Bible Lesson 227

WHAT IS SIN?

“For He (God) made Him (Jesus Christ), who knew no sin to be sin for us (you and me), that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2nd Corinthians 5:21.

“When we, as confessed, and forgiven sinners, born again of God, and New Creatures; look to the cross, we must acknowledge that it would still stand there ready for us to be nailed to it on our way to hell, had not God substituted His Only Begotten Son, the God-man, Jesus Christ, (God in the flesh), who had never known sin, to die in our place. brobob.

This month we will attempt to understand sin, and why we are all sinners, and what God did (In Christ) to be able to be just, yet pardon those who are the beneficiaries of that Perfect Sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son.

I suppose that the first thing we need to learn is that sin is specific, it is not what we in the lax and lazy churches of our day, portray it to be. You know what I’m talking about, and it is that idea that if we all get together and claim to be sinners who cannot help but sin, then sin is obligatory, and we are all alright.

We can solve that problem by stating without equivocation, that there will not be one sinner ever get to heaven. Ask yourself: Do you want to go to heaven’ I expect your answer is in the affirmative, that you desire to spend your eternal life in heaven with all its glory and in the presence of that one who died to save your soul, if you are saved. Now, remember what I said, there will be no sinners in heaven.

That leaves us with a problem to solve. If we are sinners who desire to inherit heaven, what must we do’ We must begin with the fact that everyone of us, and that includes every one of us, especially you and me! It goes on to include your mom and dad and all of your siblings, your Pastor and all of the elders and deacons, and the entire congregation of all churches.

We all have the same problem and it is called sin, and sin defined; means we have transgressed against our Holy God. When our heart beats for the very first time as we were born, we were sinners, dead in trespass and sin.

That, being dead in trespass and sin, means that we were born guilty of the sin of our great grandfather Adam. We had Adam’s nature and were born dead to God and under His wrath. We were born sinners who loved to sin, because it was our nature. Ephesians Chapter 2, begins with this indictment of all humanity; and God is speaking to saved people here, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespass and sin, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.

Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” What a picture of humanity spoken by the one who had, in the beginning, created all things good.

That is the problem, and there is an answer to that problem, and His name is Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, actually God in the flesh. Jesus Christ is the only way, there is no other. We could attempt to keep the commandments; but we could never keep them perfectly, due to our make up and inability to always do things the way that God demands. So, Jesus Christ who as we said before, was God in the flesh, left heaven for some 33 years and came to the earth, to manifest God more perfectly to mankind and to go to the Cross that you and I had earned by our sin, to take upon Himself our sins, and suffer, bleed, and die to pay our sin death and quench the wrath of God against our sin. God sacrificed His Only Begotten Son to justify those who would obey Him, and that is no small thing, so God who knows all things, remains sovereign over all things, especially over salvation. We, who have not diligently sought God by striving to know Him from His Word the Bible, have come up with several ways to be saved, but that is impossible.

Remember that Cross that you deserved, but that Christ went to in your place’ The Christ that was nailed there, is the only name under heaven, given whereby we can be saved. It is not simply that Christ died on the cross, so we can join a church and mumble some words that say we believe in Him for salvation’..and be reborn. That is not the way it works. The only way that you will ever be saved is to be “called” by The Father to the Son who died on the cross. That call is not an audible call, it is an inward pull from God on the spirit of the person who will be saved.

God calls us to His Son, who hung on the cross and died after being mauled to the point that He was unrecognizable as a human being. We must know what it took for God to save us and that should cause us to fall at the foot of the Cross and repent that it was our sin that demanded such a fate for Christ. Read Ephesians 2: 4-10; John 14:1-18; Romans 8:1-9, 28-30; Isaiah 52:14.

The question now becomes; ‘What is sin” What do you think sin is’ The very outline of sin is anything that is not of Faith. That means that if you are not saved (Remember, we are save by Grace through Faith, which is a gift of God), then anything and everything that you do is sin. If you attend church regularly that is sin to you, and if you tithe, that is a sin. If you obey all of the commandments and you are not born again, that is sin. Whatever God has said in his Word that we are not to do is sin. We seem to have adopted the idea that, simply to live and breathe is sin, and if you have not been regenerated by the power of God, that is true, because we are saved by Gods Grace through His gift of Faith.

We have a problem at least in many cases to make the move, from lost people to saved people, and many who may be saved, like the idea that if they want to be in the large pool of professing sinners, they must call themselves sinners. Listen closely now and let this mind be in you; if you truly believe and have owned your sin, and repented and turned away from sin and been reborn by God, you are not a sinner, you are a Saint, and you need to worship with a group who are professing Saints. (Romans 1:7; 2nd Corinthians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; Colossians 1:2; 2nd Thessalonians 1:3-10).

There is nothing to fear about being a Saint, in fact, that is the only safe place that exists in this world. Saints, are those who have been called by God, justified by the blood of Christ, and are obedient to God’s Commands. Saints are ‘In Christ’, and Christ is in them, and they are sanctified, set apart for Gods use. Is that your state today’ If it isn’t it is not too late to fall at the feet of Christ and repent of your sin and begin to walk that narrow way. Think on these things, read your Bible, and Pray asking God to show you the light.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob