Sin.
“Everybody” says “nobody” talks about it anymore.
So I’m about to.
Sin is falling short of God’s perfection, His holy standards. The Bible teaches that “all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory” (Romans 3:23). No Christian would argue that “the wages (or results) of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
Most of us are comfortable acknowledging the wrongness of sin, its penalty, and the way out of sin God offers through Christ. But acknowledging our sin in the nitty gritty of life…that’s a different story.
Forgive me for the list I am about to offer. It almost certainly contains an item or two you would prefer to “discuss” rather than bluntly label as sin. But I stand by this list. It is not comprehensive, but is designed to focus on a few sins with which many of us have grown so comfortable, we rarely see them as sins.
- It is a sin for a man to deliberately take a second look at a beautiful woman and linger.
- It is a sin when your employer is paying you to work to be checking out the latest sports scores.
- It is a sin to respond to the loud noise of a slamming door exclaiming, “Jesus Christ!”
- It is a sin to make the U-turn I sometimes make early in the morning because traffic is so light…and the odds of a cop watching are so slim.
- It is a sin to say anything mean about someone else.
- It is a sin to let the sun set with you still being angry at your friend, your co-worker, your spouse.
Each sin in this list has so much Bible condemning it, the very act of our rationalizing is the evidence that we’ve grown soft on sin.
But God has not.
Our unholy accommodation notwithstanding, sin is still sin.
It’s time to confess.
Time to repent.