"To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood" (Revelation 1:5).
Every morning, I was dragged out of bed by the relentless song, "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning." It came from a mantel clock that my Aunt Ronnie gave to my sister and me. Aunt Ronnie had gone on a European tour and saw this lovely clock, hand-painted in Switzerland. It didn't have the usual clanging mechanism, so common in alarm clocks. Instead it played this little song.
For a long time, it worked pretty well. I woke up with a start every time it played. It wasn't a jarring sound; in fact, it sounded like an expensive music box. But it infiltrated the silence in our room and I immediately bounded out of bed to turn it off. Now somewhere along the way, I got used to the clock and it took me longer to drag myself out of bed. Eventually, I didn't respond at all. I slept right through the song and blissfully slept in when I should've been getting ready for school. So naturally, my mom bought me a new alarm clock because I wasn't sensitive to the old one anymore.
I certainly don't want that to happen in my relationship with God! I want to remain sensitive, so I can hear Him plainly when He speaks to me. I don't want to go into some 'snooze' mode and turn off the Spirit's voice. I need to be awake to my real condition!
It could happen to me just as it once happened to King Saul. God had told him, "Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have" (1 Samuel 15:2). With 210,000 men, Saul bravely led the army and wiped out the Amalekites "from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is east of Egypt" (vs. 7). But he spared Agag, the king of the Amalekites, and the best of their herds. Really, he kept back everything that was good, being "unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless...they utterly destroyed" (vs. 9).
What really amazes me about this story is that Saul thought he was doing exactly what God said! Maybe because he did almost everything God said. And he didn't think it would matter if he wasn't so particular about every point in God's directions. Who knows how he justified this neglect in his own mind. But the reality is--one justification soon leads to another. And when Samuel the prophet failed to show up to offer sacrifice, Saul took matters into his own hands again and did it himself.
When Samuel finally ended up on the scene, Saul approached him with incredible confidence--blinded confidence--and said, "Blessed are you of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord!" (1 Samuel 15:13) How could anyone be so blind? Were God's directions that unclear that Saul couldn't understand what was expected? God had spoken in the plainest way! It was so simple that even a five year old would have known what He meant. God said, "Go, attack, and destroy everything." 3 simple things.
But pride blinded the king. "This victory over the Amalekites was the most brilliant victory that Saul had ever gained, and it served to rekindle the pride of heart that was his greatest peril. The divine edict devoting the enemies of God to utter destruction was but partially fulfilled. Ambitious to heighten the honor of his triumphal return by the presence of a royal captive, Saul ventured to imitate the customs of the nations around him and spared Agag, the fierce and warlike king of the Amalekites. The people reserved for themselves the finest of the flocks, herds, and beasts of burden, excusing their sin on the ground that the cattle were reserved to be offered as sacrifices to the Lord. It was their purpose, however, to use these merely as a substitute, to save their own cattle." (Patriarchs and Prophets, pg. 629). So, pride on the part of the king and selfishness on the part of the soldiers led them to excuse or justify what they failed to do.
Excusing sin so blinded Saul that he could face a prophet, a messenger of God, and say without any qualms that he'd performed the commandment of the Lord! Incredible blindness! I wish I could have asked him, "What do you think sin is?" It's a question we really need to understand in our journey with Jesus, so we don't end up on the slippery slope that leads to destruction. Because the sad fact of this story is: Saul lost his salvation because he justified sin. One sin led to another and still another. Saul continually resisted the voice of God until he couldn't hear Him anymore! The alarm clock wasn't broken, but Saul was de-sensitized to it.
So it matters what I think sin is. What you think sin is. If our view of sin is skewed, then our whole view of salvation will be too. It will be distorted and have no saving value in our lives. It will change in our mind, at least, why Jesus died on Calvary's cross. It will determine why we even want Jesus in our lives. And it will greatly impact how we choose to live as a Christian.
We're living in the end times when every wind of doctrine is blowing. Satan is working overtime to break down the pillars of Christianity that hold us to Jesus and keep us faithful to the end. The devil never comes out in the open for an all-out attack. He's never worked that way. Instead, he blends, ever so artfully, truth with error. He markets it through charismatic speakers, who often manipulate our emotions and captivate us with their smooth words or funny jokes or novel illustrations. It puts us off guard so we swallow whatever they say--hook, line and sinker--not merely the truth alone, but also the error. We take it all in.
Lately, the devil has been making great inroads into Christianity by redefining the key pillars of salvation. He uses our language--like spiritual, gospel, salvation, etc. He uses the same words, but they mean something far different than what we find in the Scriptures. Recently, I heard a well-known preacher do this in describing what sin is. He said, it's merely a broken relationship with God--nothing more, nothing less. Now, I wouldn't object if he said this was one aspect of sin. But to limit it to merely a broken relationship is to minimize what it really is. Because if that's all it encompasses, then why did Jesus have to die? Couldn't He just come down to earth and show us how to restore our relationship? How to pray? How to have a vibrant devotional life? How to share our faith with others? Maybe if He just gave us a crash course on intimacy with God, we'd be okay and He wouldn't have to give His life to save us!
But what broke this relationship in the first place? To answer that, we need to examine another aspect of the sin problem. For if we go back far enough, we'll see that sin began in the war between Christ and Satan, in the Cosmic Conflict between good and evil. Before Genesis 1 ever happened, Lucifer rebelled against God and His government. The Lord had given him the highest position of all the angels. He stood day and night in the very presence of God! No one was closer to the Father than Lucifer, except Christ Himself. The Bible says, Lucifer was the "seal of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty" (Ezekiel 28:12). He was perfect in every way. And yet, it wasn't enough for Lucifer! He wanted more! Not more of God's love and holiness, but more of His power! He wanted to sit on God's throne all by himself. So he said, "I will make myself like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:!4).
Later, when he brought his rebellion down to our planet, he deceived Eve with that same insidious poison--that she could be like God--not in terms of His character, but to have His power. Power for herself! And because he convinced her that God was somehow withholding something good from her, she believed what he said. And she took the forbidden fruit that God said not to touch and she ate it. She later gave some to Adam and he joined the rebellion.
The story of man's fall in the garden points out only too well that sin is a God-defying attitude where we assert our independence and do what we want, irrespective of what God says. And this attitude is what we see throughout Scripture. As the Bible says, "Sin is the transgression of the law" (1 John 3:4, KJV). It means disregarding God's will and replacing it with what I want for myself.
The history of Saul is only one example of the sinner choosing to be his or her own boss--or we might even say his or her own God. And this is what fractured or severed our relationship with Jesus.
Sin is not simply a relational problem. It's not just that I fail to spend time with Jesus every day. It's not just that I don't love Him. It's an act of rebellion against the law of God. This law reveals who God is and what He expects from His children of grace. "God is love" (1 John 4:8). And that's exactly how His Law is summarized. This law couldn't be changed anymore than we could change God. So when man broke it--by disobeying God's commandment in the garden of Eden--man's relationship could only be restored through death. Because the terms of the broken law is that someone had to die. God says, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) And Jesus chose to do that for us.
The death of Jesus on Calvary's cross draws me into a intimate relationship with Him. His love for me is displayed there because He took my punishment. He paid the price for my sins, for my rebellion against the God of heaven, for defying His Lordship in my life and breaking His Law of love. Without His death, I will remain dead in my sins. I will be lost without Christ's saving blood!
And the blood of the cross speaks volumes to me about what I have done to my Savior! It shows me the utter ugliness of sin. It's not merely that we're not getting together every day. My sins are more personal that that! I am striking Jesus in the face when I insist on my own way, when I lose my temper, when I lie my way out of something that I messed up on, when I gossip about a neighbor. My sins crucified the Lord of Glory! THAT to me is the most graphic definition of what sin is.
But if I walk away from the cross and turn from the 10 Commandments (which God wrote with His own finger), how will I know what sin is? I can define it anyway that I want! But the life stories of people in the Bible give a much broader definition of the makeup of sin and what it does to my relationship with Jesus. It's not a simple one sentence definition. It's much broader than even what I'm sharing today. And unless I understand the full scope of what sin is, I can easily follow in the footsteps of people like Saul and think I'm obeying the commandment of the Lord when I'm really rebelling and sinning against Him.
So, if you're asking yourself, "What's wrong with that?" I hope you'll remember Saul and my quiet alarm clock. Please go to Calvary if you want to see the nature of sin and what it really costs. And kneel before the cross, knowing that your sins put Jesus up there. If we keep looking at our Lord's bloody sacrifice, we'll see ourselves as we truly are and sin for what it really is. And as long as we don't resist, we'll be drawn to the blessed Savior. And His love will change our lives.
My Prayer
Dear Father, please keep me more sensitive to Your Word. When Your Spirit speaks to my heart, help me to obey You quickly. Give me Your gift of repentance that I may turn from my sins. Open my eyes so I can see how ugly they truly are. Keep my heart tender so nothing will keep Me from following You. In Jesus' Name I pray, Amen.
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