Tag: Sin

When Sin Crouches At the Door

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“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:7

We know the story of Cain & Abel. They were the sons of Adam & Eve. They both offered sacrifices to God. Cain gave an offering from “the fruit of the ground”, and Abel of the “fat portions”[1] from the “firstlings”[2] of his flock. (Genesis 4:3-4) All was good, right?

Well, no. God “regarded” Abel’s offering, but didn’t “regard” Cain’s offering, and that is when the problem started. Cain became angry[3], and his “countenance fell”. (Genesis 4:4-5) We know the rest of the story: Cain ends up killing Abel.

Lest we be tempted to think that we don’t need to pay attention to the details of this story because we aren’t like Cain – we would never kill anyone – consider these words of Jesus:

“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty ….” (Matthew 5:21-22)

Anyone who has ever been angry with another person, might do well to consider the details of the story of Cain and Abel.

Continue reading “When Sin Crouches At the Door” →

Are People Responsible for the Earth?

There is an irony at play today in regard to the way Christians see the world and the prevalent way modern westerners see the world.

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Photo by Randy Schoof
Photo by Randy Schoof

There is an irony at play today in regard to the way Christians see the world and the prevalent way modern westerners see the world. Modern westerners largely believe that human beings are affecting climate change and are arguing that we must change the way we do things because we are breaking the world.

Christians may or may not believe in climate change and may or may not believe that we can affect climate change, but Christians believe that human beings broke the world because of sin, because we rebelled against God, because we are flawed.

The irony is that modern westerners don’t believe in sin. They don’t believe in God or that we are opposed to God in our nature. They don’t believe that people are fundamentally flawed. They don’t believe that we are responsible for the brokenness of the world.

Aiming for Eternity

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God is from everlasting to everlasting. He sets eternity in the hearts of men (Ecc. 3.11), but our glimpse of eternity and our sense of God is often obscured by the every day realities of our lives.

That God set eternity into the hearts of men should tell us something. It should urge us to look beyond ourselves, to look to God for His purpose in our lives. Yet we are often given to walking with our heads down, driven with blinders on chasing after self-fulfillment or prone to obsessive self-reflection with eyes turned inward. We have a hard time seeing past our own noses, much less focusing on an eternal God  We have a hard time, wherever our gazes are set, letting go of self-direction.

The Bible calls that sin.

Take the morality out of sin, and sin is simply missing the mark. The mark is God, His character and His purpose. When our focus is on other things, when we are pursuing other things to the exclusion of God, we are missing the mark. We are missing the purpose of God in our lives.

God, of course, is the very reason for our existence. Continue reading “Aiming for Eternity” →

The Temptation to Complain

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Photo by Beth Drendel
Photo by Beth Drendel

Why should any living man complain?[i] You are alive! Therefore, you have hope.

Your life, no doubt, has not gone the way you hoped it would. Looking back, there may be many regrets. You may deeply wish that you had known then what you know now, and if only you had some foresight, some sheer luck perhaps, things would be much different.

But things are what they are, and no amount of wishful thinking will change the course of events that have happened to this point.

Have you made mistakes? Be honest! We all make mistakes, and not just mistakes of choice – we all do things we should not have done. We have all done things that we knew we should not have done because they were not right.

We try to “redeem” those mistakes. Sometimes, we try to redeem them by re-characterizing our actions, thoughts and decisions, owning them as if they were right because they are who we are.

That is the temptation of modern life. “Be who you are” – whatever that may be. “Never apologize for who you are”.

But who are you?

Are you your own person?

Continue reading “The Temptation to Complain” →

Taking the Emotion out of Sin: A Study in the Substance of Death and Life

Let’s put aside the issue of morality, take the emotion out sin and see what we have left.

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“[T]he wages[1] of sin[2] is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23.

We tend to view sin in moralistic terms, but I wonder sometimes if we might look at sin in non-moralistic terms. The adage, “we are what we eat”, is an apt description for sin. How we eat is a moral issue for some people, but most people (or many at least) don’t view eating that way.

We tend to view sin in moralistic terms, as in reaping what we sow. [3] What if we try to take the morality out of the discussion? What would we have left?

Although sin is a moral issue at heart, the emotion of morality in this modern, post-Christian age in the US may obscure how we view sin and the relationship between sin and death.

Men have tried to hijack morality and claim it as a product of their own making. If God exists, however, He is the author of morality. God, Himself, is the moral standard. I would say that, without God, there is no such thing as objective morality.

If God doesn’t exist, we create our own morality, and your morality might be different than my morality. The morality that is predominant in my community, may not be the morality to which your community subscribes. No one is ultimately right, and no one is ultimately wrong, except that those with the power and influence get to set the standard.

But that’s not what this piece is about. Let’s put aside the issue of morality and take the emotion out of the equation. Let’s take the emotion out of sin and see what is left.

Continue reading “Taking the Emotion out of Sin: A Study in the Substance of Death and Life” →