Sin is Sin!

Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death. James 1:15

I’ve been part of a number of Christian circles where I’ve been told to explain sin during a gospel presentation to non-Christians. And being young and trusting the teachers I went along with it “well sin is like ‘bad stuff’…” “Sin is like breaking God’s law…” I went on to say sin is like this and that, but realising the truth of sin and its depth, my own explanation could never unfold the true nature of what sin really is.

So I asked myself a question “how come we never explain the holiness of God?” Surely God’s holiness needs explaining. But in trying to explaining God’s holiness it would leave us dumbfounded “God’s holiness is like…” and there’s nothing! Nothing to compare it to, nothing to recognise its equality with anything else in existence!

Measuring sin against the holiness of God with any kind of comparison in all of our language would only seem vastly short of the mark! Isaiah 64:6 describes sin like ‘filthy menstrual rags’. In Ezekiel 4:12 the prophet Ezekiel was told by God to eat dried human excrements as a demonstration of the sin that Israel had relished in.

We do NOT know the offence that sin is before a holy God! It is as incomparable as His holiness is to us! We have been entrusted with such words that describe the awesomeness of God; sovereign, holy, everlasting, Lord of Lords. Why do we see a need to describe what sin is? When we ourselves cannot explain the sheer supremacy of God?!

Friends we’re not making disciples if we have to lower what sin is by virtue of our own explanation to our own humanistic understandings of sin. We need not lose hope in the power of the gospel; it is God who gives understanding, God who opens the ears, God who opens the eyes of the unbeliever! It doesn’t  matter if our presentation of the gospel is not filled with such detail, what matters is that we have faith that God saves people through hearing His word.

And so yes His word is precious to us! That’s why we treasure it, making sure that we do preach the gospel not just out of love but also with accuracy in a holistic sense. So let us not get bogged down on words like sin, but in that let us preach with accuracy the true saving power that is the gospel.