Slave to Sin
Scott Roudebush
February 22, 2004 Sin. What is it, and what does it have to do with us? It's only a three-letter word, so how powerful can it be in our lives? Yet the fact is that it is all around us. Not a day goes by that we do something God wouldn't agree with. Are we all sinners? Of course we are. No one can live without committing a transgression against the Lord. Consciously or subconsciously, we all occasionally make poor decisions. It's merely a part of our lives. Not a particularly glorious portion of our lives, but part of it nonetheless. The word sinner is rather harsh, but we can't just come up with a better word to soften the blow we're dealt when we realize that we commit wrongdoings so frequently. Sin does, however, have a wide variety of practices. When your wife has dragged you to go shopping with her and she tries on clothes to find out what you think, are you going to say: "'No honey that looks horrible, try something else'?" We all know better than that… Yet, you're looking at her and lying to her face. So why do we try to conceal from God things that we cannot hide? God sees what we think, feel, and see. Yet in a superficial effort to proclaim ourselves as saints, we go into denial about our own actions. But God knows. God knows our own human nature, and knows we are the same now as we were 2000 years ago when he sent mankind his greatest gift ever. The gift's name was Jesus. Jesus endured his tortures and torments to eventually die for our sins. God sent his only son to live on Earth and die on Earth. He died a common criminals death except for the added public humiliation he was subjected to. Why would God send his only child to this ending? An ending? No, merely a beginning. This beginning was the start of a new age. All the lying, cheating, stealing, and hiding our ancestors did two millennia ago was washed away by Jesus. It was as if someone had erased a blackboard with a list of all of our sins, as if they had wiped that blackboard clean. Imagine what a gift of that magnitude meant to the people. The only catch, accepting Jesus and his Father as our savior and protector. How hard can that be after the man who created the world in which we live sends his child to our ruthless hands so we can crucify him? Yet we make it hard on ourselves. We push Him away in our daily schedules, leaving out the very reason we are here today, the very reason we have a chance at heaven when we die. Somehow we come to the conclusion that "all that heaven stuff" can wait until we take care of the "important" things in life. While living our self-made schedules, we commit actions that cause the man upstairs to frown upon us, as we continue to ignore his words and his wishes. Yet time and again the Man forgives us and time and again someone erases out blackboard of sins, just as we reach for the chalk to fill up the temporarily empty space. I cannot remember where I got this story, but I do believe that this was written by a newly-found Christian the week before he or she died, and somehow the touching story found its way into my hands, and now I will share it with you: I am told of a room. Not just any room, but a deceptively large one. It would have to be large to hold all the files in the room. These files are not for any sort of business, but personal records. These file cabinets are for me and for me alone. When I enter the room, I see God sitting in the chair, looking sad and forlorn. I ask him why he is sad, but does not answer. He only looks at me with his knowing, and empty eyes. He reaches up to open a nearby cabinet and reveals hundreds of folders in the drawer, in one of the many cabinets that fill the enormous room. I look at the folder that he selected and recognized it as a lie I told my 3rd grade teacher about my mysteriously missing homework. God laughed an empty laugh and moved on. He then pulled out another folder and opened it up for us both to see. It was another lie, this time about me missing church to do something else. God did not laugh this time, just looked sadly upon me and moved to another one of the many cabinets. He opened it and pulled out another folder. I looked at it and recognized my own lustful thoughts. I shuddered as God stared disapprovingly into my eyes with the same static frown He has worn since my arrival. From another cabinet I read about an episode in which I disrespected an older family member. Another cabinet exposed some choice words I had for the cause of a car accident many years before. Slowly, I began to realize that this room contained all my sins, written out and categorized. The room was full of file cabinets that were overflowing with descriptions of my personal transgressions. As God and I viewed the folders, He began to cry. Stories like these are common to show the brutal reality of sins. Ebenezer Scrooge's partner appeared to him bound by the chains of sin, a very visual representation of the burden of sins. We cannot change the wrongs we have done in the past, but we can do in the present what we can to prepare for the future. A future with God in heaven. To obtain this, we must accept Jesus Christ as our savior and let him wash away our sins. As simple as this sounds, we make it so hard on ourselves that we get wrapped up in our own desires and sinning and lose sight of the reason we all have a chance to truly survive in this life and the next. Sin...It's only three letters. Here's another three-letter word for you: G-O-D. Sin is all around us in our lives, and we do not abstain from it. Yet we must see what God offered us to counter the universal need for salvation-His only son. |