Friday May 22, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

This is why God takes sin so seriously, even those things which we think are small and of little consequence. For even the small things bring terrible results.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? (7) Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (8) Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

God takes sin so seriously, that He determined Himself to give us freedom from it. He determined that even though it was our own wickedness that had driven us into this state of shame, separation, and death, He would bear those things for us.

1 Corinthians 15:21-22 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. (22) For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

People often complain that God cares too much about sin and that He should just leave us be. But, like a good Father, He will not leave His children to die in their foolishness. My son is constantly doing things that would get him hurt if I left him be. But, because I love him and care for him deeply, I will not let him do what he wants, even if it means that he gets mad at me for it.

God does not hate sin just because we like it. God hates sin because He loves us. He knows what sin does to us and to where it will lead us. It is His great love that commands us, “Do not lie, do not steal, do not murder, do not gossip, do not covet, do not worship any other god, do not lust, do not cheat, do not commit fornication, etc.” He sees the end of these things and knows them to be death. God desires the very best for you, and since there is none greater than Himself, that is what He has given us. Let us set aside the weight of sin which seeks to beset us, which brings shame, separation, and death, and let us put on Christ.

Ephesians 4:17-24 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. (18) They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. (19) They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. (20) But that is not the way you learned Christ!— (21) assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, (22) to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, (23) and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, (24) and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

-Jared Freeman, “The Weight of Sin”