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I have thought a lot about what is the real essence of sin. I have heard all sorts of arguments about what sin is (and some of them probably demonstrated a bit of it in the process) and have been confused by various pronouncements about it. But underneath it all I have searched for a clearer understanding of what it is about sin that is so repulsive to God and at the same time seems to make it so attractive to us.
As I was sitting in church thinking about various things my mind came back to this issue again. Here is another stab at what I believe is at the very heart of sin.
Sin is the very resistance that a created mind has internally that resists the love and attraction of the One who created it. And because resistance prevents the fulfillment and bonding that is inherent in a reciprocal love relationship, God hates sin with a perfect hatred. For God did not create any of His intelligent beings to live apart from His love but created all of us to thrive in the atmosphere of love. So when we entertain lies about God that cause us to pull back from Him in fear or resentment, God becomes deeply hurt and also intensely passionate about doing everything possible to eliminate whatever it is that interferes or distorts our relationship with Him. Some people call this God's wrath.
Sin is the attitudes, the beliefs and the lies about God that causes our hearts to resist the real truth about His unconditional love for us. That is becoming very clear to me. But then another truth presented itself to my mind in this context. I remembered the following verse and the implications that it has on this issue of sin separating our hearts from God.
The sins of some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment; for others, their sins follow after. (1 Timothy 5:24)
I have commented on this verse at various times and have come to understand it in a different light than most might view it. After learning so much about our great need for emotional healing and the tremendous freedom and joy that it brings into a person's life, I have come to believe that this text is talking about the crucial need that each one of us has to allow all of our pain, our triggers, our emotional land mines to be uncovered, exposed, unlocked and resolved as soon as possible. For it is the condition of our spirit which is linked to our emotional make-up and history that is the most important part of our being and that will make us fit or unfit to thrive in heaven's atmosphere of perfect love.
If we have allowed all of our sins, fears and lies to become evident instead of trying to repress them, deny them or run from acknowledging their presence in our hearts, then we can experience the freedom that real judgment can bring us if we are willing to be judged by God's Spirit here and now instead of procrastinating until it is too late. As the light of the real truth about God increases in our heart it will expose the dark lies about Him and about ourselves that we have lived under for all of our lives. If we allow this healthy kind of judgment to occur in our lives, the healing kind of judgment where we choose to allow the Spirit to expose all the evil and bitterness and pain from our past and dissolve it in the truth of His love for us, then when the final day of judgment comes we will find ourselves already free of all the resistance that would prove fatal when the full current of God's passion is revealed.
The more we learn about the true God, the less we are inclined to resist Him and be afraid of Him. All of our fears about God are based on lies that we still believe deep in our hearts about Him. As long as any of these lies and pains are cherished in the heart and we refuse to let them go, we are in danger of suffering the natural results that occur whenever power and resistance to power meet in the same circuit. This process of releasing our lies about God and ourselves is the process of sanctification.
