Sin part 3
Let'strack this thing. In the Old Testament there was a Law. The Law of Moses. The Ten Commandments. And a complete system of animal sacrifice for when the Law was broken. Look at Hebrews 10:1-2, "For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the thing, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." Get it? If the animal sacrifice worked, they wouldn't have had to keep doing it. It was more a sweeping under the rug than anything. It certainly wasn't any sort of deep cleaning. It certainly didn't change anyone's behavior or anything like that. It didn't purge anybody. And look at what that purging--that came from the ultimate "animal" sacrifice when the Lamb of God was slain--completed: No more conscience of sins. Not being conscious of something means not being aware of it. Your conscience is that still, small voice deep inside telling you what's right and wrong. Sin is "wrong" because it is unbelief, or wrong believing. It is, in a nutshell, believing that we are sinners. I can't tell you how much it bothers me when people identify themselves that way. "Well, I'm just a sinner. I'm already going to hell when I die." People who have given up. People who have no hope. People who define themselves by the worst things they've done. Let's be honest for a second--we've all done things we're ashamed of. We've all made mistakes. We've all made bad choices. That's just part and parcel to living. Nobody is perfect (in the Mr. Perfect, never messes up or does anything wrong sense). But at the same time, those we are in Christ (and to me that means those that KNOW and BELIEVE they are in Christ and have received the glorious message of the gospel) ARE perfect. In the sense of Spirtual maturity. In the sense of knowing who we really are, because we know who God really is. It is that identity that equips and empowers us to live the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God (life of love) that is the gift of God. And we live that life by letting Jesus live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. First Timothy chapter 4 speaks of having your conscience seared with a hot iron. Which to me is connected to Paul writing this in Romans 12:20, "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." But if you're loving someone (even an "enemy") perhaps we aren't heaping firey coals on their heads in order to burn them. Perhaps it is to melt their hearts. Perhaps that's what the hot iron searing our conscience is all about. Burning away that consiousness of sin. We don't need to focus on it, or really deal with it at all. Because Jesus dealt with it. He took away the sin of the world. He took away unbelief by giving us something (someONE, Himself, love) to believe in. He was the ultimate sacrifice that needed to happen so we could stop trying to make sacrifices over and over again. We don't have to come to God begging Him for forgiveness. Jesus asked for it on the cross, and I believe it was granted. Before the cross you forgave in order to be forgiven. You had to try to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. On this side of the cross you forgive BECAUSE you are forgiven. You let what's inside come out and you don't worry about the rest of it. That's the best (only) way to live. It's not about sin at all. It's about your sin consciousness, about having no more conscience of sins!