One problem : sin
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God - Romans 3:23
The prophet Isaiah identified sin as rebellion against the will of God and the assertion of the right of each man to choose for himself the way he shall go. "All we like sheep have gone astray," he said, "we have turned every one to his own way," and I believe that no more accurate description of sin has ever been given.
- A.W. Tozer
“What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin.”
― John Piper
Nowadays we call it pain, we call it trauma, we call it our shadow, or our unconscious, we call it making mistakes, low vibration, we say it’s karma, or we call it our ego.....
We'll do just about anything to avoid calling it....... sin
Now before you throw your device out the window and stop reading.... bear with me here.
You have undoubtedly heard of (original) sin before, but chances are you have heard them in a stern, religious context, from hypocritical people. You believe the idea of sin is outdated, from a time where people used superstition to control and oppress others.
In reality, sin tells us something about the true nature of God Himself.
It is not trauma. It is not your ego. It's not a case of low vibration.. it is separation from God that all of us suffer from, and it is sin that causes this very separation...
https://www.gotquestions.org/does-sin-separate-us-from-God.html
ORDER AND CHAOS
Our universe is governed by natural laws, without which life wouldn't be possible, and chaos would be all there is.
Just imagine for a second a world without gravity, or where the answer to 2+2 could be.... anything you like!
Pay attention and soon you'll marvel at the immense amount of order and precision in this beautiful creation!
Our God is a God of order, not chaos nor confusion.
"Unfortunately, Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. As a result, the order inherent in God’s creation was damaged, and chaos was introduced: we had confusion instead of surety, deception instead of truth, hiding instead of openness, weeds instead of crops, and pain instead of ease. We lost the garden. Our relationship with God became chaotic, as did the very nature of who we are."
Sin is breaking a natural law of the universe, the moral law, which reflects God's holiness, perfection, and love.
If you want to understand the consequences of breaking the moral law, simply read the newspaper on any given day.
Look at the bloody history of mankind.
Recall any tragedy that's ever happened in your own life, and you see the devastating consequences of a world that is built on sin, rather than righteousness.
Now here's where it gets tricky though.
It's all to easy for humans to see the wickedness and depravity that's out there in the world.
But it becomes a lot harder to see that same defect inside of ourselves.
And when we do, we often don't recognize it for what it truly is; we think we make mistakes, but are basically good people.
This is because we are all born with a nature of sin (a nature in rebellion to the moral law of God), and to that nature, sin doesn't look nor feel like such a big deal! Just like a vulture isn't repulsed by a dead animal carcass but delights in it.... so do humans delight in their own sinful ways because... we're born that way.
This is why Jesus invites us to be born again, and makes it very clear that without the new birth and becoming a new creation with a new nature - we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven (God's eternal presence).
Sin is cosmic treason. Sin is treason against a perfectly pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything, to the One who has given us life itself. Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin, of the most minute peccadillo? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey Him at the slightest point? We are saying no to the righteousness of God. We are saying, “God, Your law is not good. My judgement is better than Yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond Your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what You command me to do.
- R C Sproul
THE FIRST SIN
God is light and in Him there is no darkness. This means all He created was 'good'; without blemish, without darkness, without pain, without suffering.
God created humans in His likeness; with a mind, feelings, preferences, and a (free) will to make choices.
Had God not made us with free will, love would not have been possible as it takes free will to love someone.
God also created purely spirit beings; angels.
His most beautiful angel, Lucifer, didn't want to serve God anymore. Rather, he wanted to be like God (in power and position).
But there is a gap immeasurable between Creator and creation/created creature. God can never cease to be the Creator, and a created being can never become the Creator. Lucifer's desire to dethrone God, to not acknowledge the true order, that God was God, and he was not, was the first sin.
The sin of pride, came before the fall.
After this, Lucifer tempted us to sin. Misery loves company…
Lucifer now told us we could be like God to, and we took the bait. We took, the bite.
God told us to eat from any tree in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In essence, God was saying, just trust me. Since I actually created everything, including you, I may know a thing or two about what's good for you, and what isn't.
When Adam and Eve ate from the only forbidden fruit, they broke their trust in God and traded it for the promise of getting to be (like) God.
"They didn’t just ignorantly decide to eat the fruit, nor did they eat it because “the devil made them do it.” Satan’s outright lies and cunning half-truths brought something to the surface of Eve’s mind that fateful day. She realized that to “be like gods” meant not having to serve God, it meant being equal to God. It meant that she felt as if God had deliberately kept her and Adam in the dark regarding their “divine potential.” Why should they tend God’s garden in Eden when they could be as gods themselves? Why should they have to obey God if they were also gods? The quickness with which Adam acquiesced to Eve’s offer of the fruit may possibly show that he too harbored these same feelings, or it may mean that Adam, though knowing Eve had sinned willfully decided to throw his lot in with her by deliberately eating from the fruit. Eve had been deceived, Adam had not. In any event, we know that it was Adam’s sin that was responsible for the fall and the curse (Romans 5:12). The sin of pride that led to Satan’s fall had now infected the hearts and minds of Adam and Eve."
From this moment on, Adam and Eve had been 'infected' with sin, just like a little leaven spreads throughout the whole bread, and could no longer be in fellowship with a Holy God.
SIN SHATTERS OUR LIKENESS TO HIM
God created humans in His image. Sin shatters this image, like a mirror into a million little pieces.
“God didn’t make statues; instead, he formed living, breathing humans to display His glory. As image bearers, we don’t possess God’s glory; rather, we reflect it. When we move in the direction God has for us, we reflect His glory more brightly, like polished mirrors. When we go our own way, it’s as if we’re trying to display our own glory.” - Jeff Myers
The first sin shattered our likeness to God and made us unlike Him, like water and oil; separated no matter how close.
God is omnipresent, meaning there is nowhere where His presence isn't. But just like two people can sit next to each other while there is hate and enmity between them; so it is with us and God.
Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people.
Romans 5:12
ORIGINAL SIN; MORE THAN ACTIONS
- ITS NATURE
We're not sinners because we sin - we sin because we’re sinners.
"Adam’s original sin has resulted in the rest of mankind inheriting a corrupt, sinful nature, which causes us to sin in the same way that a cat’s nature causes it to meow - it comes naturally."
We were created body, soul, and spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, we are born with a nature that is rendered incapable of seeing knowing and loving/worshipping (the true) God, and now has a proclivity towards self interest (selfishness, self centeredness, self glorification, self 'love', self exaltation, etc) instead.
In Hebrew, the word חֶטְא (“sin”) literally means “to miss - “to sin” means to “miss” the will of God.
Sin is not just failing to do what is right. Sin is redefining what is right or wrong on our own terms over and against God’s. It is about wanting to be the standard for morality, rather than submitting to God's standard.
Sin, at its core, is rebellion against God and His plan for creation - and that includes us.
Original sin is the truth that, while we may do good deeds (and even this only by the grace of God, the restraining factor on evil) - our nature lacks the holiness that we were designed for, as God's image bearers.
It's not our individual sins (transgressions) that keep us out of God's loving, manifest presence (now and for all eternity, or heaven) - it is that our very nature is hostile towards Him..
Each of us comes into the world spiritually separated from God.
Humanity is now separated from God by our very nature.
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
Isaiah 59:2
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
Romans 8:7
OUR FALLEN NATURE IS HOSTILE TOWARDS GOD
Through sin, our hearts have become completely hostile towards God. Why? There can only be one God; it's either Him or us. So the moment we wanted to be God, we declared war. We are like crew on a ship (the ship of creation) that instigated mutiny.
"We also saw that as enmity, sin is primarily directed against God. It may act against the soul and hinder spiritual growth, but its primary target in doing so is to oppose God himself. It hates Him, His holiness, love, law, light and presence. Indeed it is opposed to all of Him, not just certain attributes or demands. Further, it has polluted the entire human heart; there is no faculty in the soul that is not corrupted by the presence and power of indwelling sin."
When we live with a sinful nature; we are open enemies to God Himself. This is why so many people are opposed to (the real) Jesus and the Bible: being born again means dying to your sinful nature who imagines himself to be god (either mystically, like in buddhism and hinduism, or psychologically, to imagine you are in charge of your own life), and receiving a new nature who worships and obeys the living God!
SIN IS DECEPTIVE
To a sinner, their sin means freedom. To the one who has been saved, sin is revealed for what it truly is; bondage.
Jesus said that anyone that sins, does so because they are a slave to sin. See, we don't sin just because we can...
We sin because we can't not.
Think about it. How often do we do things we know we shouldn't, we wish we hadn't, or feel slightly uneasy or even guilty about?
Sin is an invisible enemy living inside of us, causing us to do what we don't want to, love what we shouldn't, or do things we regret.
Much of what we regard as 'freedom' or 'success' in modern society is being enslaved to sin, that is because sin is inherently deceptive, it hides its true nature in the fine print, and ultimately, hides God's 'face' from ours.
Moreover, sin deadens our moral senses so that we we actually become numb to sin both within and in the world around us.
Much like a smoker who doesn't notice that their house has been completely overtaken by cigarette stench, a sinner won't be bothered by sin.
The damned think they are good, the saved know they are wicked.
- John McArthur
“Unless we know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, wretchedness and unrighteousness, we are truly blind. And if someone knows all this and does not desire to be saved, what can be said of him?”
― Blaise Pascal
SIN MAKES US DEAD.... AND BLIND
Sin introduced something new into the created order and perfection; disorder, disruption, darkness, disintegration, disease. and, ultimately, death.
The very first sin set us apart from (and against) the source of life itself. And nothing that is separated from the source of life, can be truly alive.
Just like a cut flowers will survive a couple of days, sometimes even a week, at home in a vase.... so we have the appearance of life, but in essence, are dead.
We are born physically alive, yet spiritually dead.
At the very first sin, Adam and Eve became spiritually dead, as it is the Holy Spirit that is like breath to our spirit (the Hebrew word Ruach means both spirit and breath!)
And just as we need physical food to sustain our physical lives... so we need the Holy Spirit to sustain our spiritual lives.
As you can imagine, a dead man cannot see.
And without the Holy Spirit, neither can we!
Without the Holy Spirit giving us 'eyes to see', we literally cannot see anything pertaining to the real God and so we end up creating a 'god' from our desires, preferences, ideals, and opinions; we create a 'god' in our image, essentially looking in a mirror, and then proceed to worship our mirror image! This makes any worship of God apart from the Holy Spirit is ultimately self worship.
"We don’t want the true God. We don’t like the true God. We don’t admire the true God. We don’t respect the true God. We don’t trust the true God. We don’t delight in the true God. Our longings are for what we think this God might be or should be or could be — unless we are born again."
- John Piper
How then, if man is born spiritually dead, how can he have seemingly spiritual experiences without being born again?
Mankind is created both natural (physical) and supernatural (spiritual), unlike God or the angels who are spirit only.
Before the fall, these two realms overlapped, this is what we know as the garden of Eden; or heaven ON earth.
Humans had the ability to see both the natural as well as the supernatural realm. After the fall, these two realms split into two, and the supernatural now became the unseen realm for humans. Not any less real, just unseen.
However, since man is created to live in both realities... he has a longing for that realm he can now no longer see. God has literally 'placed eternity in our hearts'.
The occult & the mystical have given us tools to re-open these doors - on our own , without permission nor the protection of God.
And here's the caveat - the spirit realm is now home to a countless number of fallen, or dead, spirits. Malevolent spirits.
And no matter what they would have us believe - interacting with the spirit realm doesn't ultimately do anything for us besides temporary experiences and supernatural 'wisdom' (equating to power).
No matter the experience - the truth is; any spiritual path practice or philosophy that doesn't deal with sin, is dangerously deceptive (like all of the new age).
Anything that doesn't deal with sin, which caused our spiritual death, can not make us alive, now or eternally.
In short; we can have spiritual experiences while we are spiritually dead, because there are many 'dead' (separated from God) spirits in the unseen realm.
The spirits that are still benevolent, that still follow a holy God, will not entertain us by us seeking them out, as they obey God - not man. The spirits that therefor answer when we seek them out (through spiritual/occult practices) are those who no longer obey the true god, but have chosen to follow after Satan after he fell from grace.
We call these spirits demons.
And since demons are able to masquerade as angels of light... they always appear benevolent to us.
Not all that glitters is gold.
Not all that is spiritual, is of the Holy Spirit.
It's not all good, and it's definitely not all God.
SIN IS CHEAP PLEASURE
"What I really wanted was just out of reach not because of something I couldn’t do - but because of something I couldn’t stop doing."
CS Lewis is recounting the first time he realized that what he was searching for wasn't happiness, but holiness (communion with a holy God). He had spend time in the occult (new age) trying to 'reach' for some higher state, chasing shiny new experiences, and esoteric power and knowledge... but when he came across a christian book, he realized what his soul was really longing for, and that we we are deceived when we think there is anything we must do to attain it.
What he couldn't stop doing, was denying, defending, and indulging in sin.
Before being saved, we can only see the gospel as a message of 'give up something good for something restrictive'. But the true gospel is; Jesus came to set us free from something bad (that, yes, we love nonetheless...), for something better.
Way better.
The devil wants to keep you entertained and subdued with twinkling lights.... whereas God wants to give you the brilliance of the sun!
This world will have you chasing fleeting and/or superficial pleasures, whereas God wants to offer you everlasting joy.
No one who has ever tasted joy would trade it for pleasure. But if we haven't tasted the joy that can only come from intimacy with our one true God... we settle for the pleasures and treasures of this world instead.
To live in sin is to live your best life now, and your worst nightmare for all eternity.
To live in Christ is to live your worst life now - not because your life gets worse, but because you get to spend eternity in heaven - in God's loving presence in a new creation without any blemish!
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot
To live in sin is to enjoy life - but to live in Christ is to enjoy life as God intended it!
(and let's not forget - God is the source of joy, while the devil is merely the copycat of God... and all that he copies is nowhere near as good as the original)
“It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
- CS Lewis
WHY PEOPLE DON'T BELIEVE IN SIN
We cannot see that a stick is crooked unless we compare it to a stick that is straight.
We are born with a sin nature, everyone around us is born with a sin nature, and this entire world is the result of humans born with a sinful nature.
When you are born in darkness, your eyes adjust to the lack of light and you assume this is just how things are supposed to be.
When you are born in sin, your conscience adjusts to the lack of holiness and you assume this is just how things are...
People do know sin within them and all around them, but by avoiding to acknowledge what it is, and calling it by another name (like trauma, shadow, low vibration, or ego), we get to stay in control. We get to run to therapists, workshops, healings, do session after session, reading after reading, we get to 'transcend' our limitations, 'claim' our innocence/perfection, 'dissolve' our egos, 'think positive thoughts', do volunteer work or donate to charity, and become 'spiritually enlightened/awakened'.....
In other words, it's all in our hands.
We want to work on becoming better versions of ourselves, but never humble ourselves and sit at the feet of the God that created us, and let Him tell us what He sees.
Only God Himself can show us what sin truly means.
Only by His light can we see the darkness that we have called light.
Only in contrast to His holiness - are we able to see how unholy everything else is...
Knowledge of sin cannot come from head knowledge (such as this article) alone. We must go to God and ask Him to show us. If we want the truth more than we want to keep doing as we have been doing, He will waste no time to supernaturally open our eyes and hold up a holy mirror to our face.
The good news is that we need fear not what He will show us, as He has already provided the solution since before the beginning of time....
SIN LEADS TO SPIRITUAL DEBT
Why did Adam and Eve spiritually die the moment they ate from the tree that God had forbidden?
For the wages of sin is death
Romans 6:23
"A wage is something we work towards, something we actively pursue whether we realize it or not. When we go to work and expect to get paid for that work, we are earning our wages. In the same way, we are going to be paid at the end of the day for our sin. The payment is death."
Sin creates a spiritual 'debt'
A transgression, any transgression, of God's moral law, has to be accounted for and atoned for.
- because God is a perfectly just God.
Anything that God is, He is infinitely so; meaning without end and without compromise.
Me or you might value honesty, but when we also don't want to hurt someones feeling's, we might opt for a white lie.
We become less of one thing (honest), to accommodate another (compassion).
Not so with God.
God is love. God is just. In our minds the two might have a different, separate meaning, but actually not so in God.
Love and justice are one in God.
Because God is love, He must abhor evil.
When we are dead in our sins (which we all are until we've been born again), we cannot see the holiness of God nor the severity of sin.
We interpret God's justice as undue punishment, rather than a restorative and life-preserving measure.
“Truth without love is imperious self-righteousness. Love without truth is cowardly self-indulgence.”
In our postmodern, post-truth society, we have changed the meaning of love to mean passive acceptance, and tolerance to mean ignorance. Love has gotten to mean soft, passive, standing up for absolutely nothing.
But the truth is, without justice, love is not love.
Love protects and corrects as well as accepts.
God is both Judge and Lover.
He is our King, as well as our Father.
Never one, without the the other.
If you have a hard time wrapping your mind around a God who is love, yet also kills, watch this video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slj4yUoPz1Q
Only in punishing sin, can God truly be a good God.
Only in showing humanity the severity of sin, through the consequence of death, could we ever come to see that sin corrupts our moral character and makes us murderers; if not physically then psychologically; sin makes us selfish, rather than selfless.
How come that when we send rapists and murderers to jail we all understand we do this to protect the innocent, to protect
life itself?
But when God does it... we call Him a mean, angry, spiteful, revengeful, murderous God?
This is because we do not understand the severity of sin.
And when we cannot see the severity of sin, we think we (all) deserve heaven, rather than hell.
The wages of sin, is death. In God's perfect universe, to preserve perfect love and life, He has instituted that the payment for sin, is death.
But ultimately; God overcame evil not with evil, but with love, true love.
With the sacrifice of His Son.
THE SOLUTION : TETELESTAI
For the wages of sin is death...
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus Romans 6:23
FURTHER CONTEMPLATION
https://www.gotquestions.org/does-sin-separate-us-from-God.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/sin-nature.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/born-sinners.html
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/sin-cosmic-treason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNOZ7ocLD74
https://www.ministrysamples.org/excerpts/MANS-SPIRIT-SOUL-AND-BODY-AFTER-THE-FALL-3.HTML
https://bible.org/seriespage/4-indwelling-sin-enmity-against-god
https://firmisrael.org/learn/the-hebrew-word-ruach-and-gods-breath-in-our-lungs/
https://www.oneforisrael.org/bible-based-teaching-from-israel/concept-sin-hebrew-perspective/
“Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from Him. …So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.” - Dr. Timothy Keller