by John Fischer
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If you are anything like me, you have probably caught yourself trying to make your own sin out to be something less than the big sins that everyone else commits. You know, the biggies that are in the Ten Commandments like murder, adultery, stealing, lying … stuff like that. Certainly I’m not that kind of sinner. No, I’m a minor sinner. When I sin, it’s more like “sin lite.”
Thinking like this creates a ridiculous state of affairs when it comes to Christ dying for all our sins while we attempt to rationalize them. Sure I’m a sinner and all that, but my sins are mostly the private ones that don’t hurt anyone else. Oh sure, they may not hurt anyone else but they killed Jesus! Let’s think about that the next time we’re considering one of those little private sins. Did Jesus die less for my little sins than for anyone else’s? Did my sins only make Jesus die a little bit? If sin means missing the mark (which it does), by how much I miss it is a non-issue. No one’s out there measuring how far we missed it by. We missed it. Line up for the death penalty. (Thank God, this is where Jesus comes in.)
When you’re dead, you’re dead. I’m not a medical professional, but I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as being just a little dead. Yet try telling your rationalizations that. Look at the silly consequences we create whenever we try to rationalize the truth.
There is no such thing as a little sin. Sin is sin, and the wages of sin is death, says the Bible, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) You can’t any more sin a little than you can get a little eternal life. There is only one way this works: Sin, death, gift of God, and eternal life, in that order, and they’re all big time – full strength. Whenever we sin, we sin big, and we die big; but Jesus died big time, so that God could give the gift of eternal life … and that’s big too! That’s forever! To belittle any one of these is to belittle the rest.
So if you ever catch yourself comparing your sin to others and trying to tell yourself that your sin is less significant, just remember Christ died for our sins, and there’s never anything little about that!
No one can be just a little bit dead.
You can comment on this devotional online at:
http://thoughtsaboutgod.com/blog/2008/11/29/jf_dead/