It's what blinds us from the Truth.
Are you tired of carrying yours around? Choose this day whom you will serve.
Sin shouldn't be complicated, but there may be more to it that you realize at first. Sins may be commited, but some may be imputed? Some inherited? Some may be spiritual and some may manifest physical...
Sin. Like a cancer. It's so serious that it brings forth death. Like cancer, it requires remission and seperation from the body. If it were allowed to live it would go on harming forever and the end is death.
A MINI-TESTIMONY ABOUT THE HORRORS OF SIN - BY BRIAN
- Just A Few Reasons That I Deserve Hell -
[Jas 1:15 KJV] Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
You may say you don't know what sin is, but you'll know if you've been sinned against.
Has someone ever purposely hurt your feelings, taken something from you, called your loved-one a name or hurt them? We all know how it feels to be sinned against.
As a teenager, perhaps 14 years old, I once 'went along' with another kid who was using handcuffs to tease a younger little kid on our bus. Perhaps he was 10. Even worse, He was being teased in the presence of his mother, who happened to be our bus driver.
This 'prank' was more or less a part of an ongoing battle against her...for no other reason than being our driver. We felt it was our duty to make her life miserable. Basically just because she drove our bus.
Between previous and ongoing wrestling matches, screaming, throwing stuff out windows, and general 'messing with others' the entire year on the bus we stayed in trouble. We managed to terrorize her and others on the bus for an entire year of school. Just for the sake of doing it. When this instance with the handcuffs started, I didn't come up with the idea, but was a participant. Originally in it for the laughs, trying to be 'cool' or keep status in my social group I went along. We decided we were going to see how far we could take things, basically.
But this time was worse than before. Her child was a special needs child.
I don't remember exactly what happened, but someone thought it would be funny to handcuff him to the bus rail.
It wasn't funny.
She didn't find it funny.
Her child certainly did not find it funny.
He was scared.
The look on his face haunts me to this day.
To my eternal shame I can never know how to find, how to make up for, or even ask for their forgiveness face to face. Nor would I deserve it.
I will never know if that child or his mother had or may still have nightmares, or if our driver ever forgave herself for bringing him on the bus. She was helping all of our parents and the community by driving us safely to school while we often made it as difficult as possible for her and every other person on the bus that was not involved.
In just that year, during the driving back and forth during school hours of the day, I can not recount what a miserable bunch of acts I commited. Tossing pennies out the windows towards cars on the road. Watching in horror as some kids spit on others, punched them, hit them with bags and books, but laughing about a lot of it. Sometimes talking down to weaker kids. Cheating on homework and guilting people who wouldn't share theirs. Acting worse than an animal.
This would all be added to so many other incidents around school, the neighborhood, growing up and beyond :
Everything sarcastic.
Everything for laughs.
Everything for me, and whatever I wanted to do.
Everything whatever.
This all eventually headed it's way into college and then my 'adult' life. There it became beer, sex, and party.
Work, game, beer.
Date, party, travel.
Never giving back to people unless there was something potentially in it 'for me'.
Selfish.
Prideful.
Lustful.
In my eyes, or man's eyes, I will never be justified, and I shouldn't be. If given a chance today I would beg forgiveness from the kid and His family. But either way the damage was done. Perhaps the damage to their family wasn't life-long permanent, but it could be. I will never know, but either way they didn't deserve it. Nor did anyone else.
Emotional damage is damage.
Psychological damage is damage.
In some ways these are much worse than physical damage. Physical things can sometimes be replaced.
Based on just this series of incidents, if God is good, then I don't deserve to be spared from judgement. Especially if I'm to be compared to how 'holy'or worthy of eternal reward or existence next to a perfectly sinless God who is a God who wants to provide love, safety and justice to His creation.
How could I ever claim to be 'good' or 'better' than others. I'm not.
[Isa 64:6 KJV] But we are all as an unclean [thing], and all our righteousnesses [are] as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
I don't deserve mercy, and I certainly should pay for the damage I caused that child and family whom God loves. I have screwed up thousands of various ways and moments since.
If god gave me what I 'deserve' based on everything He knows about every incident, in every peron's life, then I can never'right' my way out of so many wrongs. No matter how many prayers I say, or how many works I do, or how often I do them. How demented and prideful to think that I ever could. And how can I justify sitting next to the kid on the bus in eternity in their presence in a place called heaven?
I am not alone. According to the Bible, we have all sinned.
[Rom 3:23 KJV] For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
As a result of that sin, we all serve and deserve death and eternal judgment:
[Rom 6:23 KJV] For the wages of sin [is] death;
[Rom 6:6 KJV] Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with [him], that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
[Jhn 8:34 KJV] Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
[Rev 20:12 KJV] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is [the book] of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
[Rev 20:13 KJV] And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
[Rev 20:14 KJV] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
[Rev 20:15 KJV] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
[Jde 1:14 KJV] And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
[Jde 1:15 KJV] To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard [speeches] which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
When it comes to justice and judgement, feeling sorry doesn't make it 'right'. Feeling sorry only proves that sin is bad, and that we have come to agree that if God is good, then sinners must be separated from Him and any they would harm for eternity. I know I'm a sinner. We all sin to our own shame, and not God's. God made us all, but He didn't make me sin like I did. I had free-will :
[Jas 1:13 KJV] Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
I chose to go along. I didn't stick up for the weak. If I assume that we are all God's creation, and that God loves all His creation equally, what is He to do with us besides judge us evil? What should He do?
He has to judge all, or judge none at all.
What to do?
I knew and agreed that I was in trouble. Should God offer me an eternal reward for sin? Eternal life? That would make God the utlimate bad guy.
God's Plan: JESUS
God knows right from wrong. God is going to fix that which is wrong, and deliver justice. That's God's plan. But...for repentant sinners like me, God has always had a plan to offer mercy, instead of justice. Life, instead of death. By oiffering us Jesus:
[Mar 2:17 KJV] When Jesus heard [it], he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Sadly when God looks on us He sees there are no good or righteous people who carry the knowledge of sin: No one who has ever sinned can earn, nor 'deserves' salvation. No person can stand before God and explain to God how they were worthy or good.
[Rom 3:10 KJV] As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
[Rom 3:11 KJV] There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
[Rom 3:12 KJV] They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
God has always been deadly serious about sin. God's so serious about sin, we all currently live under the death penalty. Afterall, accoding to the Bible, death is the result of sin. Meaning sin is the original and root-cause of death. Rightfully so. We get what we've earned:
[Rom 6:23 KJV] For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
His Way:
Thankfully God is longsuffering for all of us...
[Rom 2:4 KJV] Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
[1Ti 1:16 KJV] Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.
[2Pe 3:9 KJV] The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Thankfully God's ways are higher than our ways.
[Isa 55:9 KJV] For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Salvation is a gift that can not be earned :
A gift is when we get something we did not earn. God is and will always be alive; and though we have earned death by committing sins, we could and can be made alive if God gifts it to us and we accept His gift.
God’s gift ofering of forgiveness through Jesus Christ who was sinless and confession of His righteoussness, not our own, is so that any who come to Him may enter heaven humbly.
[Rom 3:25 KJV] Whom God hath set forth [to be] a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
[Rom 3:26 KJV] To declare, [I say], at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Many of us feel bad about our sin, and try to chalk it up to a mistake, or say if we commit less sin it's maturity. We may try to justify ourselves in that way. I did for years. But it's not ture. It's not right.
I finally looked in my mirror long and sober, and remembered the nightmares I must have caused. The pain and suffering. I will never know what I did to that mother and that child. Perhaps she blames herself, perhaps he still fears the bus to this day. I can never be justified even if I never break another one of God's commandments :
[Rom 3:20 KJV] Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law [is] the knowledge of sin.
Yes, we are all sinners. Yes the sins we have committed deserve to be and someday will be judged. I did the crime, I should do the time. If I went into eternity and that part of my nature didn't change I would be a cancer to God and those He loves for eternity.
The kid on the bus would have to look at me forever. Haunting him. Potentially causing him pain again.
If God saved us because we had done something good for Him, we might have reason to brag or think we deserved it.
[Eph 2:8 KJV] For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God:
[Eph 2:9 KJV] Not of works, lest any man should boast.
But the truth is diametrically opposite. We didn’t do anything good for God—we caused the death of His Son! He loved us “while we were still sinners” still rebelling against Him, doing things He hates and finds disgusting. So do I.
[Rom 5:6 KJV] For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
[Rom 5:7 KJV] For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
[Rom 5:8 KJV] But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Can you believe how much God loves us? God proved His love for us when He sent Jesus into the world as a man to suffer and die a substituional death in our place.
Only because Jesus rose from death He can and does offer us a way back into an eternal relationship in the presence of God. Apart from sin and death and the grave. If God kept sin around forever He would die, He would be cruel, He would be mean. But He's not. He's patient, long-suffering that we may see our need for a way, a savior, help in a way that we can't help ourselves.
[Jhn 3:16 KJV] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
[Jhn 3:17 KJV] For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
[Jhn 3:18 KJV] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
But for Jesus
He promised to save me in in spite of all this. All Glory to God and Jesus! For there is salvation in no other name!And if in this life, if I ever see that driver or her son I will beg their forgiveness too! I pray they find it in their heart to forgive others and accept Jesus so that we can all be forgiven.
[Mar 10:31 KJV] But many [that are] first shall be last; and the last first.
[Luk 18:10 KJV] Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
[Luk 18:11 KJV] The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men [are], extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
[Luk 18:12 KJV] I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
[Luk 18:13 KJV] And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as [his] eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
[Luk 18:14 KJV] I tell you, this man went down to his house justified [rather] than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
The Truth:
To come to understand that God sent Jesus to die for me...that He woud accept me?
After all the sins I have have committed? That's truly amazing. Jesus offered himself completely out of His love, readiness to forgive and restore sinners who have come to try and reason with' who they really are' - before sitting next to the kid on the bus for eternity.
He died hoping that we would not reject the forgiveness He is so ready to offer us, so that in Him we can have the priveledge to sit across from that mother and son and to be truly reconciled.
He gave His life for sinners like me who depeartely need forgiveness rather than justice.
Undeserved, unearned mercy is required if there is to be anyone in Heaven. We can’t earn back our innocence, and we all have a past that has to be accounted for :
Besides babies ( who don't go to Hell because God will not impute the eternal death penalty to one who is not able to willingly and knowingly sin ) we all end up earning hell one way or another.
[Eze 11:19 KJV] And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: