Salvation Part Duex
Sin and Repentance: Yes, you will and Yes, you have to
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might display the surpassing riches of His grace, demonstrated by His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.
Ephesians 2:1-10 BSB
Truth: The salvation Jesus gives is beyond any gift a person could ask for and nothing is asked but to believe. The recognition that Jesus can meet that need will help you see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Let me start by acknowledging the fact that the topics addressed in these starting blogs are indeed huge topics with varying degrees of complexity. Rabbit trails may occur and indeed that may be necessary at times. Sometimes life cannot be summed up so simply because one situation or one example may seem relevant to our lives and another may not. One person relates to one experience and truth and another doesn’t. There are no formulas at times because of the complexity of life in general but also because just being an over thinker has its unique challenges. And I firmly believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to reveal all things and that I do not have all the answers. I convey my understanding in hopes others will have a clearer view of Jesus, God, and Holy Spirit. In the end, while we can help each other, the work must be done by each individual to search the scriptures and ask God for the revelation. The reason being that, as we are building relationships together, you are doing the same with God. It is one of the main gifts God has given us: to know Him.
Here is the one thing I will hold to if it kills me: it is possible to have peace. It is possible only due to God and for anyone wiling to believe that. It is my hope not only to give words to my understanding on how he does this but also to hold onto that truth more intimately as time goes on. I need to remember them as much as anyone.
The practical way we can understand this peace is to help each other remember what is true. Relationships are a powerful tool that bypass the formalities to get to the heart of issues at hand. They are the physical, tangible means God uses to sharpen us. This causes friction and fights many times but when we learn to do this together and not give up we will surmount the truest challenge: overcoming the exhaustive thought processes. What I learned while still new to this born again life has been true for 12 years of walking with Jesus: its always easier to give up on a relationship than it is to maintain it and grow it. But it is in this arena that I believe God created us: we grow when challenged with the sin in ourselves and in each other.
Sin
What is it and why does everyone make a big deal out of it? Sin, as far as I have researched, in the original Hebrew and Greek are terms that basically mean ‘to miss the mark.’ Very underwhelming when we look at the actions that are used to describe sin. To be clear, all of the grotesque and evil actions by men and women are indeed sin. What isn’t understood is the degree. Ill dissect this into two parts: Who God is in relation to sin and how the degree of sin is irrelevant.
If you can imagine a perfect person you have to ask the question, what makes them so? There has to be a foundation of standards that makes someone a perfect person. The end result is that person has to meet each and every objective requirement: there is no deviation from perfection in the slightest for it to be perfection. Lets start with you and substitute sin with the definition which is to miss the mark. Whether acknowledged or not we all set the standards for our lives. We look at what job we should have, what car we should drive, how we wish to act in each situation, we imagine the words we wish to use to convey to each other who we are in order to create great connecting conversations. It should be plainly obvious that we have a desire for our lives to turn out well and we do acknowledge to a degree we are a huge factor in making sure the standards are set. But the question is do we make mistakes in all these areas and often? Of course. There is no area where we can look at where we didn’t wish we made different choices. The point being that a standard was set in our minds and many times they didn’t get met. You can then say that you have missed the mark on the life that you set a standard to. Many books and self help material has been made to help us deal with the repercussions of this pattern (and the repercussions are an important aspect as I describe later) but here is the truth: it is impossible to match your own standard forever. Ill put it this way: no one does everything right every time.
God has a set standard for your life first and foremost and crucially that standard is very detailed yet simple and foundational to life because He created us, our world, and the existence in and around it in order to have purpose on how all of it functions together. This may seem over simplified and unspiritual by both those who follow God and those who say they follow God but I want this analytical objective explanation to be just that for a reason. That reason is the same as mentioned: NO ONE does everything right every time.
Why does this matter? Because the effect of missing the mark (sin) causes the most devastating consequences and it all starts from losing this objective perspective. Missing the mark of your own standard causes turmoil and confusion internally which needs to be alleviated in some way to function. To live means to deal with the doubt, insecurity, and confusion of not only our choices but the choices of others that directly or indirectly effect us. And all the consequences of missing the mark, insecurity, doubt, anxiety, anger, depression, sadness, etc, are cumulative whether we admit they are or not. The library of self help books written have a great perspective of isolating each moment separately in the attempt to stop this overwhelming feeling of accumulation but the truth is that they are cumulative and they produce the worst outcomes.
(It must be said that the crucial criteria for this perspective is dependent on those who have accepted the gospel and those who have not. This is a disclaimer simply because I do not remember a time without this perspective and I am limited in understanding a life before Jesus which is referred to in the Bible as Death. This is the spiritual death that as far as I know does not wrestle with right and wrong. There is more to dive in with the life before Christ but for the sake of focus, I will dive into the paradyme of the life with the Spirit and without Him another time.)
Coming back to God, when analyzed, sin can simply mean missing the mark God would have for your life. What that looks like has to be grounded not in what your life will look like, but who He is to your life. The reason being is that God has one very simple standard and one very simple fulfillment of his standard: To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. There is so much more to this very topic and it will be explored in time but I say all this in order to illustrate an image of what sin ultimately is, to give an idea of the effects of sin by giving a different perspective of it using your own desires to illustrate that point, and now to try and understand why the degree of sin never matters.
Sin is Sin
When seeing that a set standard is apparent and how we miss the mark even with our own standards we begin to look at what the effects are. To do that the stage must be set with some more information on who God is. God, in truth, has no evil in him. He is pure in all His nature and his commandments, whether ‘not lying’ or ‘not coveting,’ they are not given to us because they are ‘good’ actions he chooses to uphold but they are the very truths of WHO HE IS. He will never lie, He will never covet. While monumental in the revelation of this truth, it is also the hardest truth for many people to grasp and simply because nothing in our existence can be matched to that. While its relatable to this truth to say a fish by nature breaths water in an effort to illustrate the inherit natural aspect of a creature we do find some fish can get oxygen through other means, or creatures like fish, dolphins and such, breath air and so what happens is we tend to find some degree of complexity that begins to dull the attempt of comparison at some point. Gravity is another example that is commonly used but even so gravity does vary depending on the mass, like in the case of the moon and the sun and their respective gravitational forces, so then this example too dulls in magnitude at what we are trying to understand.
The truth is that the goodness of God cannot be compared to anything. The nature of God has nothing that matches it. Nothing. So how do we comprehend this nature if nothing in existence can give an accurate comparison for us to hold on to in our day to day lives IF we decide its true that understanding God is the foundational bedrock to experiencing what His standard is for you? Its actually very simple: we acknowledge nothing in creation is like him and never will be. That simple truth tells us the purity, uniqueness, and ultimately the goodness of him.
Now fish and gravity are trite examples, really, and mean nothing to us except to fill shallow conversations. The true example is us. If we begin to acknowledge we miss our own mark and that God has his own standard then it becomes obvious we would never be able to perfectly meet his or ours. And if we acknowledge nothing in creation can compare to God and, crucially, the cumulative and exponential effects of missing the standard is disastrous to ourselves and everyone around us, then an overwhelming truth hits us: whoever this God is is so overwhelming in magnitude that He is beyond everything else in his nature (goodness, power, ability, etc) and to such an infinite degree that we have to ask the question if the degree of sin matters at all? Its like asking a collection of toddlers to set defense against the New England Patriots: ANY effort is a token gesture and pointless to imagine a modicum of success if they decided to try.
Side note: It does seem odd but when we acknowledge nothing can reach perfection to match God we gain a gift called wonder. An awe that starts to understand the chasm that is in-between us and God. But that can only be the start because this awe will lead us to despair if we don’t push forward with understanding the individual aspects of God like long suffering, humility, goodness, etc.
To step back we have to understand that we have consequences in varying degrees for crimes against one another. To murder someone gets one consequence, to cheat on a spouse has another as does lying to a friend about missing a movie for the chance to have a date with a coworker. But the effects of those choices are real and they do not end after the act. To murder someone leaves a hole in peoples lives as they are faced with a future without a loved one, to cheat on a spouse devastates a household for generations, to lie to a friend plants seeds of doubt in the relationship. These are obvious because we can relate when we are the victims of such acts, but what isn’t obvious is the effect on the person who chooses to do these acts. This is the other side of the cumulative consequences of sin (missing the mark) that effect a persons total being. This cumulation then causes more destruction because the standard has been violated. I do believe that deep down inside of us, because God created us, the standard violated isn’t ours but his.
But why Gods standard and not yours? The reason being is that we were never created to function in sin. We malfunction. And when we malfunction we lose precious aspects of life like peace, joy, security, and wellbeing and we lose (what I call) gifts of God: patience, forbearance, compassion, empathy, and long-suffering which are indeed gifts but for those around us. If you need the evidence to support this, there is research by Brene Brown or Jordan Petersen or many others that support the effects of a persons actions on another in the studies of human development. But truly it is in your own life where you can see as much evidence as you need. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to absorb all the mistakes you made in life to feel the effects of them. I don’t recommend doing so if you are struggling with depression while reading this and there is no need to add to the inferno burning in your mind. But to those that are ignorant or prideful because of their opinions on God I would almost dare them to do so without resorting to any alleviation of the senses like alcohol, pornography, sex, video games, movies, etc.
To violate the standard is to miss the mark which is sin and while the degree has varying consequences just doing so creates the cumulative effect that sticks to us like a bad smell. And as a life progresses through the hours and days and weeks and years and decades the smell gets worse. Whether our own sin or sin against us (missing the mark of the standard) the cumulative and exponential effects are real. We can argue over semantics of reason with ‘ends justifying the means’, ‘survival of the fittest’, and all the other excuses for why we do what we do but in the end all of it means nothing as your sitting alone somewhere questioning your entire life, guilt-ridden or ashamed of the past, looking at a future without hope, and wondering if the bad smell will ever leave.
While hard to swallow, we have to get to the point to find ourselves surrounded by the reality of our choices, do our best to gather it together in a makeshift pile of odds and ends, take a step back and set it in comparison to the truths of who God is as given us in the Bible. This is the true comparison, not in searching endlessly to find things that match Gods nature but in the stark contrast of realizing nothing matches up at all and in such a vast degree it becomes impossible to even suggest a perfect being would want anything to do with us at all.
The great news is that the Bible is there for just that reason: to magnify the differences between us and Him and then to show that no one who turns to him will be forsaken, ignored, or passed by. Being perfect he also has so many ways of reaching out that creativity has to be one of his more wonderful traits. I have heard many stories and testimonies of how God reaches people and all are intimate in some way to that person. As an example, I love birds. Always have. And while I do not believe God is in a bird, I do feel he reminds me of him when I see a bird fly close or I see a bird I never have seen before. And, honestly, I am not a hundred percent sure its from God or have the ability to prove it in scripture that He does this but that’s ok. I have tried to tell myself otherwise and that it is just a coincidence but in never helped me in the least. The truth being what I have said all along: nothing compares to God. And when nothing compares, God cannot be predicted or understood in His entirety. What I am not saying is that it is impossible to try but it does take time as does any good relationship and we are all in seasons of development.
Patience is a learned and cultivated trait we must maintain with ourselves to learn and grow in time.
It seems this section is becoming more and more elaborate in this understanding of sin and repentance so I will continue repentance in a third part so stay tuned!