Read Genesis 6:1-13, 2 Corinthians 5:17-21,
Romans 8:5-8, James 1:21
The entire life of the Christian is to be a life lived for God’s glory…a life of worship. Worship is the response to God revealing Himself to us. As God reveals Himself we learn more about ourselves, our condition, and our desperate need for a Savior. In Genesis 6, sin reveals a lot to us about God… or we could say that God reveals a lot to us about Himself in His perfectly just and perfectly righteous response to sin. In just a few chapters before we see God observing all that He created and saying “It is good!” Now He observes His creation and says, “I am grieved…I will destroy them…” What happened? What changed?
The huge change came when sin entered the picture. Sin is corrosive. Adam and Eve turned from God’s design in the garden and the result was death. And from that point sin infected humanity. This is no small problem. All of humanity had turned from the worship of their Creator and become consumed with the flesh. Not only were all of their actions evil, but not even a good thought or intention could be found. And in the midst of all of creation walking according to the flesh, we see God’s response. He repeatedly points out the corruption and violence and reveals His sorrow and grief.
Rather than being wiped out with the old creation, in Christ, God makes us new creations. Now we have new roles, new minds, new desires, new longings, and new passions as we no longer live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And as we set our minds on the things of the Spirit, we should see sin as God sees it. Rather than welcoming sin into our lives and experiencing again its completely corrosive nature, we present our members to God as instruments of righteousness. We put away filthiness and rampant wickedness. We will face temptation, but now God has given a way of escape and a way of endurance. In Christ, we put on the new self showing steadfast endurance, going to God for wisdom, setting our minds on the things above, and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, transforming us by the renewal of our minds. God’s disdain for sin and its effects should keep us pursuing holiness and purity, glorifying and honoring Him who pulled us from our sin and gave us new lives as new creations in Christ.
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3 comments:
Well it certainly TOOK long enough... But good to finally see stuff up here. Also good to be able to see what I missed due to family members being sick. (Wave after wave, I tell you...)
I've never really stopped to consider the severity of sin. I've always approached it with a "Yeah, that's bad so don't do it," kind of attitude. I've never considered how God must view sin. My limited and human mind really can't understand how a holy God who is perfect and sinless really sees sin. I'm used to it. It's a part of my everyday life, so for me to consider it from God's point of view is both really hard and really eye-opening at the same time. And as I realize that I'm looking at sin with a blase attitude, I realize that the devil uses that to lead me down paths I never thought I'd go. And it's not until much later that I look back and realize that had I stopped one little thing that didn't seem like a big deal at the time, I would have saved myself a lot of regret and heartache. Am I the only one who's ever experienced that?
Hardly, Catherine. Hardly....
Probably one of the biggest things that just blows me away is how we, being regenerate, still mess up time after time after time after time after time after time (extend pattern for large amounts). And mess up big time. And even when we aren't doing things horribly wrong, we aren't doing what we should be. There's not a smidgen of room for leniency, and as being still under the corruption of fallen humanity, we can't get anywhere close. There isn't any "close enough" which we so often settle for.
I keep thinking back to a song by Chris Rice, entitled Clumsy. If you've never heard it, the lyrics go like this:
"You'd think I'd have it down by now, been practicin' for thirty years. I should have walked a thousand miles, so what am I still doin' here? Reachin' out for that same old piece of forbidden fruit, I slip and fall and I knock my halo loose. Somebody tell me what a boy's supposed to do. I get so clumsy, I get so foolish, I get so stupid, and then I feel so useless. But you're sayin' you love me, and you're still gonna hold me, and you wanna be near me, 'cause you're makin' me holy. Still makin' me holy, yeah..."
There's a reason that Calvin said that nothing we can do can please God. Because if it's got even the slightest smudge of sin, it's off the charts, and even if it was perfect then it would be tainted by every single other action we do.
We can never really appreciate the light unless we've seen the darkness. And man, we've certainly got one heck of a darkness going here.
Isn't heaven going to be just AWESOME?!?!
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