www.devotions.com

God's Love Covers All Sin

5/03/1997   

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24)

The other night I awoke from a bad dream. It seems I had wronged someone and was now defending myself in court. The rub was that I was not in court because of what I did, but rather for what I had not done. I couldn’t believe what was happening. The harder I tried to convince the judge that I was innocent, the deeper into trouble I found myself. Oh sure, justice is supposed to be blind, but come on, I was being convicted for a crime that I did not commit.

Throughout the night, I kept waking up only to return to my dream every time I went back to sleep. The irony of it all is that even though we dream every night, I rarely remember any of my dreams. Well this was one I couldn’t shake. Was God trying to tell me something? No. In fact, God revealed to me that my dream was not from him, but from Satan. He also helped me to understand how he judges sin.

The Bible warns us to be very careful about reading too much into dreams. "He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams…" (1Samuel 28:6) I knew that the Lord was not the maker of this dream. It was too confusing and quite unsettling and I remembered what Paul said about such circumstances: "For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace…" (1 Corinthians 14:33) Now that I knew where the enemy was, I could turn to the Lord to help me understand the truth behind the lie I was being told.

The Apostle Paul dealt with an incident of sexual immorality in the Corinthian church that provides a great deal of insight about how God looks at sin in the life of a saint. It was a case of incest in which a man had taken his father’s wife. While the woman was not his mother, God’s Word condemns such acts as abominable. Listen to what Paul said, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

Those verses convey three very important principles about how god looks at sin in the lives of Christians-. Obviously God doesn’t differentiate between sin. The fact is we are all in the same boat, slanderers with thieves and the greedy with the sexually immoral. Sin is sin.

Secondly, sin is a lifestyle and not some discrete act. As Dr. Charles Stanley puts it, "Sin isn’t something you do. Rather, sinful is something you are from birth." Indeed, the Bible teaches us from Genesis through Revelations that we are born to sin.

Finally, God will forgive us of any and all sin that we have in our lives. The Corinthians were about as sorry of a group of sinners that ever started a church, which is why Paul said, "And such were some of you," with the same breath he used to talk about the sexually immoral, thieves, homosexual offenders, etc, (1 Corinthians 6:11) But he also reminded them that they were no longer just sinners, they had been washed, were sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord.

God’s revelation to me is that nothing is beyond his forgiveness. Just like Dr. Stanley said in one of his sermons, "No sin is too great, too awful, or too prolific for God to forgive. No person is so deep in sin, so ingrained in a lifestyle, so steeped in evil, that he or she cannot be saved."

God wasn’t the judge in that dream. Satan was spinning a lie and I almost went for it. He wanted me to think that God would send me to hell for sins I didn’t even know I had committed. But John reminds us, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins, and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)

posted by Mike Ruffin on 5/03/1997