Unsaved man stands condemned before a holy God for their sin nature inherited from Adam after the fall and also for their sins committed in the body during their time on earth. Saved man, on the other hand, while he stands guilty before God for both of the sins mentioned above he is not condemned. The saved man by grace has their sins forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Salvation is our, “get out of jail free card,” that will keep us from going to hell.
Sin is any lack of conformity to the character and will of God. God created the universe so his will is law. God makes the rules. There’s no need to debate the semantics of sin. Sin is whatever God says it is and God says to disobey him is a sin. As a creature of God we are simply to obey. God is good and God is great. Never lose sight of the fact God is always fair and God always does what’s in our best interest.
Deuteronomy 7:9 – Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments.
Psalm 51:1 – Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
Psalm 117:2 – For His merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever.
Jeremiah 31:3 – The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”
God reveals his will, his commandments, through the Holy Bible. God makes positive statements and explicit commands in the Bible we’re to follow. Let me be clear, we sin any time we disobey a command of God. My Bible guide lists 129 separate commands God makes to man. Admittedly, some of these commands are redundant. For our discussion, let’s say there are 100 different commands from God to man. Most of us are familiar with the ten commandments and as believers we try to follow them.
Few believers consistently obey all ten commandments, including me. If we can’t obey God’s first ten commandments how are we doing on the other ninety? How many of the other ninety commandments of God do you know? I’ll bet not more that ten. That means most of us don’t know 80% of what God requires of us. Does that scare you? It does me. We’re held accountable for those unobeyed commandments whether we know them or not because we could know them if we searched the Bible for them and etched them in our hearts.
Proverbs 23:12 – Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to words of knowledge.
Psalm 32:8 – I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.
Psalm 119:2 – Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!
Psalm 119:18 – Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.
How can we obey the commands of God if we don’t know what they are? How can we know what God requires of us if we don’t read and study the Bible to find out? We can’t. That’s why God repeatedly commands us in the Bible to study the Word of God so that we can gain the knowledge, understanding and wisdom we need. Spiritual maturity is a journey but you must make the effort to know God. The Bible makes it clear that nobody consistently obeys God. We’re to try our best to obey God knowing we’ll probably fall short. Then we’re to ask God to forgive our sins and strengthen us so that we sin less over time.
Personally, I ask God every night to forgive the sins I’ve committed that day. As a believer saved unto eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior I’m a child of God. As his child, God has promised to forgive my sins if I ask him. I have peace with God and the peace of God every night before my eyes close. I don’t want to stand before God with unforgiven sins on my books. God cannot lie so I know my sins are forgiven. God is always faithful and true. What can be better than going to sleep in the arms of Almighty God?
Proverbs 8:34 – Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.
Isaiah 55:6 – Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.
Psalm 106:1 – Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.
Micah 6:8 – He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
Proverbs 14:25 – A true witness delivers souls.
My recommendation to anyone who is unsaved is to seek God while he may be found and accept the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. My suggestion to believers is to study the Bible so you know all of God’s commands and then obey them. Any decent Bible guide will have a listing of all the commands of God contained in the Bible. I cover these commands in more detail in my blogs posted in December, 2019. Nobody who is saved suddenly becomes a saint. We’re all sinners living in sin-filled world and we’ll all continue to sin while we’re on this earth. That’s a given. We should make it our goal to sin less over time and try our best to stop sinning altogether. It’s a slow incremental process.
When you do sin, ask God’s forgiveness, right then if you can, and then try to do better going forward. Remember that our race for God is a marathon and not a sprint. We’re to persevere in the faith. Don’t listen to Satan when he tells you God can’t possibly love you because of your sin. That’s Satan’s biggest lie. God made us and he loves us all equally, sin or no sin. God wouldn’t have sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for all sinners if he didn’t love us all dearly. Our job down here on earth is to seek God’s face and to obey his commands, especially the command to witness for Christ. Then we’re to emulate Christ in the way we live our lives so as to honor and glorify God the Father.