We hear the word all the time. “Sin” When we hear it we may think about murder... injustice... a drunken party... or the unspeakable images and pornography piped into our televisions and computer screens every night. But what is it really? If we’re to understand sin enough to fight it, we need to understand the true nature of our enemy.
Go back to the garden in Genesis 3. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree, but they did anyway: the first sin. The story illustrates the point that sin is, at its heart, rebellion against God. It separates us from Him, just like Adam and Eve.
So what’s the big deal? Why does God hate sin so much? What was so wrong about eating a little piece of fruit? What’s a little rebellion against God? We’re not puppets. What right does God have to impose his will on us? Why did He create people who must walk in obedience? Why couldn’t he just leave us to our own ends?
These are the questions a foolish person asks.
Sin separates us from God.
God alone is good. God is love. In God there is no shame. In God’s kingdom there is no pain or death or war or loneliness.
So when I say that sin is rebellion against God, it’s rebellion against all that is good, all that gives life, all that is holy and pure. Sin separates us from life... from hope.
So why does God hate sin so much? Why is there no tolerance for it?
He hates it because sin brings death. He hates sin because shortly after the first sin... people were killing each other. All the hardship, evil, rape, genocide, starvation, and death in the world traces its lineage back to the one event when man declared his independence from God.
Apparently, sin doesn’t just stop with a little fruit growing on a tree. Because sin is separation from God, it’s also separation from life and all that’s good. And when someone is cut off from their source of life and goodness, they begin to die. Think about it this way. A man deprived of oxygen will continue to go through the motions of life for a little while... but his condition quickly deteriorates. He’ll start to struggle and gasp for air. Short moments later he’ll be on the ground, and finally he will die.
Sin does the same thing to us. The longer we live separated from our source of life, the more we fall into death. I believe that’s why God shortened our lives after the flood for this very reason. It’s amazing the evils we do in only 70 short years. Now imagine if we lived for hundreds of years. What if Stalin, Hitler, or any number of evil dictators had lived for 900 years? What new ways of doing evil would we invent?
So why does God hate sin? Why must sin be punished and the sinner cast out of God’s presence? It’s because the sinner has cast himself out of God’s presence, His love, and His life. It’s also because God can have nothing to do with something that is completely evil, destructive, and murderous. God and sin have nothing in common. Sin is the complete lack of everything that God is. A sinner, someone who worships sin, cannot live in the presence of God.
That’s why our sin had to be dealt with on the cross.
And on the contrary...
Why does God desire our worship? Does he lack anything? Is He really on such an ego trip? Does he need our worship? No... not at all...
God desires our worship because He is compassionate and loving. We become like the things we worship. In our worship of God, we become like Him. We reverse sin’s curse when we worship God. If sin disconnects us from God, worship reconnects us to Him. Worship is pleasing to God because it's fellowship with Him and partnership in His work.
Am I making this up? Or was this the view of the scripture writers?
David wrote in song that, “You are my Lord, apart from you I have no good thing.”
He also wrote that “Your loving-kindness is better than life” and “With you is the fountain of life.”
David knew that God alone was the source of goodness and life. The scripture writers also knew this about sin: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”
Remember also the story of the prodigal son: he took his Father’s inheritance and squandered it on wild living. And it was fun for awhile. Then, like a man deprived of oxygen, his inheritance ran out and he found himself feeding pigs... and starving to death.
The prodigal son realized what we must... that it would be better to be our Father’s hired servant than to be dying alone apart from Him.
So he returned. And the Father not only accepted him back... he called the very man who dishonored His name His son.
With God alone is life.
Sin brings death.
That’s why God hates sin.
That’s why sin isn’t a joke. It’s not something to play with. It steals our very lives.
And we have to hate it.
