Sinful

July 6

I Chronicles 13-15

Psalm 78:32-39

Proverbs 17:9-11

Romans 3

Sinful

“But their hearts were not loyal to Him, they were not faithful to His covenant.  Yet He was merciful; He forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them.  Time after time He restrained His anger and did not stir up His full wrath.  He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.”  Psalm 78:37-39 NIV

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”  Romans 3:23-24 NIV

Throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament we see clearly that man is sinful.  From the fall to the present day, every baby born into this world has been born with a sin nature.  Only one man, Jesus, has ever lived a sinless, perfect life.  Any parent knows that you do not have to teach a child to disobey.  One of the first words we all learn is “no!”  We each have within us a rebellious spirit that wants to do what we want to do when we want to do it and how we want to do it and we don’t want anyone telling us we can’t do it.  Thankfully our passage in Psalm explains that God “remembers that we are but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.”  He knows how weak we are.  He sees our propensity to sin and instead of destroying us, He forgives us. Time and time again He restrains His anger and does not administer His wrath to us.  We deserve to be punished and yet He is merciful. 

Sin is not a popular thing to talk about these days.  Calling something sinful is considered to be judgmental and intolerant.  Unfortunately, this has led to a generation of people who don’t recognize their true condition.  They do not understand that they are sinful and therefore they don’t see the need for a Savior. They either believe Satan’s lies that there is no standard of right and wrong so we just need to follow our own conscience or they recognize that they do sinful things but think it is all relative and they aren’t as bad as murderers or rapists so they will be ok.  The problem with this logic is that everyone thinks they aren’t that bad.  We can all find someone that we think is worse than we are so we all think we are good.  Many people even think God has a giant scale and if our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds at the end of our lives, we will be allowed to go to heaven.  That is not how it works.  The Bible is very clear that we are all sinners and we all deserve the death penalty for our rebellion against God.  Romans 3:10 explains, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” NIV  Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.”  NIV Thankfully, because God is loving and merciful, He made a way for us to be saved.  He sent His One and only Son to earth to live a perfect, sinless life, to take the punishment in our place.  Jesus died on a cross, was buried and rose again defeating death and hell and making a way for us to get to God.  If we believe in Him and accept Him into our hearts, we receive forgiveness and eternal life.  There are not lots of different ways to get to God.  There is one way and that is through belief in Jesus.  He didn’t have to provide any way and yet He did because He loves us.