My BSF leader, Angela Vaughn, taught the other day that Jesus offers mankind forgiveness. Any believer knows that. But sometimes these simple truths are easy to forget. Or easy to ignore. Or easy to not embrace. Let me talk today about the power and penalty of sin from my point of view. Angela got me thinking…
Do you sin? If you said “no”, then you just sinned by lying (1 John 1:8)! We all sin in one form or another. Some may sin thousands of times a day, others only in the ten’s. Some may commit big sins, others little ones. But God looks at all sin the same. One sin or 100,000 sins, big or little – they are the same to God. Jesus’ desire is to save. If you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior, then we are clothed in Him and God sees us covered in the blood of Jesus–not in all our sin (Rom 6:8-14).
But when we sin, we must acknowledge it to ourselves and then confess the sin to God and ask for forgiveness (1 John 1:9). We then need to perform an action–we are to turn away from that sin, NOW. Finally, offer yourself as an instrument to God (Rom 6:13).
Here’s an example. If you gossip about others you are in the same league as murderers. A great article on gossip is here.
Back to Angela’s lecture. She recommends : Don’t gossip, pray. We are to confess the sin, then go the opposite way of that sin. An awesome truth to integrate into our daily lives!