1 John 3:4-6 “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” This episode is about how all sins are sins and how we can't justify our sins by comparing ourselves to someone that is doing a sin worse than ours. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A Sin Is A Sin, No Matter How Small
1 John 3:4-6 “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.”
This verse took some contemplation, some research, and some time. Each Thursday at prayer group I get several verses. I write each verse down on its own document and then in the mornings I pick one to write about. I have clicked on this verse several times now. However, the wording was intimidating to me and I felt like I could not explain it to you if I didn’t understand it. I reasoned that this was a good idea as I don’t want to teach you something that is wrong. Then I remembered my reason for this podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to discover scripture with you. I chose these scriptures because they are the ones that God revealed to us at prayer group. If I skip over all the ones that I find difficult or the ones that I don’t fully understand, then this podcast won’t last very long because there is a lot more in the Bible that I don’t understand, then what I do understand. This podcast is meant to help me, and hopefully you, grow in the faith. We won’t grow if we just stick to what we already know. So, I will do my best to learn and then explain to you any scriptures that come up. If you are listening and I talk about a scripture and you think I am wrong with what I said about it, please reach out and let me know. I am not perfect and I will make mistakes. Making mistakes is part of learning and growing.
The first verse says, “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” I think what through me off with this part was the word lawlessness. Apparently back in the day when this was written those that were not believers in God were referred to as lawless. Which, if you think about it, makes sense. If you do not believe in God then you would not feel as though you needed to follow His laws. Lawless means lack of law. What this first part of the verse is saying is that if you sin, you are guilty of not following God’s law. One of the commentaries that I read talked about how this verse is also not making a distinction between sins. It is saying if you sin in any way you are guilty of breaking God’s law.
Sometimes we can get caught up in thinking that some sins are better than other sins. We justify our behaviors sometimes by saying, “its ok that I did this small thing because at least I am not doing something that is a bigger sin.” For instance, It is ok that I spread a rumor about that person, at least I didn’t beat them up. I don’t know if that is a great example, but you know what I mean? We can justify something small because we could be doing worse. Or we justify our behavior because although, yes we are sinning, we aren’t acting as badly as the rest of the world. This can be a very slippery slope. Just because someone else is committing a bigger sin than you, doesn’t make your sin any less of a sin. This verse is telling us, a sin is a sin. End of story. No matter how small of a sin you think it is, if it goes against what God has told us to do or not to do, then you must repent. If you do not repent there will be a consequence.
Have you ever heard a child do this? One of my boys called his brother a name once. When I talked to him about it, he didn’t feel like he should be in trouble because, “at least I didn’t hit him,” he said. Are you rolling your eyes thinking about times when you have heard kids say things like this. I have news for you, kids are not the only ones who do this. I would bet we have all done this at one time or another. I heard a podcast by Hal Elrod on this topic once. He said he was tired of being a good enough father. He would do things that weren’t necessarily bad, but they just didn’t align with the kind of dad he wanted to be. For instance he would get caught up in work and let his kids watch too much TV. He would feel bad, but then would tell himself that there are parents our there that are hurting their kids, and what I am doing is not that bad. Obviously, you can’t compare the two. But in our heads, we sometimes do compare worst case scenario’s to our scenario to make ourselves feel better.
Hal decided instead of always trying to find someone that was doing a worse job to make himself feel better, he would try to find someone that was doing a great job and try to live up to that standard. He would find role models that were knocking this whole dad thing out of the park. He would see what they were doing and how he could do it too. He said this was a game changer for him and it fundamentally changed how he showed up for his children.
What if we did this with God and our relationship with Him? What if instead of looking at others that are not getting it right and being happy that we are doing better than them, we look to those that are getting it right and see how they are doing it so we can do it too? What if we set our own standards higher for our behavior? What if we saw all sin as bad, and not justified some of it because we could be doing worse?
Father Mike the other day was talking about a prophet Ezra. Ezra was talking to the people of Israel and found out that they were not keeping themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices. They had intermarried with those around them. Also the leaders and officials had led the way in this unfaithfulness. In Ezra 9:6 Ezra prayed,”“I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.” Father Mike asked how we react to sin? When we see others sinning in this world, what do we feel? Do we feel outrage, do we feel anger, sadness, embarrassment? Do we feel anything?
Sin seems so commonplace these days. It feels like sin is all around us all the time. Have we become complacent? Have we given in to a worldly view of things? Have we committed sins and not even really considered them sins because everybody is doing it? One way to really examine this is to take a look at the examine of conscience. Every time I look at that I am surprised at the things I see in it. I am reminded of how we should be living our lives and how out of the ordinary that may feel sometimes. Following the Lord isn’t always easy, especially in this ever changing world. It says in John 15:9, "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
We are called to live a different life. We are called to a higher way of living. God has specific rules for us and He has them for a reason. God has not arbitrarily assigned us any rules. If God says you should not do something there is a very good reason for it. We may not always understand what those reasons are. It is the same for our kids. We give them rules and we know why we have the rules we have. Our kids may not agree, they may not understand them, but they need to abide by them. We need to do the same. Let’s show God just how much He means to us by how we live our lives.
Dear Heavenly Father I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see those sins that we may not see. Help us to notice where we have become complacent in our lives. We believe Lord and we don’t ever want to be counted among the lawless. Help us to stay on the straight and narrow path. We are thankful that you have chosen us out of the world and we hope you continue to choose us. Lord, help us to aspire to be better than just ok Christians. Help us to aspire to be the best. Help us to show you how much we love you with our actions. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Did you say the Litany of Humility yesterday? Did you say it yet today? Here is your friendly reminder. It does not take long to say but you will notice a difference. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!