Theme: Sin<\/p>\n
Genesis 6:5-6 (NIV): ‘The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.<\/em>‘<\/p>\n Romans 3:10: ‘As it is written: \u201cThere is no one righteous, not even one;<\/em>\u201d’<\/p>\n Question: I hope that, like me, you have received great kindness and goodness from many people in your life, but how do we reconcile that with the above verses?<\/p>\n Further reading \u2013 There are many other verses which relate to these, including Gen 2:16-17, Gen 3:1-19, Lev 19:2<\/p>\n In general, when we say \u201cHe\u2019s a good bloke\u201d, we usually mean his good points outweigh the bad, so we choose to overlook those. But we may meet people who appear to have no faults and always do the \u201cright thing\u201d, and the father of a school friend was like that. I tried to follow his example but failed.<\/p>\n But our readings tell us that even he was not acceptable to God.<\/p>\n God\u2019s standard is stated in Lev 19:2, \u201cBe holy, as I the Lord your God am holy\u201d, and Jesus repeats that in Matthew 5, using the term perfect instead of holy.<\/p>\n In Genesis the story of the Fall of humanity in the garden of Eden shows us the nature of sin.<\/p>\n They were clearly told (Gen 2:16-17), \u201cOf every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.\u201d<\/p>\n But in Gen 3, the serpent invites them to assume authority to question God\u2019s command, by including an incorrect statement \u201cHas God indeed said, \u2018You shall not eat of every tree of the garden\u2019?\u201d It\u2019s like the start of a philosophy tutorial, where we place human reason as our supreme guide. Taking on the role of judging and reinterpreting God\u2019s commands in our own terms leads us to doubt, and she was tempted by the serpent with the false hope that they would be like God. It\u2019s tragic because they were already \u201clike God\u201d, created in His image. Yet through sin, that perfect harmony with God was lost.<\/p>\n That shows the core aspect of sin, of rebelling against God by trying to put ourselves in His place, putting ourselves as the centre of interest instead of God, and trying to create heaven on earth by our own power.<\/p>\n In verse 6 Eve gave the fruit to Adam and he ate. He could have said no, but being agreeable can be another path to sin.<\/p>\n When mankind broke our perfect relationship with God, that soured all our relationships. From verse 16, God explains the consequences of sin, or separation from Him \u2013 sorrow, pain, conflict between man and woman, toil, thorns and thistles, sweat, and death itself, \u201cto dust you shall return\u201d.<\/p>\n In later chapters we see further descent into the results of man\u2019s sin. We see the same pattern continuing today. In the workplace, in education, and everywhere, we are conditioned to continue that sin, to put ourselves first, with pride in our own strength and reason. The wonderful part of this story is that God has acted where we were powerless. Jesus came into our world to save us from our sin, and this is what we celebrate at Easter.<\/p>\n And of those people from whom I have experienced goodness and kindness, I have often found the key to what made them special was their faith in Jesus, for that is truly life-changing.<\/p>\n Praise God for the good He is doing in our world, despite our sin.<\/p>\n <\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Theme: Sin Genesis 6:5-6 (NIV): ‘The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-verses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30043"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30047,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043\/revisions\/30047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHow do we judge goodness?<\/h3>\n
Nature of Sin<\/h3>\n
And verse 2 shows how human reason is faulty; in analysing the command, Eve misquoted it, and muddied what was clear.<\/p>\n
In verse 12, Adam refused to take responsibility, he blamed both Eve and God, saying, \u201cThe woman whom You<\/strong> gave to be with me, she<\/strong> gave me of the tree, and I ate.\u201d
Eve also refused to be accountable, as if she had no choice, saying, \u201cThe serpent deceived me, and I ate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cain\u2019s self-focus led to jealousy and murder, yet he remained self-concerned and complained his punishment was more than he could bear. Later in the same chapter Lamech boasted of his revenge, of killing a man who had only injured him.<\/p>\nIn our current era<\/h3>\n
All people are affected, even in church circles.
I read of a pastor who said his time without sin after a sermon was the time it took to walk from the pulpit to greet the first person who congratulated him on his sermon, which changed the focus from thankfulness to God for His word, to pride in himself.
In bible study groups, I have often found someone who wants to dominate conversation and put their own ideas and concerns above what God wants to show us.
And in two churches I found musical arrangements were causing strife among personalities.<\/p>\nGood people<\/h3>\n