Pastor Tom Buck recently said, “Some people talk about sin like it’s a traffic ticket violation instead of a full-blown insurrection against a holy God.” I would take it a step further and say most professing Christians treat their sin as if it were a minor infraction instead of the devastating rebellion against the holy God that it is.
Each of us sins every day in some fashion or another. It’s not the circumstances of our sins that matter or even the perceived seriousness of them. All sin is detestable to God. All sin demonstrates we don’t care how much it offends God, we only care about what we want. But the weight of our sin, any and every sin, should crush us.
We don’t feel the weight of our sin because we don’t understand how abhorrent it is to God. Until we do, we will continue to sin regularly without comprehending the devastating effect it has on our souls. The Lord instructs us to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16 Leviticus 11:44-45; Leviticus 19:2). This is the standard He set for us. Anything less is a failure to be who God has designed us to be. To lack holiness is to usurp God’s calling on our lives. We are telling Him we know better how to conduct our affairs than He does.
Without an understanding of the weight of our sins, it will be our selfish desires that guide our lives. Life has a purpose, and it is not what we determine it to be. God created each of us to worship and bring glory to Himself. He created us to be in fellowship with Him. Every sin is another barrier to that fellowship. The entertainment, comfort, and success we seek in earthly things stand in stark contrast to what God intends for us. His riches are so much more fantastic than any we can imagine. His plans are so much better than any we can conceive. Unless we understand the weight of our sin and the devastating effects it has on our relationship with the Father, we will continue to not only thumb our noses at the holy God but to miss out on the incredible life He has in store for us.
There is no such thing as a little sin. There are no white lies. Every sin is a crushing blow to our hearts. Sin distorts and hinders our communication and communion with God. If we want to live right with the Father, we must be clean before Him. We cannot be clean so long as we are engaging in sin.
In our humanity, we will never be free from sin. No matter how hard we try or how determined we are to no longer sin, our flesh is too weak (Matthew 26:41). If not for the sacrificial blood of Jesus, the wrath of God would crush each of us. Because of Jesus, we are made right with God and He wipes our sins away. This fact must never obscure the weight of our sin.
No matter how much we’ve been forgiven, we never cease to need God’s mercy. We must always recognize how egregious our sin is to God. For those who surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and free. But that freedom was purchased at a price we cannot fathom. We must never underestimate the damage sin is causing to us and our relationship with God. We must never forget the weight of our sin.