Not a popular subject this one, but if I wanted to be popular in this present evil world I'd just write about Britney's latest fling or how Michael Jackson lost his glove. That's what the world is interested in. The world is more interested in the latest tips on how to pick up your husband's best friend, then on the things of God and doing right. The world is more interested in the latest Hollywood puppet coming out of the sodomite closet, then of sin and the imminent flood of God's wrath and judgment. Therefore we tend to minimize sin in our modern culture because it is out of control and rampant. Being bad is now considered good and being good is totally not cool. The bible predicted this would happen by the way. What is sin and why is it sin?
The bible says that sin is the transgression of the law. By what law though? The ten commandments? What law governs us individually and what about those that have never been told what the bible or religion considers as sin? What about those lost native tribes that have never had any contact with the known world? What law are they under?
According to the bible, we are all under known law. In other words we are under jurisdiction not of some outside law that we have no knowledge of but, the law of our minds or our conscience if you will.
Romans 2:14 For when the Gentiles (that's us), which have not the law (Mosaic Law), do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law (Mosaic law), are a law unto themselves:
Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
Here is what that means. We all have a knowledge or a standard of right and wrong. That is proven every day when we judge our own thoughts and actions, as well as the actions of others. All day long our thoughts are accusing or else excusing us and we feel good when we do right and guilt when we do wrong.
We can't get away from knowing right and wrong. The only way we could not know right from wrong is to get brain damage to such an extent that we lose all sense of reality. The older we get, the more knowledge we retain of what we ought and ought not do. The more knowledge we hold, the more we use that knowledge to judge ourselves and those around us. It might be conscious and vocal, or a mere thought, but we can't escape it. So what it boils down to, is that the Judge (God) will one day judge every person by the amount and severity of the times he broke his own personal standard or knowledge of right or wrong.
Mt 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
There will be no excuse in that day. Those that are still in their sins will stand before God with their mouths shut, fully knowing that they are guilty. There will be no "but...", only, "I knew I should have, I blew it".
Nowadays we see sin as not a big deal. That is because we have been blinded by our own sin so that we don't see the holiness of God. We can get a glimpse of the righteousness of God from the old testament and from the teachings of Jesus. For instance, if a young man was consistently rebellious toward his parents, he was to be taken outside of the city and stoned to death. That's pretty harsh for our day. The punishment for adultery was death. All transgression had a punishment and had to be paid for. Eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth. Payment had to be made for sin, and this was done by sacrificing animals and shedding it's blood to cover the sin so that God's judgment and wrath wouldn't fall. Whole unrepentant nations were destroyed because the continual transgressing of God's commandments. God killed 23000 of His own people Israel, in one day for worshiping other gods. We could go on all day and give more examples of how severely God views and judges sin. So severely that He had to send His Son to die on a cross and shed His blood to satisfy the justice of the law so that He could justly forgive sinners.
What the world tends to do is to look at others and judge their own selves compared to those around them. They think that if their in the top 10% of "good people", they'll be alright and everyone else will go be punished.
The thing is the law says that the soul that sins shall die. Here you have been thinking you might be alright but you have been in a condemned state since the first time you understood that you had a duty to do the right thing and you didn't. It doesn't matter how good a murder is after he has committed the act. The penalty for breaking the law still has to be payed. Being a good person won't satisfy the punishment for the crime. In fact, even the murderer asking for forgiveness from the judge or the family of the victim, won't make things right. Justice must still be served. The punishment for sin is eternal death in the lake of fire. Forever in a state of dying but never quite getting there. The soul never dies. Constant pain and torment with no relief, ever. You say you don't believe in a literal hell? Jesus spoke of it more then heaven. He spoke of it more then any other person in the bible. Either Jesus is a liar or else there are literal fires of a literal hell. If you reject the message of Jesus, you reject Him.
So what is the sum of these things? The whole world is guilty before God and in a condemned state. That's a fact. There is no person on the face of the earth who feels confident at the thought of standing before Almighty God and being judged. Our conscience bears witness that we are all guilty. We are hell deserving sinners with no hope in our selves of doing enough good to make peace between us and God. What are our options? Keep heading down the path of destruction and hope for the best? Continue to feed our lusts and ignore the impending doom? Just like the people in Noah's time, we could just continue eating, drinking and marrying until the flood comes. The flood of God's wrath is coming and there is only one Ark of safety! As in Noah's time, only the people in the ark were saved. All others were destroyed by the flood. They died! The flood of God's wrath is coming again and the only Ark of safety is Jesus Christ. Only by getting into Christ, can anyone be saved. He is the only one with the righteousness to get into heaven. Jesus is the only one who paid the price for us to have peace with God. Jesus is the only one that God ever raised from the dead to eternal life. Everyone else falls short. On one side we have everyone that has ever lived... Lost and condemned sinners, but on the other there is One righteous Man who never sinned. If we can join ourselves to Him, we'll be saved. If some how we can have peace with God through what He did, we'll be saved. If we can enter into a oneness with Jesus, we'll make it in. God says we can do this freely by simply by believing that Jesus payed the price. God says if we believe in Jesus, He will forgive our sins and we'll be saved from the judgment to come.
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