“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)
“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 of my innocence, the deeper in trouble I found myself. I know that justice is supposed to be blind, but it never occurred to me that the judge could be blind, too. So there I stood, being convicted for a crime I didn’t 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 all of us dream every night, I rarely remember any of my dreams. But this was one I couldn’t forget. Was God trying to tell me something?
The Bible warns us to be very careful about reading too much into dreams. In fact, I realized it was the devil and not the Lord who was the maker of my dream because it was too confusing. Do you remember what Paul said about such circumstances? “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace…” (1 Corinthians 14:33)
So now that I knew who and where the enemy was, I could turn to the Lord to help me understand the truth behind the lie that 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. First of all, God never differentiates between sins. His Word says that we are all in the same boat, slanderers with thieves and the greedy with the sexually immoral. In other words, 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. But Paul pointed out to them that they were heaven bound because they had been washed, sanctified, and justified by the blood that the Lord Jesus shed on the cross for them.
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.”
So you see God wasn’t the judge in my 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 my sins. 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)
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