Monday, September 12, 2005

On hating sin

Sin messes up our lives. It enslaves us, perverts us, and defiles us. It's an ugly, hideous, blood-thirsty beast that wants to destroy us.
So um, why don't we hate it?
I guess there might be a couple different ways we could answer that question.
It might be because we aren’t truly born again. Solomon says in Proverbs 8:13, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil…” If a person doesn’t hate evil he doesn’t fear God and if he doesn’t fear God he won’t hate evil. Unbelievers according to the apostle Paul, “walk in the futility of their mind, darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is within them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they having become callous have given themselves over to sensuality…” (Eph.4:17ff)
Another reason may be because of a lack of faith in God. Even Christian can have weak faith. A person may not hate his sin because he doesn’t fully believe that God is omniscient. He doesn’t have an overwhelming awareness that God sees absolutely everything he does. He soothes his conscience by fooling himself into thinking that there are certain sins he can hide from God.
Still another reason for not hating sin may be because you think of yourself as less of a sinner than you really are. Sometimes people have images of themselves that don’t correspond with reality. If a person doesn’t think he’s much of a sinner, it’s not because he isn’t much of a sinner, it’s only because he is fooling himself into thinking he’s not much of a sinner.
I’m sure there are many other reasons why we not hate our sin the way we should, but let me give you what I think has to be one of the biggest.
Many times we don’t take sin seriously because we don’t take God’s judgment on sin seriously.
If a person is going to treat sin lightly he must refuse to take God’s judgment seriously. When you understand that God’s judgment on sin is absolutely right, that it’s not too much and it’s not too little, and that His judgment on the smallest of sins ultimately is eternal death; meaning that the smallest deviation from His law in God’s eyes is worthy of an eternity of hell, you understand how terrible it is to disobey God. When you understand that God isn’t being harsh or unfair when He judges sin like that; He’s being right; you begin to understand that sin is an awful, awful thing.

No comments: