Hi how are you all? I am very late writing this week’s blog as we have had a death in the family. It has been a stressful week. How was your week?
This week I want to blog on an unusual topic- happiness and sin. I had a dream a week or so ago where two people were getting married. The problem was they shouldn’t have been but I had to pretend to be happy for them.
Too often, this is how we treat sin in our lives- we don’t hate it like God does. In fact it makes us happy. We can’t repent for something we are happy to do and keep on doing.
So what is sin? Sin in the Old Testament was disobeying the commandments of God. However, in the New Testament, and what we currently live under, is not believing that Jesus is the Son of God- that He died and rose again to restore us to right relationship with others. It is also not obeying the two commands Jesus left us with- love God and love others. Sin encompasses a wide range of things but as a Christian if we repent and turn away from it, we are forgiven
Most of us do this but there are some things we struggle with. I struggled with anger for a lot of years until God healed me of it. It was really my first reaction to circumstances but that didn’t make it right. I would ask God to forgive me but the next time something happened, the anger would arise. Eventually as I read the Bible, God healed me of it. This is not what I am discussing in this post. I wasn’t happy I was getting angry.
So what happens if we deliberately keep on sinning because we somehow enjoy it. Hebrews 10: 26-31 in the Message Bible states:
26-31 If we give up and turn our backs on all we’ve learned, all we’ve been given, all the truth we now know, we repudiate Christ’s sacrifice and are left on our own to face the Judgment—and a mighty fierce judgment it will be! If the penalty for breaking the law of Moses is physical death, what do you think will happen if you turn on God’s Son, spit on the sacrifice that made you whole, and insult this most gracious Spirit? This is no light matter. God has warned us that he’ll hold us to account and make us pay. He was quite explicit: “Vengeance is mine, and I won’t overlook a thing” and “God will judge his people.” Nobody’s getting by with anything, believe me.
These verses tell us that if we keep on sinning and enjoy it, we turn our backs on all we have learned. We are literally telling God that His way is not best for our life, His truth is not believed and Jesus’s act on the cross doesn’t apply to us. This is a harsh truth but one where there is warning.
For those that this is speaking too, there is still time to repent and return to God. However, it can become harder to see the love of God especially when your heart gets hardened to the truth.
God loves but He is also just. Jesus took the punishment for us but if we don’t believe, then we must take the punishment on ourselves. This is a hard truth and is a weight none of us were meant to carry.
This post has a very heavy message but I hope you heed the warning. It tells us in Galatians 6: 7-8 in the Message Bible that:
7-8 Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
None of us wants to harvest a crop of weeds. We all should desire a harvest of eternal life. So today, repent of your sins, turn back to God and allow Him to rid your life of anything not pleasing to Him. You can do it because you are amazing!
Bless you and keep living the life God intended for you.
Karen
