When I first came to faith, explaining it to someone else seemed so simple, because obviously my understanding was very simple and basic. Now, years later and I still have a lot more to learn because it’s endless, I sometimes find it much more difficult to explain to friends, family, or when evangelizing on the street.
One simple question and my head explodes. I can almost see all those spiderweb connections physically hanging above my head because it’s just not that simple, and at the same time, it is.
One of those things I have thought about a lot is the concept of sin.
Telling someone, “Jesus died for your sins,” is not going to get you very far. In fact, people often have more of an understanding of Jesus, even though they do not know Him, than they do of the concept of sin.
So what does it mean to be a sinner?
We often see it as external behavior: drinking, smoking, porn, stealing, fighting, lying, murder, you name it. But those things are actually only symptoms of humanity, they are not the root.
So if we look in the Bible for the first sin, people immediately look to Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which she wasn’t allowed to do, and we know the story from there.
But if you expand your thoughts and truly think about where it all went wrong in the first place, it was in the heavenly realms.
God was surrounded by His heavenly armies, His angels. And there Lucifer was:
“You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God… Every precious stone adorned you… You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.” (Ezekiel 28:12-15)
And then we read:
“Your heart became proud because of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.” (Ezekiel 28:17)
Our text tells us that this king was a created being and left the creative hand of God in a perfect state. He remained perfect in his ways until iniquity was found in him.
What was this iniquity?
We read that his heart became proud because of his beauty and that he corrupted his wisdom because of his splendor. Lucifer apparently became so impressed with his own beauty, intelligence, power, and position that he began to desire for himself the honor and glory that belonged to God alone.
The sin that corrupted Lucifer was pride. And what does pride do? It makes you believe you are not in need of a God. You place yourself on that throne.
So very simply put: being a sinner, sin, means choosing to live separated from God. But God loves you so deeply as His child that He died to reconcile the relationship with you.
For example, imagine you do something wrong and get thrown into prison. Your parents can come and visit you, but they cannot hold you. They cannot hug you. They can only love you from a distance because of the bars between you.
There is only one way they can have you back close to them, at home where you belong and that’s by paying bail for you to get you out.
Although they know you deserve the sentence, they are physically and emotionally so hurt by being separated from you that they would gladly pay the price to bring you home.
And that’s the God who died for your sins, to restore the relationship. So does it make more sense why He died? And what sin actually is?
Because when you come to faith, it doesn’t mean you’ll never sin again. He knows that’s impossible. We can try, we should try. But no matter how hard we work for it, it doesn’t earn His love. Whatever you do, His love is never-ending.
You can never be too far gone, whatever you did, thought, believed, or became…The only thing He is waiting for is for you to come home.
The price has already been paid. The prison door is already open, so why are you still sitting in the cell when you are free to go home?
Love always,