In the beginning God made everything, and it was all good. It was exactly as it was supposed to be. Then came the Fall. The serpent came and tempted Adam and Eve, we're not going to get into whose fault it was or anything because it doesn't matter, and they sinned. Now it is to be noted that being tempted is not a sin. Jesus was tempted yet he was still perfect. Adam and Eve were tempted and they failed the test, and sinned.
Now in this moment in human history there are a lot who say that Adam and Eve never had any real knowledge of how to handle a situation like that; being tempted. While they have never been in a situation like this, they did have knowledge how to handle this type of situation. They were given two rules: Take care of everything, and don't eat THAT. Pretty simple. the Fall hasn't happened, things don't die, should be pretty easy to take care of the Garden. Don't eat from that particular tree? Well there's tons more stuff around here to eat, shouldn't be that hard. It should be ingrained in their minds by this point that they're not to eat of that certain tree. And that's shown in the dialogue between Eve and the serpent. "God said, 'You shall not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" Eve has that memorized so she knows that she is not to eat of that tree. And God had made them a promise: Eat of that tree and you die. Now he wasn't talking physical death, but spiritual. The serpent tricks her and reverses her thinking though, getting her to eat from the tree, going against what God has told them not to do. They knew this thing wasn't God, he spoke about God in the third person and said the exact opposite of what God did say, therefore they questioned God and his wisdom, then went and acted on that questioning doing what he said not to and therefore sinning. It wasn't because they wanted to go against what God said, but they wanted to be like God (Gen. 3.5-6). In that moment she put herself before God, wanting to be like him and maybe even hoping to be better than him.
Because of that single moment in history, one bite, everything changed. And the world has been declining since. I've spoken about it before, the Law of Entropy, how everything is dying. This is a result of the Fall, of sin entering into the world. Everything started to die then, everything began to decline, all as a result of sin.
Now we all have sin in our own lives. Think about the best person you know, whether it be your parents, pastor, best friend, grandparents, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Liam Neeson, whoever, they have sinned. The only person that hasn't sinned is Jesus, which is why his sacrifice was perfect, but we'll get into that later. Paul tells us in Romans that all have sinned. Solomon tells us the same in Ecclesiastes. There are all types of ways to sin: Actions, inactions, seen, unseen, thoughts, conversations, even letting your emotions out of control is a sin (example being Matthew 5.21-22). Go look at the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5-7 and tell me that you haven't done at least one of those. Have you looked at a guy or a girl and thought, "I'd hit that"? Guess what, you've sinned. You've committed adultery. You ever been driving and someone cut you off and you thought about running them off the road? Well you just basically murdered them.
Now these things don't mean we might as well go out and do them. Let me be very clear about this.
THOUGHTS LEAD TO ACTIONS
THOUGHTS ARE AS BAD
AS ACTIONS
BOTH CONDEMN THE SAME
WE ARE CALLED TO BE CHRIST LIKE
WHO WAS PERFECT
WHO KEPT HIS THOUGHTS
EMOTIONS
AND ACTIONS IN CHECK
GET YOUR IN CHECK AS WELL
MESSING UP BY THOUGHT DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OKAY TO MESS UP BY ACTION
What this really comes down to is: Have you repented? Have you been saved? If so act like it. But if you're still a slave to sin then continue to reap judgement on yourself. Pile it high and see where that gets you on the other side. If you're a Christian: Act like it. If you're a pagan: Do whatever.
You may not think you sin, but that's you turning from the truth. We all sin, saved and unsaved. The difference is those who are truly saved make an attempt not to sin. They don't always succeed, I sure don't. They stumble, probably a lot. But they try. They act like their saved.
A guy smokes from the age of 14 till he's 40, pack a day kind of guy. Finds out he has stage 3 lung cancer. He goes and gets treated, and by the grace of God the cancer goes into remission. Now do you think after that he's just going to go out and start smoking again? Probably not. He realizes that he has a second chance and he's going to honor and respect it.
It's the same thing with sin. We have this cancerous thing in our lives which is killing us. We finally realize it after a while and realize what it's doing to us. We go to have someone take care of it, we go to God. He says that he's already done everything to take care of this cancer in our lives, all we have to do is believe that he and his son did all the work. We do that, we turn our back to the life that we lived, and start over again. Since we've had the problem taken care of do we then go on living the way we did? By no means! We died to sin and found a new, better life in Christ!
The point of all of this is: We all have sin in our lives and it's killing us. Murder, rape, abuse, bullying, obesity, hurricanes, earth quakes, wild fires, depression, fear, hate, suffering; it all comes back to just sin in the world. Those in the world continue to sin more and things get worse. I think there's something to that. We all do it, we can't get around it. There is absolutely nothing we can do to take care of this sin problem.
But luckily for us, someone who could do something about it already did. And he did everything required. Jesus lived a perfect life. He went to the cross in our place. He took on our sin. He died then rose again. This defeated sin, defeated death, and brought life back into the world, and pouring out grace. This grace has appeared to all of us, as has God. Accepting is the only way to gain this grace and the freedom that comes with it.
For sin is paid for with death, but God gives the gift of grace for free, giving us life.
Sin is why we need a Savior.
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