Sin is something we’ve known about since childhood. Our parents and Sunday School teachers instructed us regarding the sins of stealing and lying; and as we grew into young adults, we added alcohol and premarital sex to the list. Pastors and evangelists warned us that other things were sins too: failure to evangelize our neighbors and feed the hungry. What’s sad is that this is the entire scope of far too many people’s understanding of SIN.
We cannot begin to confront SIN until we really understand SIN as a singular entity. SIN is something quite different from that of a bad deed accomplished or a good one neglected. Sin is a universal and willful refusal of human beings to acknowledge that God is God! Even if we could find a way to conquer individual sins – subduing our tongue, our passions, curbing our appetites, meeting the needs of those far and near - we would still not have escaped the power of SIN.
The purpose of salvation is that we might be reconciled to God and be delivered from SIN. God wants us freed from SIN so we can fellowship and commune with Him. SIN needs to die. Throughout Romans Chapter 6, Paul gives several analogies of the death of SIN: baptism, being buried, being planted, crucifixion, slavery and widowhood. There are great contrasts in each of these analogies. And Salvation vs. SIN needs to be the same way. Each Christian should have two volumes in his or her life story: Volume I - Before Christ and Volume II – After Christ. Salvation in Christ is that powerful that it literally brings death to SIN.
Incredible as it may seem, God seeks our fellowship and our communion. He wants to dwell among us. This is why God went to all the trouble to build the temple in the Old Testament – so that He might “dwell among us.” (Exodus 25:22) God wants us to be able to “see” Him and “experience” Him. (As Job did. Remember our study of Job?) The first step is Death to SIN. But it does not end there. In order for this to occur, purity and holiness are required. As Hebrews 12:14 says, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
Sanctification is the procedure by which we become holy. It’s the means by which we are set apart, separated and consecrated from anything that is unholy. One has likened sanctification to a new government. (Think Iraq here.) There’s a new governing body, but there are still insurgencies and uprisings. Same with life after salvation. Sanctification is a process that God has designed to conform us into Christ’s image so that we can reflect Him in all that we do. It does not happen automatically. It all depends on our own moment-by-moment choices – Faith choices, non-feeling choices where we say, “not my will, but Thine,” -- are the only choices that allow sanctification and a complete and full Death to SIN.
No comments:
Post a Comment