Jesus Died For Us While We Were Still Sinners

Welcome to episode 23. I'm going to start this episode the way I start every episode. We're going to go to the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 23. If this is your first time listening, I want to thank you, and if you enjoy what you hear, hit the subscribe button. I'm looking for a couple of extra subscribers, and if you've been here for the whole journey, I want to personally thank you. My mom has gone to be with Jesus, so that was the only person that I knew in my audience that I could count on. Even if I was just terrible, mom would always have an encouraging word. So I appreciate any of the— any review that you would give. I'm looking at them and I'm trying to make corrections, course corrections. Of course, this is my 23rd episode ever. On a podcast. So I'm getting a little more comfortable speaking into this microphone, but it's still very awkward. Well, that's enough of that. I wanna dive into today's episode, and it is about sin. I'm going into the same topic that I had in the last, number 22, but I've got a couple of scriptures. Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." In Romans 5:28, "But God demonstrated his own love toward us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Sin is such a huge topic, and it's so big because most people, I believe, have a, you know, I don't know that they have a great picture of what sin is. You know, when you start talking about sin, you know, there's a lot of people that shut down, even Christians. Kind of shut down. And so in my ready, fire, aim way of doing things in life, I, you know, back in— I think it was 2012, I don't know, I probably should go back and look— but I wrote the book What Is Sin and What Does Sin Look Like? Because I was thinking, you know, if there's so much— if everybody has sinned, then wouldn't it be a good idea to see what the sin was or at least maybe get a picture in your mind of what sin is instead of thinking of sin as a specific act. Like, you know, there are different types, I guess, of sin. There, there are transgressions and then there's iniquities. And, and that gets a little— I mean, for driving down the road or working out or just listening, that kind of gets a little bit cerebral. For this discussion, but an iniquity is more like something on the inside of you. Probably in this, in the sin of lust, you know, were you lusting after something? That would be an iniquity. But say if you're taking a sexual lusting after somebody, and then to, to take it to the physical sin would then be to take it into the— that'd be a transgression where you actually act upon the iniquity or the thing that's going on inside your mind, that would be— that would take care of the outward or transgression, or you trespass against one of God's commandments. But you know, Jesus said, and I think it was Isaiah, I don't know, I have to look it up, but it says that he were— he was wounded for our transgressions and he was bruised for our iniquities. And, and so God took care of all of that through his son Jesus. But we still all have sin. We still have to deal with what is it. And, and I kind of want to— since everybody in the world, anybody that's listening to this podcast is dealing with sin. Now, you may not admit it, you may not want to deal with it, you may not even want to think about it, but I want to help try to give you something like a handle, like I've talked about before, these truths to where you can kind of get a picture in your mind of what sin is. And instead of, you know, instead of pointing at someone that they're a sinner, or, you know, drunkenness— if you've ever seen, you know, just a somebody drunk on the side of the street, passed out, or in a park bench, and you've seen the pictures, and you look at that and something inside of you goes, uh, I mean, you, you can see the, the results of the sin, what, you know, what drunkenness it does to a person. You know, if you see that person passed out or you've seen them throw up, you know, that kind of thing, you can see the results of it. But what is sin? Before I give you my picture of sin, I want to read you a couple of scriptures that I was— as I was reading the Bible and I'm, you know, kind of meditating or kind of digging around on this idea, this, this picture kind of came to me. But the first scripture I want to read to you is in Revelation 3:20. And it says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with me. Again, that's Revelation 3:20, and that was Jesus. That's in red. That's Jesus talking to John where he's talking to the— about the different churches. And this was the— I think it was the lukewarm church, Laodicean, the church of the Laodiceans. But that's not important. I just want you to think about that scripture where Jesus is knocking knocking on the door and you open it. And, and so with that in mind, I want to go to Genesis 4. So we're going all the way back to the beginning book in the Bible, into Genesis 4. And he was talking about— this is where Cain and Abel were introduced to us, and they were just born, you know, Adam and Eve's— that was their first two children. And it says in 4— but we're going to pick it up in 4:3. It says, In the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? And in verse 7, 4:7, I want you to listen to this. If you do well, will you not be accepted? Sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now those are two totally different examples, but both of them had a door. If you can picture a door in your— in the spirit, since we've been talking about the spirit realm and the physical realm, I'm talking about in the spirit realm somehow Now whether this is your spirit or your soul, I'm not gonna get down in the weeds right there with this, but I just got this door pictured with a handle on it, and the handle is only on one side of the door. So you are the person that controls the handle of the door. And if you look in Revelation 3:20, Jesus is the one talking, and he's being a gentleman knocking at the door of your heart. And I think this is his way of saying, you know, with salvation, if you'll just open up, the door, if you open the door into my life, if you've, if you've accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and somehow you've shut the door on him, or you've kind of pushed him aside, or however you want to use the analogy, but if he's knocking and say, hey, let me, let me help you with that, if you'll open that door, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Father God, they'll all come into your life. The same door I believe is what Cain— it says door to the spirit realm or to your soul. Or again, I, I'm not going to get into all of that, but the same door that God was talking about with Cain and Abel, where God saw sin waiting or sitting at the door. In fact, I think the New King James that I read says it's lying, lies at the door, or it's just sitting there. I see it like pouncing, wanting to pounce on you. When I talk about sin and how I picture it, I see that door and I see Satan knocking on that door with temptation. That door that you, the only person that's got the ability to open that door is you. Is if you are tempted, and let's, I mean, we can use any kind of temptation. There's so many different ways you can quote miss the mark. Well, if while you're surfing around on the internet, if you one time click on the wrong button and don't immediately click back, or— I just see that as maybe as opening the door. You know, the temptation is just gets too, quote, strong, and you open the door. And so then, in— I mean, you can fight it off. All you got to do is click back or not look, or, you know, not watch the video or whatever it is. But once you open that door then I think sin is able to walk into that door. So to kind of bring this episode to a conclusion, I, I see sin as an open door. Now temptation is, is the thing that knocks, and everybody is going to be tempted by something different. That's the thing that makes the punk so slimy, is that he knows each one of our soft spots, like, like something that that would tempt me may not have any effect on you. In verse 26, so the thing— and Satan knows, I mean, he's— I've been at this life 57 years. The first 29, like I've told you before, I didn't know God from a billy goat. So he kind of played me, you know, like a puppet master or a fiddle. I mean, he just, he did whatever he wanted with me, and I didn't even know any different. But now that I've gotten saved and I've started reading the word, I mean, it may be a little bit— I'd like to say, and I'm putting air quotes— it may be a little harder for him to tempt me or to get me to sin. But I still mess up, you know, because the Bible is pretty clear: to him that knows to do right and does it not, to him it is accounted as sin. So it's so— it's not difficult at all to miss the mark, which is perfection. So I don't think perfection It's why a lot of times I say that I don't think perfection is the goal, but it's imitation. When we fall down and when we repent and when we humble ourselves before God, he's, you know, he helps. He gets us back up. He says, it's okay, I'm not mad at you, just don't do it anymore. You know, Jesus was talking about forgiveness when he was talking to Peter, you know, and Peter was thinking that he did something really wonderful. And I think Peter asked him I mean, how many times do I have to forgive somebody? 7? You know, and Peter was just being some outrage— I love Peter, but he was thinking, the man, this is just some outrageous number. If this guy wrongs me 7 times, I— am I supposed to still forgive him? And Jesus said, no, 70 times 7. And it's somewhere, and I'll have to bring— I'll bring that scripture and I'll put it in the show notes. But it's like, no, not 7, 70 times 7. It's like, you can't forgive somebody enough or ever. You never run out of forgiveness. But, and then Peter's like, Lord, I need more faith. But again, that wasn't even where I was supposed to go. That's another rabbit that I started chasing. I want to finish up this episode the same way that I started it, with the two, with the two scriptures in Romans 3:23 and 5:8. Where it says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but God demonstrated his love toward us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God loves us. God's not mad at us. He sent his Son to take care of sin for us. And in the next episode, I'm going to talk about what, what God actually paid and how he paid it. And does it Does it count for all sin? Well, that's enough sin for the day. I think we're going to move on to the next topic here maybe in an episode or two. But I want to— if you've made it this far, I want to thank you for staying with me. 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