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May
Perspectives on Sin
Dear Friends,
The Lord has recently blessed us with a very challenging, comforting, and edifying Immanuel Bible Conference. Pastor Fred Sloan opened and developed the theme titled: God’s Word and My Problems. Audio recordings of the four messages he gave are available through the sermons link on our church website (address listed on the back of our Congregational Record).
Among the many penetrating and practical insights Pastor Sloan shared with us, one of the most profound and important was dealing with the question of what sin looks like. From Genesis 3:6, we were asked to consider what we would have seen had we been with our first parents as witnesses to the action taking place in that verse. The action observed would have been a woman taking some fruit from a tree, eating it, and sharing it with her husband. Such action looks at worst innocent and harmless and at best considerate, generous, even loving. The only reason we know what Adam and Eve did in that verse was sinful is that we know from God’s Word that the Lord had forbidden the action. Our sins often appear to us to be harmless, legitimate, even virtuous. Yet those same sins always appear to God as being rebellious, heinous, and blameworthy.
The point of our consideration of God’s perspective in contrast with man’s perspective of sin is that too often we weigh our own attitudes and actions in the faulty scales of human observation and opinion rather than in the holy and righteous scales of God’s justice. A large part of the Christian life involves our learning to think God’s thoughts after Him, and in His light to see things not as they appear to our darkened understanding but as they truly are in the perfect sight of God. Nowhere is this more vital than in our understanding the nature of our own sins. If we do not perceive our sins, or if we think of them as being but misdemeanors, then we fail not only to apprehend the justice of God but also the depth of our need for mercy as well as the magnitude of the Lord’s saving mercy.
Let us return to consider further what we see Adam and Eve doing in Genesis 3:6 and how we see the Lord reacting to what they did. The divine response to an action wherein two people simply ate some fruit was the Lord’s cursing of the beguiling serpent (Gen. 3:14,15), cursing of Eve (Gen. 3:16), cursing of Adam and of the whole world, including all of humanity to be descended from Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:17-19). God’s reaction to the brief and simple action of two people is profound, extensive, and perpetual in its consequences. Clearly the Lord saw far more heinous and harmful features in the act than did our first parents or than do we, apart from our understanding and accepting the testimony of Scripture.
It is only through our reading and meditating upon the Word of God that we come to perceive the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Our first parents sinned against the goodness and lavish generosity of the God who had made them and the entire creation in which He had placed them. They sinned against the wisdom and sovereign authority of the God who had forbidden them to eat the fruit. The fact that they sinned against the infinite God entailed infinite consequences issuing from their sin. The fact that they heeded the insinuations of a snake that had done nothing for them and was itself a lower creature over which they were to have exercised dominion, and that they heeded the snake above the Word of the God who had done everything for them and should have been everything to them, constituted a most heinous offense against their Lord. The fact that they desired to be as God—even above God, whom the serpent impugned with his insinuation that God was envious and lied when He said our parents would die—constituted attempted God-murder. The fact that they sinned as public persons, they being the source and Adam being the federal head of the human race, constituted massive infanticide. Hence, from God’s Word we learn not only that sin is serious, but we glimpse at least some of the reasons why it is serious.
Surely we have been seeing the great contrast between how sin appears to men and how it is regarded by God in the series of sermons I have been currently preaching through Hosea. The people of Israel in Hosea’s day were militarily strong and economically prosperous. They also were religiously active, multiplying altars (Hos. 8:11) and offering many sacrifices (Hos. 8:13). If we had lived in Hosea’s day, we might have concluded that the people of Israel were spiritually strong and greatly blessed by the God whom they appeared to worship. Yet, the Lord shows us His perspective through the words of Hosea in which Israel is charged with faithlessness and manifold, extensive, and continual violation of God’s holy Law (Hos. 4:1,2). They are idolatrous (Hos. 4:12) and guilty of spiritual harlotry (Hos. 9:1). Hence, God promises not to commend their spiritual hypocrisy, but to chastise them for it (Hos. 9:9). In 722 B.C. this promise was fulfilled when the Assyrians carried Israel away into captivity (Hos. 9:3).
What does sin in our lives look like? Are we seeking to answer that question by a superficial analysis of the appearance of the action, or do we measure our actions and the attitudes that prompt them by the standard of God’s Word? If we judge ourselves rightly, we will not be judged by the God whose standard is the only one that matters.
Faithfully yours,
William Harrell
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Sunday
Morning Worship 10:30 AM
Evening Worship
6:30 PM
Wednesday
Christian Education
7:00 PM
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Congregational Prayer Meeting
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