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"Why is not knowing Jesus a sin? Simply stated, God knows how futile it is to try and be holy and righteous, even in a secular way, without the power of being God’s Child."
As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 59.
I have a pastor friend that says "SIN" in an acronym for something we all have in our lives. Sin stands for "Selfish Independent Nature."
So much of the world is turned off by the word sin. I think we hate the notion of sin because it divides us into two camps. One one side are those that sin. They are the bad ones. They are the ones to stay away from lest they be able to draw you into the bad camp. On the other side of the ledger are those that don't sin. They are the good ones. They are the ones we need to make examples of so that we all will be able to join that "in" group. What a crock!
It is when we view sin from a good and bad perspective that we put ourselves in a position of death. God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He explained that by eating of that tree they would die. Equating sin to good verses bad is eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. All it does is bring death. When we make sin about good and bad we kill relationships, we kill our ability to live like the victors we want to be and we kill our ability to reflect the loving power of a God that wants the best for us.
That's why I love my friends acronym for sin. You don't have to be particularly religious to know that when we live focused on our own selfish independent nature, sin is something that makes living with one another a real challenge.
How many people do you know that when you run into them in public, all you are going to get is a running diatribe of their lives? Don't you know those folks who just can't seem to bring themselves to understand that your life might be filled with some challenges as well? I'm sure you can point out people in your sphere of influence that are so self focused that they can turn any event in their lives into a drama of epic proportions.
Let me ask you a question about those people? Do you like being around them for very long? If you are anything like me, you turn and run when you see those folks in the grocery store. Sadly, even this attitude I'm exhibiting now is a pretty good example of sin, when sin is considered from the acronym of Selfish Independent Nature. My wanting to avoid those people is nothing more than my desire to not get splattered with the relational mud of someone else stuck only thinking about themselves.
With that definition of SIN firmly in place, lets go back and revisit the premise of the quote I read at the beginning of this presentation. The Bible says that it is a sin to fail to get to know this Jesus in your life. That sure does sound like a pretty narrow view of a relationship with God. Sin - don't you think that is too strong a word for those that choose not to get to know this savior called Jesus?
Well, when you view SIN through the lens of living in a place of being selfish, I think there is a really strong correlation between sin and not knowing Jesus. To help emphasize the problem of our selfish ways when it comes to sin, check out today's Bible reading with me now.
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48 (NIV)
It is the epitome of selfish independent nature to think that we can ever get to this God in Heaven on our own efforts. God is perfect. Even if we are, somehow able to live a perfect life from this moment on, there is something in the past that was done from a place of our selfish interdependent nature. Even if it was just one selfish thing that we did, according to our reading today, we are disqualified from ever entering in to an eternal relationship with the God that made us.
Along the same lines, we will never be able to live like the victor God has called us to be if we think we can create and maintain an identity that has world changing impact all on our own. That's a SIN approach to identity if we use selfish independent nature as the definition of sin. Not knowing Jesus and thinking we can know ourselves by the results of our own efforts position selfish independent nature as something that makes a lot of sense when we think in terms of sin working to separate us from our God.
What's the answer to all this SIN in our lives? Well I can tell you right now it has little to do with just changing your ways. That's just the selfish side of our lives trying to fix a problem that only makes SIN more prevalent in our lives. Sure it will take some will power to make our selfish ways less and less impacting in our lives. But, will power isn't the answer. Jesus is.
The Bible says Jesus didn't have SIN. He didn't act in ways that could ever be attributed to selfish independent nature. He told His disciples that EVERYTHING He did was done as a result of watching what His Father was doing and joining Him in on that endeavor. Jesus never stepped outside his bounds and acted in a selfish way. He was tempted to do so, just like we are on a moment by moment basis. Yet, Christ never stepped into SIN.
God wants us to live our lives as a victor by letting our nature be seen through the perfect nature of Jesus Christ. He wants us to live in a place free from the need to strive to get our lives right. He wants us free from being trapped in that place of never ending work so that we will be ready to join Him in some pretty ambitious projects He has made plans for in our lives. That only happens when we stop doing things to try and be something and just be who God says we are.
That's the power of living like a victor. SIN doesn't play the kinds of roles in our lives it use to. As we grow more an more into the victor God has called us to be we begin to see how a dependent nature trumps a SIN nature any day of the week.
Take on your day today with the power of knowing who you are. Let Jesus be all He needs to be in your life to make your selfish independent nature bow down to a dependency on God like never before. In doing so your ability to shake off victim thinking and live in that place of a victor comes alive in ways your efforts could never duplicate.
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