Monday May 18, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

Ephesians 5:1-6 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. (2) And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (3) But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. (4) Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (5) For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (6) Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

To really understand what sin is, we must understand what God is. God is the supreme being in all of existence. All things came to be only because He is. Before all things He is, and after all things He is. He is the only being whose existence depends solely on Himself. No one created Him and no one began Him. He exists because of Himself. Thus, when He introduced Himself to Moses He said, “I Am that I Am.” That being the case, God is the ultimate standard for what is good and perfect. Since He is above all things, is the source of all things, can be influenced by nothing, never changes, and is perfect in every way, He is the standard by which we measure what is good, correct, and right. Therefore, sin is anything which goes against the nature of God. Lying is a sin for God is a God of truth and cannot lie. Murder is a sin for God is a God of life and justice. To dishonor your parents is a sin for God honors authority. When we act, think, or speak in a way against the nature of God we are setting ourselves against the very standard of goodness.

This was the sin of Adam which allowed death into the world. God created mankind in His image and according to His likeness. This means that man was perfect as God is perfect, that the nature of man was as the nature of God, perfectly good. God, however, established freedom for mankind by giving them the choice to remain according to His nature. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was set in the midst of the Garden, and of all the trees therein, of it alone did God command not to eat. Before this time, mankind did not know what sin was. They did not have to think about doing the right thing anymore than we have to think about eating when we are hungry, it was simply a part of their nature. They did not know what good was because they had no knowledge of evil. Just how we do not think about breathing air until we are underwater. However, once man encountered evil by seeking to define what was good according to a standard other than God, they came to know both good and evil. They set themselves against the nature of God and so brought upon themselves and all after them the great consequences of sin.

Proverbs 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

-Jared Freeman, “The Weight of Sin”