Tag Archives: Sin

How You Walk

Leave a reply

“Let’s eat Grandma!”  Put one comma in that disgusting sentence and it makes all the difference for Grandma: “Let’s eat, Grandma!”  What makes all the difference in 1 John is understanding the word, walk, in these verses:

If we claim to have fellowship with him (God) yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:6-7)

John wrote this letter to tell about a special relationship he and others have with God, that he calls “koinonia,” or fellowship (See: Flood Muck and Koinonia).  John wants you to have that same fellowship with God, too.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:3)

But how do you know if you have that fellowship or not?  John says you can tell by “your walk.”  He says, since God is light, since in God there is no darkness (See: Light Reading), the people who have this fellowship with Him do not “walk in darkness.”

But what does that mean, exactly?  Do you walk in darkness?  Are you a liar?  Have you been fooling yourself?  What does John mean by “walking?”

When John says “walk” he is talking about the regular direction and character of your life.  “Walking in darkness” means living a lifestyle at odds with the direction and character God intended for us humans when He designed us.  “Walking in the light” refers to a lifestyle that is harmonious with what God intended.  For example, one who walks in the light would tend to love those who treat him badly.  One who walks in the darkness would try to get revenge against them.

WATCH OUT!  IT IS EASY TO MISUNDERSTAND THIS!

First, John is not saying that if you try real hard to be good, then you will earn a relationship with God!  Rather, he says that when you have a relationship with God (the one that comes when you trust Jesus Christ), you can tell it by the change in the direction and character of your life.  The “koinonia” relationship one has with God causes him to turn around, and heading toward the light and away from the darkness.

Secondly, “Walking in the light” It does not mean living a totally sinless life, but, rather, a lifestyle that tends to be harmonious with God’s design.  Do you see where he says “the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin”?  Doesn’t that mean we live a sinless life?  No way, and John is going to explain that further in the next verses.  Notice that John does not say the blood of Jesus purified us from all sin, but that it purifies us.  The form of the word he uses means that this purification happens in a continuous way, as we walk in the light but still sin.

You have seen offers online to clean viruses off your computer. But unless you get an antivirus program that continuously does that, keeping your computer clean every time it was attacked, it would quickly become hopelessly corrupted.  That’s how the blood of Christ works to purify us from sin when we “walk in the light.”

So, John wants us to ask, which direction are you walking?  Toward the light or away from it?   Don’t fool yourself or lie to others about this.  If you see that you are walking in the darkness, don’t try to turn yourself around.  Ask Jesus to do it, and trust Him.  You will soon see the difference.  You will see it in your “walk.”

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  John 8:12

The Futility of Religion

1 Reply

Religion doesn’t work.  By ‘religion,’ I mean man-made attempts to get close to God and earn His acceptance by performing rituals and following rules.  We humans feel “something” is missing  We are wired to go looking for it.  Most have a sense that what’s missing is our connection to God.  We sense He is “out there“ somewhere, but we can’t seem to find Him.  We know the difference between good and bad, and yet we cannot consistently be good.  Religion is our human attempt to fix that emptiness and failure.  It seeks to fill the emptiness with ritual, such as chanting, singing, saying prayers, swinging incense and the like.  It seeks to repair the failure with lists of strict “do’s and don’ts” and punishments for those who screw up.  Every religion that I am aware of is a combination of those two elements.  People who strive to connect to God and to be good by following religion are usually sincere and well-meaning, but inevitably fail.

Why is that?  Let’s take it from the top:

God knows our connection with Him is broken.  It was broken from the beginning.  The first three chapters of the Bible (Genesis 1-3) form a powerful narrative that illustrates two profound truths:  1) We were created by God to have an intimate connection and relationship with Him that depends upon trust.  2) That connection is broken when we turn away from God and trust our own ideas.  Adam and Eve had an intimate relationship with God – they could hear Him and speak to Him, and they walked with Him in the “cool of the day.”   But when they doubted God that intimate connection was broken.

God designed human beings to be connected to Him by His Spirit.  Your computer is connected to mine by the internet.  My television is connected to America’s Got Talent by means of a satellite signal.  Your cell phone is connected to your Aunt Louise by an invisible cell signal.  All of these connections are possible because of the the equipment was designed.  God designed us to connect with Him by His Holy Spirit.  When you don’t have any cell signal, you say your phone is dead.  It still lights up, it still goes “boop” when you push the buttons, but it is dead. When God disconnects us from the flow of His Spirit, we are dead.  Our bodies work, our minds still work, but we are dead.  That’s why God said to Adam:

when you eat of it [i.e. when you doubt Me and disobey Me] you will surely die. (Genesis 2:17b)

Adam’s body didn’t die, his soul (his mind) didn’t die.  His connection to God died.  Since his original act of doubt and disobedience, all people have been born  with the equipment to connect to God, but without His Spirit.  We have been born dead.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— (Romans 5:12)

Religion cannot work because nothing a dead man can do will restore him to life.  The only One Who can restore “dead” humans to life,  who can restore the flow of His Spirit,  is God.   That is why Jesus said,

…I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10b)

Guess how that “life” happens?    Stay tuned…

Keep the Faith – Good Question

Leave a reply

Somebody who has been reading these posts on faith asked a good question: “What if my suffering is God punishing me?” When we are tempted to turn back from our faith, is it always because we are experiencing some kind of attack? What if God is doing it to us? Let’s sort this out.

The last post, about keeping our eye on Jesus (See “Keep the Faith – Part 5“) did not go far enough. Here’s the next line from Hebrews:

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Heb 12:3)

Much of the suffering one experiences in following Jesus, comes from opposition from sinful men. Jesus clearly said:

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. (John 15:18)

But there is another Source of some of the hardship we face as followers of Jesus. Some of it comes from God. But it’s not punishment, it’s discipline. Punishment is a penalty that is due for something wrong. Jesus took the punishment for all our sins; there is no further punishment due. Discipline, on the other hand, is correction for a tendency we have formed that is wrong. Discipline shapes us and steers us in a positive direction.

And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” (Hebrews 12:5-6)

Discipline is given to encourage us because we are loved. True, he uses the word, punishes, in that quote from Proverbs, but does so with the meaning of working to produce good in us. This whole passage is well worth chewing over, but here is another quote from it that makes the same point:

Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:10-11)

See the difference? Hope that helps. My sense is that this is a question we all ask ourselves from time to time and it is good to get the truth of it, stated clearly, right from Scripture.

Keep the Faith – Part 2

Leave a reply

We’ve been getting some complaints about the way you talk so much about Jesus.  If you want to keep your job with this firm, knock it off …”

How can you hang tough with what you believe when there is so much pressure  – tough pressure – to make you let it go?   Hebrews 12:1-3 answers that question with practical tips.  We covered the first one, about the “great cloud of witnesses,” here: “Keep the Faith – Part 1.”  

Here is how that passage continues:

…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,  (Hebrews 12:1b)

Want to hang tough with faith?  Pull up your socks and tie your shoes!  Get rid of anything that will slow you down or trip you up.   

FAMU athlete Robert Hayes practices running on...

FAMU athlete Robert Hayes practices running on the track: Tallahassee, Florida (Photo credit: State Library and Archives of Florida)

 Things that slow you down (floppy socks) include anything you don’t need but have been carrying through life out of habit or laziness. In her younger years, my daughter used to want to take all of her stuffed animals with her on cross-country trips in the car.  Sometimes she would be nearly buried in the pile of fuzzy objects in the back seat of the car.  But there came a time when she realized all those toys were getting in her way.  We all have stuff like that in our lives.

It is time to take inventory and pitch a bunch of stuff.  After I retired, I spent about a month fixing up my woodshop so I could work in it again.  You wouldn’t believe all the useless crap I hauled out to the dumpster.  But now it feels good out there; I can actually see the workbench and get right to work.  You watch Olympic athletes getting ready for track events and the first thing they do is take off everything they don’t need – from jackets and sweats to jewelry – just so they can run faster.   Did you know that sailboat racers spend time scrubbing the dirt and algae off the hulls of their boats?

i don’t know what stuff you have loading you down and slowing you down in life, but you do!   When you “pull up your socks,” you become stronger and more effective.  It is easier to resist the world’s pressure.

If the “floppy socks” in your life slow you down, the sins (untied shoelaces) actually trip you up.  They stop your progress.  Picture a runner who is competing pretty well, right up there with the leaders.  As they round the final turn, he steps on an untied shoelace and loses his balance.  His legs begin to windmill wildly as he fights to stay up. But then he goes down, sprawled awkwardly on the track cinders.  He gets up, he finishes the race, but it’s not the same.  Sin works like that.

I have no idea what your “shoelaces” look like.  But you do!  “Tie ’em up!”  Don’t get tripped up.

When the world comes after your faith, tries to hold you back or knock you down, first, remember that you are a member of a great team, stretching back through history, a team that has left an indelible legacy of powerful acts of faith.  Secondly, pull up your socks and tie your shoes.  Get rid of anything that’s slowing you down or tripping you up.

Check Engine

3 Replies

Are you getting tired of all this talk about what makes God angry?   You might be thinking, “Alright already! I get it; let’s get on to something more pleasant!”   If that is how you feel, imagine how God feels!  Fact is, God wants us to get on with the good stuff.  That’s why He gave us the Bible!

When your check-engine light comes on,

Check Engine light on a 1996 Dodge Caravan.

Check Engine light on a 1996 Dodge Caravan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

you can either get upset about it, or you can think, “Wow! My car just informed me of something I can do to get it running better.”   Sure you can  also be bummed out about the cretin who just serviced the thing and who probably left a wire unplugged…   But the point is, Isaiah 5 is a “Check Engine” light.  Ignore it to your own peril.  Here’s what lies ahead for those who do:

So man will be brought low and mankind humbled, the eyes of the arrogant humbled.  (Isaiah 5:15)

The problem, at its root, is arrogance, the attitude that presumes it knows better than God how to live in His garden.  The opposite attitude, humility, is held by those who really do know they need to pay attention to God, the Creator and Designer of all this and to submit to the ways He has said work best.  If you are only recently reading these posts, go back and read about the key verse in Isaiah, the one that reveals the message of the whole Bible.  The short version is this: God will dwell in the souls of the humble, will forgive them, restore them and bring them to full life (Isaiah 57:15-19).

Here is what lies ahead for the humble:

But the Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness. Then sheep will graze as in their own pasture; lambs will feed among the ruins of the rich. (Isaiah 5:16-17)

The “sheep” in those verses are the humble who pay attention and submit to God.  And to His Son, Jesus.  Here’s what Jesus said lay in store for His “sheep”:

Therefore Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.
(John 10:7-9)

Real Freedom

1 Reply

Tucked into the hills of North Carolina is a campground that has been under the watchful, squinty eye and command of an 88 year-old lady.  Abigail (not her real name) is laid back and nice, but she has her rules, runs her place by what she reads in the Bible and doesn’t put up with anybody who doesn’t like that.  We spent a night there, along with maybe 200 other campers.  It was a little slice of heaven, nothing like inner, what-used-to-be-a-city, Detroit.  You don’t want to set up your tent there.  I know I’m painting with too wide a brush, and there are exceptions for sure, but the big difference between Abigail’s place and inner-city Detroit is that Abby respects the ways of God and the gangs on the streets of Detroit do not.

It might seem that the old-fashioned, Southern, campground lady, bound up with her Bible principles isn’t as free as the folks who go ahead and do whatever they feel like doing in Detroit.  But in reality, the opposite is true.  Abigail’s respect for God’s operating instructions for His garden allows her to breathe free.  I know, I know: there are a whole bunch of “yeah-buts” with which you could poke holes in that comparison, but the point I’m trying to make is true.  God isn’t trying to restrict us with His rules and principles, but set us free to make the most out of life.  Those who don’t pay attention, or who deliberately thumb their noses at God will ultimately be hurt by what they do.  That is the point of Isaiah 5 (This topic begins here.).

The next four “Woe’s,” next four things that make God mad, from Isaiah 5, sound like they are critiques of our current culture.    I won’t quote them here; read them for yourself and see how close they fit.  God is angered by:

Verse 18-19 – People who put real effort into doing things God forbids and by their actions ridicule God

Verse 20 – People who say that evil is good, and vice versa.

Verse 21 – People who think they are smarter than God and that they know better

Verse 22 – Corrupt officials who peddle influence and deny justice to those who are not connected

Sound familiar?   Our culture is shot through with all of them!  The people who do these things think they are being smart, squeezing the most out of life.  Fact is, they are missing out, lurking about in Detroit when they could be having lemonade at Abigail’s place.  Here’s what God says lies in store:

Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets.   (Isaiah 5:24-25)

What Kind of Termites Anger God?

3 Replies

If that question doesn’t make sense, go back one post and read “On the Other Hand, God Really is Angry“.  When termites threatened to destroy my house, I exterminated them.  In Isaiah 5, God explains that He is going to eradicate the “termites” that threaten to destroy His garden.  He doesn’t use termites as a metaphor but, rather, a vineyard that does not produce good fruit because of people wrecking the place.  What kind of behavior does wreck the vineyard, so to speak?  What kind of termites does God see?  Before we answer that, have a look at verse 7, to see what “good fruit” looks like to the eyes of God:

And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.  (Isaiah 5:7)

What does God desire for this world?  Justice and righteousness.  Not what we think of as justice, but perfect justice.  A world where a person’s position and wealth does not change what rules apply to him or her.  A world where corruption of any kind is non-existent.  A world full of people who intuitively do the right thing in a harmonious way.  (For more on righteousness, see “Jamming in God’s Band.”)  God desires a world in which there is no bloodshed – none.

But if that was all He said, it would resemble a vacuous speech at a beauty pageant (“I want world peace!”).   Specifically, what kind of human behavior does God see as termites?  He gave Isaiah several specific examples, beginning in verse 8.  These are representative examples of things people were doing in that time that wrecked God’s vineyard.  Many of these sound pretty contemporary.  Let’s just consider the first one:

Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.  (Isaiah 5:8)

When God sees wealthy people gobbling up vast tracts of land for themselves, building themselves house after house, not because they need a place to live but just because they have the money to do it, God sees termites.  Think about it:  God designed the Earth as a perfect garden and invited humans to live in it and enjoy it.  Whose garden is it?  How is it that some of the guests in God’s garden think they should fence off hundreds of thousands of acres, saying to everybody else, “Keep out! This is mine?”  It is not that God is opposed to holding property in a family in trust and passing it along.  What God sees as termites is the people who greedily attempt to own and control much more than they could ever need and who wind up isolating themselves from everyone else in the process.

I could be wrong about this, but I believe God sees termites when He looks down on how much of this country is “owned” by so few – not because they need to but simply because they can.  I think God sees termites in places where huge conglomerates make it impossible to make a go of a family farm.  It’s not just agriculture; I see similar things going on with the decline of “Mom and Pop” stores and restaurants, too.  I’ll bet that there are aspects of the forces behind enormous conglomerate corporations that God sees as termites.  Just sayin’

Of course the argument for those who do such things is that they do it to be successful.  Listen to what God says will be the outcome:

The Lord Almighty has declared in my hearing: “Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants. A ten-acre vineyard will produce only a bath of wine, a  homer of seed only an ephah of grain.”  (Isaiah 5:9-10)  (Note: the words, bath, homer, and ephah, all refer to an extremely paltrey amount for such big places.)

God says, “What you think is success will lead to utter ruin.  Mark My words!”  Why?  Termites!  Living like that wrecks the place.  That’s not the way God designed for the world to work.

That’s just the first example.  Next time we will go further

Now You See it; Now You Don’t

Leave a reply

My wife has a can of aerosol wonder spray that causes spots on the carpet to vanish.  No, I don’t know what it is – deliberately, so I don’t have to use it.  We each have our own gifts: my gift is putting the spots on the carpet…  Anyhow, it’s amazing stuff. You should get some.  Now you see it; now you don’t.  

In Isaiah, God said this:

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall  be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

Most of us have sins we hope nobody ever finds out about, the ones that, whenever they come to mind, cause our toes  to curl up in our shoes.  We’d like to forget them but they won’t go away.  They are like bloodstains on the carpet.   But God says He will cause those to vanish.  Not just forgive them but take them away entirely.   Literally.  Isaiah knew this from first hand experience.  When he cowered before God and confessed that he, like everybody else, was a man of “unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5) God arranged a weird, supernatural ceremony of atonement to happen:

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” (Isaiah 6:6-7)

I cannot explain all the bizarre details described there.  But God (literally His angelic beings) did something to cause Isaiah’s sin to disappear.  The Hebrew word behind the phrase “taken away” means to drag off, or cause something to vanish.  Now you see it; now you don’t.   The reason that is possible is explained in the Hebrew word behind the phrase “atoned for.”  If you wanted to purchase freedom for a slave, you would pay the going rate to his master, making atonement for him.   Jesus made that kind of payment to free us from our guilt.   If you are willing, God removes it.

In the verse we began with above, God says, in effect, “Be reasonable and I will cause your sin to disappear – not just the common ones, but the whoppers, too – the ones that seem like bloodstains on your memory.”   What does He mean by “Let us reason together?”  We see it in the next two verses:

If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.  (Isaiah 1:19-20)

Accepting the Gift

3 Replies

Unemployed, you have missed the last several mortgage payments on a house worth less than you paid.  You are about to be foreclosed.  A registered letter comes to the door.  You sign for it and tear it open:  “This is to inform you that someone, who would like to remain anonymous, has offered to pay off your mortgage obligations.  If you choose to accept this gift, the bank has agreed to suspend all foreclosure proceedings.”  Nice letter, eh?  Nice gift.

God’s gift to us wipes out the obligations we owe for sin – completely – if we accept it.  His Son, Jesus, Who never sinned and therefore had no personal punishment due, willingly died a brutal and tortuous death to cover what I owed.  And you.  If you accept His gift, God suspends His foreclosure on your life.  God told Isaiah He would do this and told him to write it down:

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  (Isaiah 53:4-5)

If someone offers to pay off your mortgage, your first response might be something like, “What? Does he think I’m in poverty?  Does he think I can’t do this on my own?  Give me a bit more time and I will get this fixed…”  But if you hang on to that attitude, you won’t accept the offer.   In a sense, accepting his offer involves a willingness to acknowledge that you really do need his help.   In the same way, accepting the gift of Someone Who went to His death on your behalf requires a change in attitude, acknowledging that such a gift is absolutely necessary.  Most of us would rather hold to the notion that, “I got this; I’m doing pretty well on my own; I’m a good person.”   But if you do continue to believe those things, you cannot accept the gift. Do you remember how Isaiah responded when he caught a glimpse of God’s glory?

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”  Isaiah 6:5

Isaiah knew a humbling truth:  compared to God’s perfection, he was just as sinful as his neighbors.  We humans are all in the same boat of sinful imperfection.  We all deserve the same punishment.  We tend to compare ourselves with others and think, “At least I am not as messed up as that guy…”   Somebody illustrated the fallacy of such comparisons like this: “If the requirement to get to Heaven was jumping up and touching the moon, there would be no significant difference between the contestants for ‘Biggest Loser’ and a member of the Celtics.”   The requirement for going to Heaven isn’t touching the moon, it’s having spiritual life.  And everyone who has ever sinned – that’s you and me – is spiritually dead.

God is willing to correct that condition, to give us His life, His Holy Spirit to live in our souls.  But first, because He is perfectly just, He must require that your punishment for sin be paid.  Because you cannot pay, because, even if you could pay you would sin again the next day, He paid.  He allowed His Son, Jesus, to pay your sin mortgage in full – forever – if you accept.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the (punishment for the) iniquity (sin) of us all.  (Isaiah 53:6 – my explanations in parentheses)

Accepting this gift begins with understanding the words, we all.  It requires acknowledging your own personal sinfulness and complete helplessness to fix your own spiritual deadness.  That’s what being “lowly and contrite” means in Isaiah 57:15 (See “In a Nutshell”). God said He will revive (bring back to life) the soul of the lowly and contrite. He will forgive and restore a person who is lowly and contrite.   That is, He will do so once the bill is paid.  And He offers to pay the bill.  Accepting this gift is like what you would do with the mortgage letter example we began with: – you say, “Yes.”   If you understand that there is no way you can fix yourself to become perfect, no way you can pay what you owe for being imperfect; if you understand that you really need God’s forgiveness, then say “yes” to Jesus.  Probably want to say, “Thank You,” also…

The Riddle and a Hint

2 Replies

There is something in the Bible that doesn’t seem to make sense.  Consider: We were designed by our Creator, to be connected to Him, by His Spirit, in an interactive way, much like a cell phone is connected to the cell signal. However, because of rebellion and sin, we are disconnected from God’s Spirit. We are spiritually dead; in cell phone lingo, we have no bars (See: Dead Man Walking).  God desires to connect us again, and said He will do so for those who are receptive – the lowly and contrite. He said He will forgive, heal, restore and revive them. But God also said He does not leave the guilty unpunished. This is the riddle of the Bible, set forth in Exodus 34:6-7 and not solved until the New Testament. But God gave Isaiah big hints. Before considering some of those hints, let’s clarify the problem.

Justice demands that the guilty be punished. We know that in our bones. For example, suppose a drunk driver killed your toddler daughter. He’s arrested and goes to trial. During the trial, he breaks down in heartfelt tears of remorse, acknowledging to the judge that he is guilty and that he can never bring your daughter back to life but that he has committed himself to a life of complete sobriety. He is sincere. How would you feel if the judge said, “Because you are sorry, I’m going to let you off and clear your record. Case dismissed!”?   Frustrated?     Angry? Sure, because justice was not served. Justice demands the guilty be punished. Perfect justice demands that the punishment be balanced to the crime. Too light a punishment makes a mockery of justice.

God is just and God is perfect. According to what He showed Moses in Exodus 34:6, He is loving and forgiving but He also will not leave the guilty unpunished. Question: What should be the just punishment for something that causes death? I’m not talking about something that causes physical death, which merely shortens the span of a lifetime, but an act that causes spiritual death, which has eternal consequences?  Death, right?

Jesus said to the most religious people of His day, that, without some significant intervention and change, they would die in their sins.

But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” (John 8:23-24)

Sin, separates us from our spiritual connection to God, and causes death – spiritually, eternally. Justice demands a full punishment.   But Jesus said, “…if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”    Who did He claim to be?    Why would that make a difference?

Let’s begin with a hint, given by God to Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6 )

The “Child” would be born. The “Son” would be given – literally given over.   He would be called Mighty God.   Jesus said, “… if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will die in your sins.”

Chew on that…