What is Sin? Why Does It Matter?

Welcome to episode 22, Gospel of John 1:1.

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.

Well, I want to continue here in episode 22. If this is your first time listening, I want to thank you for being part of this. And if you've been following me for a minute, then you'll know that I've been talking about the spirit realm and then the physical realm and the differences between that, and that's in the last 2 or 3 episodes. But in this episode, I kind of want to take a little bit of a turn I want to talk specifically about a topic that involves everyone, and that topic is sin. And I've got to go to the Bible, of course, because that's what this whole podcast is about, is putting the foundation of your life on the Word of God. And so for that, we've got to go to Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, I've talked in previous episodes about when you come into a new community or a new business or a new country, even, there's a language and there's terms and there's definitions and things. When people start speaking inside their little culture, culture or community, you know, they use words that sometimes we don't understand. And that sin, I think, is one of those instances. I mean, you hear that word all the time, and I, in my first 29 years, I mean, I thought I knew what sin was. You know, it was, it was something really bad that everybody else did. You know, occasionally I'd screw up, but you know, before I knew Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I don't know that I ever attached, you know, walked around. I guess if I did, I would I would feel all that pressure and weight of needing a Savior. But for whatever reason, I just put my mistakes and all of my misgivings just in the back of my head. But, you know, I knew when the Word of God came and said, the Holy Spirit, when it was preached, you know, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. When the Word of God was spoken, it quickened something inside of me that said, ooh, You know, that may be me. And so when the Bible says something like all, then it means everybody. And so I kind of— I want to define sin. What is sin? And the, the practical definition that I've heard and works for me, if you, if you think of a, like a dartboard or a, you know, a target, a shooter's target with the bullseye in the middle, That bullseye— everyone's seen a target and everyone's seen a bullseye, but anything outside that little red— most of them are red or black— most, most anything outside of that circle is sin. It's missing. Everyone's aiming at the bullseye, so it's missing the mark. If you can picture throwing a dart at a dartboard and every time you don't hit the bullseye, you've sinned. That's your, that's your picture of what sin is. Sin is just missing the mark, and it's pretty easy to see that we've all missed the mark. I mean, I miss the mark weekly, daily, but I don't just wallow in, in missing and screwing up. I mean, even though I do that, you know, I try to correct my course. I, you know, that's repentance, and that's for a different episode. What I do is I try to have a standard, a standard. And that's where I, that's where I believe the Bible is such a powerful tool, because that is God's standard, perfection. And to think, I mean, when you start thinking about what Jesus did when he was born, he, he left heaven and he was born a virgin and he came to earth and never missed the mark. I mean, he never hit outside the bullseye. If for that day, like, God had a specific plan for Jesus on each day, and Jesus nailed it. Now, I think he woke up early in the morning, he prayed a lot, he stayed in constant— I mean, if you look at the life of Jesus, you can see how to avoid it. But there's no way, because we're not born perfect, and we don't have We're not born with Father God's blood. So we are born into sin, and that's a whole nother thing. And, you know, I don't want to start chasing a different rabbit, but I want to concentrate on what sin is. Sin is just missing the mark. That's if you're supposed to turn left— if you've ever driven in a different city and you've got your, you know, whatever the navigation's talking to you, and it says at the light turn left, and you turn left and then at the next street turn right, and you don't, you don't see that street and you drive past it, you know, that recalculating tool. I mean, you could say that missing that mark, missing that turn, I mean, you know, in the simplest of terms, you, you've sinned. So I want to, you know, I want to take away, you know, that stigma. You know, we all sin, so we all have missed the mark. We're not perfect. And the good news is, is that we don't have to be. Perfection has never been the standard for us, for you and I, because we have someone that has walked this earth and lived a perfect life and died a perfect death, and on the third day was, was risen to sit in, you know, to sit at the right hand of the Father. I mean, it is a wonder. The gospel is a wonderful message. But I want to get back to sin because since we've all done it I want to kind of give it— and I, I have a ready, fire, aim mentality, and I've, I've said that multiple times, and that's probably why I'm on this podcast. I don't, I don't use a lot of thought process when I decide to do something. I just do it. And so I tend to jump in, and before I'm ready to go swimming, sometimes I don't put the swimming trunks on in life. I just jump in and I'm soaking wet, and everything that I'm wearing But when I saw this sin and how everybody did it, I was like, why not write a book? I mean, I know you're probably thinking, now who thinks like that? But why not write a book on what sin is and what it looks like? And so that's what I, way back, I don't even remember, I think it was in 2012 that I wrote this book, 8 years ago, 9 years ago, somewhere. We'll call it 10, just for easy numbers. But about 10 years ago, I wrote this book, and it was kind of based on— and I was, you know, God was showing me things, and I was kind of picturing things in my mind. And as I was reading scripture, I was getting a picture of what sin looked like. Before I tell you what I think sin looks like, in my first 29 years, you know, sin like murder— I mean, lie, I lied. I mean, I, again, I didn't go around it. I never considered myself a liar because my mom wore my butt out. But you know, the little white lies, if you're not telling a whole truth or anything— I mean, I, I lied. I lied to people. So I mean, there was things that I did in my life that I didn't— in my mind, because I wasn't, I wasn't walking through life like that. I wasn't counting it, counting it as sin or towards my— I wouldn't, I wouldn't keep it at a tally of all the times I've screwed up. You know, I thought the big, like, murder and robbery And you know, and you can even go to the, you know, the other things that are, that are current now in, in your mind, you know, like the homosexuality and, you know, all of the other things that people would point to and, you know, and point and shame people and say, see, you did that. But if you go all the way back to the garden when Adam bit the fruit, that was sin. That was missing the mark. And the way God designed this whole thing, he gave man dominion And when one man messed it up, it messed it up for everybody. From everybody from Adam on was going to be born in sin because sin came into the world with that one mistake. And, and, you know, if you're sitting there driving, because I had this thought, well, wow, that's pretty, that's pretty bad if, if one guy— I mean, I wasn't even there, it was over, what, 6,000 years ago— this guy and this gal are in this garden, this beautiful paradise. They got one rule, and this guy chomps on a piece of fruit, and now I've got a— now I've got to suffer. Now I'm punished. And you know, when in the fairness doctrine, I'm like, that's not fair. As you fast forward all the way up to here, or actually 2,000+ years ago, when one man walked on this earth perfect. He was God, he was man, he was perfect. This one man came on the earth to correct this one wrong. If one man can cause all of this damage and carnage, then it makes sense that one man can come on the scene and fix it. So in God's special, unique way— I mean, he, he didn't do it how I'd have done it, but you know, it says that God's ways are not our ways, and God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So God had a plan, and he sees the end from the beginning. So he knew— that's another thing that I can't wrap my mind around— that he knew Adam and Eve were gonna sin or fall, and he created the garden and he did all this anyway. But that's That's going to make my head— I, I'm not that bright, so that kind of makes my, my brain hurt when I start thinking like that. But God is so loving, God is so kind, he, he gave Adam and Eve the chance to not sin. Well, when they did, they were thrown out of the garden, and they were not thrown out because of the sin. They were thrown out of the garden— well, maybe they were because their body was gonna die. Their body was in an imperfect state. God made them perfect. They were perfect beings. And then when they sinned, part of that perfection was gone and something had died. And so God did not want man, or Adam and Eve, to eat of the Tree of Life and forever be in that state of of imperfection. So he threw them out of the garden so that they would not seal their, quote, fate for all eternity in this imperfection. All of that said, I know I've rambled on. There's a lot to unpack here, and I want to pick this up in the next episode. I want to tell you kind of how I've got it pictured, because, you know, I've got to picture stuff in my head. But I want to get all this out that God had a plan. God knew all this. He knew we were going to mess up. He had a perfect plan with his perfect Son, and it's— it all comes together at the cross. But it is so magnificent. But I want— and the reason I wrote the book is, wouldn't it be to our benefit if we saw it coming or we knew what it looked like it would kind of be to our benefit to avoid it, or to know how to avoid it. So in the next episode, I'm going to take this the next step, and I'm going to kind of open up kind of in the spirit realm— and I'm putting air quotes up— what I want to do is I want to give you an idea. And it's kind of hard as I'm talking. I want to give you an idea, picture of what I had in my mind of what sin looks like. And it's not— and sin is not an act. It is It is something that I can picture in my mind, and it's, it's something that I think, and I hope it will help you as, as you go through your life and you see kind of what I see. And it may not be perfect example, but if it gives you an idea of kind of something to grab a hold of, and, and the whole idea of me giving you these pictures and me talking on these podcasts is to give you a, like, a handle on the truth to where you can kind of get a picture in your mind and, and grab a hold of it instead of saying, well, murder, that's sin. Yeah, but it's, it's the action. It's the— it's more of the result of sin entering into your life. So, and I don't want to get into that. This has gone on longer than I wanted. Again, I'm trying to keep these around 10 or 12 minutes so that you can just consume them pretty quickly in the day. So with that said, I will talk to you on the next episode. Thanks again for being a part of this.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.