Tag: Sin

Morning Musing: Romans 8:19-22

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“For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Things in this world are not the way they should be. That’s something every religion acknowledges in one way or another. It’s not just that we’re broken, though. The problem extends to the whole world. Creation itself is broken. Creation itself needs to be restored and set right again. Believe it or not, this is part of the Gospel. Let’s take a look here as Paul explains that creation is looking forward to our redemption as much as we are.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 10:13

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“No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Day three of camp was all about living a holy life. If we are going to go higher in our relationship with God, we are going to have to come to look more like Him. This means growing in holiness. God is holy. If we worship Him, if we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will come to reflect His holiness in and through our own lives. That’s natural for someone who is in Christ. What’s unnatural for a Jesus follower is sin. And yet sin keeps getting in our way. As a result, in worship tonight we talked about one of the vehicles sin uses for that: temptation. Let’s dive in a bit deeper.

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Morning Musing: Romans 7:22-25

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“For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

You’ve been there before. You knew the right thing to do in a situation. You further knew what the consequences of doing the wrong thing would be. But you did the wrong thing anyway. And now you’re facing the consequences. There aren’t many feelings worse than that. The right word for that feeling is wretched. Let’s join Paul as he concludes his reflections on the nature of our struggle against sin and the sense of wretchedness that brings.

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Morning Musing: Romans 7:12-13

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“So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. Therefore, did what is good become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, in order to be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment, sin might become sinful beyond measure.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I love a good mystery story. I tend to let myself get taken into the story such that I’m fully along for the ride. I rarely figure the best ones out until right at the end, which, in a really good mystery, should always be the case. One of the best I’ve ever seen is the movie, The Usual Suspects, starring Kevin Spacey. Spacey plays a criminal who, after being arrested, convinces the police with an elaborate—and entirely false—story that he is innocent even though he was the mastermind behind the whole thing. One of the best lines from the movie is a quote attributed to a 19th century French poet and essayist, Charles Baudelaire. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” When we become convinced that evil isn’t really evil, that sin isn’t really a thing, we find ourselves able to justify all sorts of things. Law serves as the only effective restraint when we walk that path. Sin, though, is bad enough stuff it can corrupt even that. Let’s talk a bit more today about the relationship of sin and the law.

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Morning Musing: Romans 6:23

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“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the classic approaches to sharing the Gospel from the last century was to take unbelievers along the Romans Road. This was a series of verses in this incredible letter that spell out the basic Gospel message, leading the listener to the point of making a decision to follow Jesus. This verse is one of the major stops on that road. Paul here spells out the result of sin. Let’s take a look at this and talk through just what it means.

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