What Sin Does to Us: Trending Toward Truth

I’ve always known that sin was bad. I’d say that’s basically common knowledge!

But for the longest time, I thought about it like a scale. The one with Lady Justice holding the scale. As if the good things that I do in my life can outweigh all the bad.

Sinned twice? No worries! Do three nice things to cancel out the bad.

Almost like counting calories. Ok, I eat that oh so delicious hot fudge brownie sundae. All good, so long as I’m sure to get my workout in the next day.

How wrong I was!

Sin builds walls. It creates distance between me and God.

In my previous post, we went back to the Garden and traced where sin started, how one choice in a perfect place altered the landscape for all of us. If you haven't read that yet, I'd encourage you to start there.

Because now we're getting personal with sin. It's one thing to know where sin came from. It's another thing entirely to look at what it's doing to us.

Not some. Not the really bad ones I see talked about in the news. Not even everyone except the people who go to church twice a week and volunteer at the food pantry.

All!

This verse levels the playing field…but in a way that's kind of uncomfortable. Because if I'm being honest, how much time do I spend comparing my sin to other people's sin? Like it’s some kind of competition I can win.

Well, at least I'm not doing THAT.

Sure I messed up, but have you seen what so-and-so did?

When it comes to sin, there’s no ranking here. We’re all in the same sin boat. We all miss the mark.

Yet there’s something strangely freeing about that. Because once I stop pretending that I’m somehow the exception, I can start refocusing my life.

I, like a good chunk of people, look forward to payday, the day when the employer issues wages to employees.

Wages are something you earn. You put in the work, you get paid. That's how wages work.

And Paul is saying sin operates the same way. It pays out…and the payment is death.

Now, I don't think this is only meant to describe no longer physically living on this earth.

I think it's more like a slow fade, a growing separation. And this separation continues to accumulate, like interest on a debt you forgot you had. Then when you finally look at the balance, you wonder how did it possibly get this high?

I think of all the scary situations that I’ve ever been in. Being in a foreign country and not having money, a car accident, a house fire from a bolt of lightning (thank goodness for fire extinguishers!), and on and on.

But I’ve always been able to call for help, and help came because someone heard me.

With this verse, our sins block God from hearing us.

Unlike ignoring a petulant child, God’s not giving us the silent treatment because He’s annoyed with us. It’s our sin that builds the wall, and a natural consequence of any wall, is again, that separation.

The thought of praying and God not hearing me due to a wall is unfathomably terrifying.

And even worse, knowing it’s because I’m the one who made the wall between us.

Like I said in my last post, this is heavy stuff!

Giving in to temptation. Shackled to sin. The constant struggle to resist yet not being able to.

And no, I don’t mean resisting another freshly baked chocolate chip cookie that’s in my kitchen right now.

When I say I’m going to be more patient tomorrow, and then lose it before lunch. Or when I say I’m going to put God first in my life, and then I decline a request to serve at church, because c’mon I already served last week.

This verse openly exposes the gap between who I want to be and who I really am on any given day.

But it also tells me that I’m not uniquely broken. I’m human. The struggle is definitely still there! But I know I'm not the only one fighting it.

Sowing and reaping, this is agricultural language. And even though I’m not a farmer, yes, this is still applicable.

What I plant, I pick. That's the idea. And it sounds simple enough…until you realize that the harvest doesn't always appear the same week you planted the seed. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes years.

The deception is in the delay.

I call this the gut punch. When the consequences of my action finally appear.

These are from the seeds I'd sown way back when. Hey, who planted all of these weeds on my lawn?

But sure enough, when I trace it back, I find the choice that I made. And it’s usually a pattern. A bunch of little compromises that I barely noticed at the time.

But there are two harvests mentioned. Destruction (no thank you!).

There’s also eternal life. What I sow to please the Spirit produces a harvest too.

That means seeds of faith that I plant for me and for others may very well seem like they’re not doing anything. But these are for eternal life.

Makes you want to pay more attention to what you’re planting, doesn’t it?

As you can see, sin does a lot. None of it is good.

And if this is where the story ended, we’d both just sit here staring at our screens, bummed out.

Thankfully it doesn’t! Not even close.

Up next, we get to see how God intervenes. I hope (*hint, hint*) to see you there.