We all know them. The big bad sinners. The scumbags we love to hate. Murderers; cruel, deadly dictators; embezzlers; hit men; adulterers. The more public they are, the more we like to hate them.
We know their sins. We know the damage they have wrought. We know the wives and the children and the innocent victims they’ve destroyed. We know they all leave devastation and ruin in their wake. Many times these big bad-boy sinners don’t express any remorse or regret for what they’ve done. They only regret that they got caught in their sin.
The more public they are, the more we like to hate them. However, the more public they are, the more we’re apt to forgive them. Sometimes we make excuses for them. Some of us accept them back into the fold. After a while it’s like their sin never happened.
We have relegated sin to a place of indifferent passivity in our culture.
What About The Little Guy?
Forget the headline sinners. What about us church-goers?
What about our petty jealousies, our unrighteous anger, our slandering, our gossip, our stealing, our judgmental attitudes, our envy, our self pity, our criticism, our lying? Our silence? Many of us don’t understand, don’t appreciate, or don’t care about sin any more. If we recognize our sin, get convicted by the Holy Spirit that we have sinned, or our friends point our sin out to us, many of us tend to dismiss it with a sincere sounding, “I’m sorry.” or an “Will you please forgive me?”
It’s not over, yet, my friend. That won’t do. Oh, it may make you feel good, or appease the one you offended with your sin. You might even get on your knees and pray, “Father I know my sin. I’m sorry And I repent of it.”
You’re not through. You may feel better now that you’ve prayed to God and told Him you will repent. But ol’ Satan still has a grip. It was a petty little sin. You thought it was trivial and insignificant on the grand scale of things (“After all, you didn’t kill anybody, right? You just lied a little. Big deal.”)
That petty little sin will keep cropping up and you’ll keep committing it and you’ll keep agonizing over it until you’re broken. And the only place you can be broken is at the cross of Christ. Only when you go there and understand how horrid and wretched your sin is. Only when you go to the cross and understand the unthinkable cost and the repulsive, grisly, excruciatingly painful price Jesus paid for your sin (your little white lie) with His precious blood. Only when you’re totally broken.
Your sin IS horrible. No matter what it is. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” How many sins? The word is sin. Singular. There’s no “s” on it.
One piddly little sin is enough to send you to hell, if it weren’t for the priceless blood Jesus shed on the cross so you would have eternal life instead of agonizing, teeth-gnashing, horrifying separation from God forever.
We don’t like to talk about sin. We don’t like pastors to preach on it. We don’t like to admit we have a problem with it. We like to ignore it or just think a heartfelt “Forgive me,” or “I repent” is enough to remove the stench of our wickedness from our thinking and our lives.
It is not. You won’t get rid of it. The Holy Spirit will keep convicting you. It will bug you and bug you and bug you until you’re ready to be broken. If you continue to ignore it you will eventually feel the gnawing misery of guilt, shame and self-loathing.
Only brokenness at the foot of the Cross of Christs can rid our lives of the stench and horror of our sin. When we’re completely broken. When we’ve been crucified with Christ. When we understand the depth and filth of our sin and the price Jesus paid to cleanse you completely of it. Then we can earnestly ask God to forgive us. We can forgive ourselves. And we can move on with a clear conscience and a clean heart.
Thank you. I’m so blessed that you stopped by my blog. Did you enjoy reading it? If you did, why not subscribe. Simply go to my home page, click on Follow and enter your email address. You’ll receive an email notification each time I publish a new post.
If you did NOT enjoy reading this, you might want to consider examining your life and your heart and look for sin you’re not recognizing, or ignoring.
For His Glory 