Sinners

In that while we were yet sinners...

The title seems so antiseptic and innocuous, not to mention a sense of universal camaraderie that helps spread the guilt. But that name has a deep and unimaginably sinister meaning, which the very nature of the sin itself attempts to minimize accompanied by a tacit admission of a general guilt. “Everyone is a sinner” is used as a badge of protection in order to accept the guilt but dulling the painful truth by spreading the complicity. A sinner is a complete and aggressive enemy of God Almighty that is filled with moral and spiritual treason against his loving and Holy Creator. He is absolutely worthless and stands adjudicated as eternally guilty without any opportunity of early release on his own, not only because he is incapable of self exoneration, but he is also unmotivated and sees no need to seek such forgiveness.

Have you ever looked into the bathroom mirror and attempted to see yourself from any other perspective than that which has your eyes fixated upon the mirror? It is impossible to see the back of your head without using your own eyes and another mirror, so in essence you are always seeing yourself from your own perspective. It is the same way with sin, we cannot see and understand God’s perspective of sin simply by using the eyes of our own understanding, we must rely completely on someone else’s perspective. God’s. The enemy of all mankind is death and sin is its author. At the very core of sin is the human desire to usurp the authority of God and become its own lord and master. It rejects God and by its action it denies Him fully, and all the while experiencing all the carnal emotions that are the unified siblings arrayed against the Sovereign in useless rebellion. The entire scene is both horrific and senseless and abjectly stupid.

Without realizing that the only reason every sinner hasn’t been destroyed is due entirely to the mercy of God, sin continues to strut and fret its hour upon the stage in a foolish and temporary season of false bravado which will eventually be exposed. And those created souls who have been permeated by sin invite its company and enjoy its escapades. Thinking they have gained an enhancement to their hedonistic lifestyles, sinners have lost it all. Eternity is not just for the reward of those in Christ who have had their sin removed, eternity also looms large for a tormented justice that will continue forever and ever. Every sin will be judged either at one time and place called Golgotha, or forever in the lake of God’s fire of justice.

Does that seem too unsophisticated for your post modern sensibility? Does the talk of hell and the lake of fire make you recoil because it seems like so much Dante’s fairy tale and very little of a coming reality? It is this eternal place of justice that should give us a glimpse of how God views sin and its hosts, and with that tiny perspective should we not endeavor to be free from this albatross that will be our everlasting undoing? And instead of seeking relief the whole world invents more and newer nuances of sin to minister to the basest instincts and display the deepest, most blasphemous attitude openly before the Lord of All the Universe. Make no mistake, He has seen everything.

And in the church even the blood washed sinners who have had their eternal penalty removed by the blood of the Lamb of God, continue to conform to their previous lifestyle in an amazing display of ungratefulness or worse yet, a display of an unchanged condition. Sin is not a polite guest, it doesn’t just sit where you tell it to. It may come into a life as a small and submissive friend but as a power hungry parasite it will begin to demand more power while attempting to remain unnoticed, but one day even if noticed it will have gained enough power to resist any assault from its host. And all the while this sin takes on a substantive role in universally excoriating the holiness and authority of the Lord God, no matter how small the sin. Murder and an insignificant lie both equally attack God Himself viciously and tear at the fabric of the law of the Eternal Lawgiver, and in the face of such monstrous horror we feel nothing when we say that men are sinners. As if saying that men are just on another team than God is, we have not only indicted ourselves we have crafted a self serving depiction about which the Great White Throne Judgment will destroy and prove a costly lie.

So with just a little peak from a pitiful pen, have you seen a glimpse of how our Sinbearer sees sinners? Well, you ask, if we were that repulsive how can God love us? Let me suggest that as deep and deathly is the subject of sin, eternally deeper and life giving is God’s love. And in that depth stop fighting it and drown in God’s waves of redemptive love, because if you will by faith drown in Calvary’s blood, the Lifeguard will save you.

Christ died for us.