement and strength in that.
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