We have a tendency to think that if we’ve lived decent, honorable lives, we’re surely on God’s “Nice” list. If there’s ever been some way in which I didn’t follow the WWJD format, our eternal and holy God and king will overlook it because I’ve been trying to do good things. There’s a problem with that.
Our eternal and holy God and King doesn’t just dislike sin; He loathes, hates, despises and cannot tolerate sin, period. He has such immense, unimaginable hatred of it because our sins (even our “little” sins) reflect how deeply entrenched the sin nature is in us. How to explain the “sin nature?”
When God created mankind, He put a piece of His own nature into us, let us say a small flame of His holy fire. When the snake in Eden introduced disobedience, distrust, and disrespect, the flame very nearly guttered out – which was the evil one’s intent – because God’s holiness will not share space with sin. The devil inserted his own thoughts and resentments into the mindset of mankind by injecting rebellion into those two hearts, contaminating and shriveling what had been a sin-free nature to make room for sin. And so began the war between the glorious loving God of all being, and the small decaying presence of evil.
Unfortunately, we humans have been aligning ourselves on both sides from the beginning. It’s worth noting that the evil side has grown in strength and numbers only as people have allowed usurpation of God’s true power within ourselves – by following the false allure of empty promises from the devil. Plainly and simply, whatever power the evil one exerts in this world, we have actually allowed him to steal from us.
Think about it: when the devil wanted to “offer to give” Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, he could only preserve the illusion of such power IF Jesus would submit to his “control” by falling down and worshiping him. He would have had to use Jesus’ own power to work his plan; Jesus didn’t give it to him; he failed. As disciples of the Master, we must learn from His examples sprinkled throughout His Word, and refuse to give away the power that Jesus has given to all His followers. He told us He was giving us “the power to become the children of God,” and if that doesn’t speak to you of a power beyond our imaginations, you are probably behind on your Bible reading.
There is nothing that is actually good that can arise from an evil foundation because only God is good, and all good things come down from the Father of light. The devil has been lying to mankind from day one, and we need to recognize the truth of the Word, and learn to defend ourselves with it.
For all of the above, we may begin to understand why God hates sin — He waits for us to come to Jesus, His beloved Son that He sent as a sacrifice, a propitiation, for our sins. And because sin can be defined as something that pulls us away from God, it’s understandable that God hates it: only through Jesus’ suffering and death could the penalty be paid for it, and that selfsame sin has a tendency to cause people to reject Jesus and His sacrifice of Himself. Sin is treated rather lightly in a lot of preaching today but the truth is, it’s serious business. We can’t usually avoid it, and we can’t ever afford it.
This blog was originally written before Christmas, but publishing failed. The bottom line is: 1. We desperately need Jesus whether we know it or not. And 2. God puts us on His “nice” list gladly as we find Christmas in our hearts through the baby of Bethlehem who came to Earth to become the Lamb of Calvary.
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