If I were to ask you if you are a sinner, what would you think of? Murder, adultery, theft, drunkenness, or some other of the most obvious evils? If so, the chances are that you would insist you are not guilty of any of these. One man said he felt it was an insult to call him a sinner. Obviously, he thought of sin only in terms of those things just mentioned. Yet, the Bible says in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Not some, but all, and that includes you and me.
Therefore, we may well ask what does the Bible mean by sin. There are many words used to describe sin, but the one most often used simply means to miss the mark.
It’s like shooting at a target. You may miss it by an inch; while someone else misses by a mile. Both missed the target. With respect to sin, the target is the holy, righteous nature of God. So unless you are as good as God, then you are a sinner.
We tend to grade sins. We call some people murderers, adulterers, thieves, and drunkards. We call others liars, even little liars, disobedient to parents, people who use profane language, people who covet or who disregard the Lord’s day as holy.
But God calls all of them sinners. Each one has violated God’s law. James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all."
Now you may miss the mark by faulty aim. You may discount the holy, righteous nature of God. You may assume that something less than God’s character will be sufficient for you. Or you may miss the mark by lack of power to drive your arrow to the goal. You may aim dead center at God’s nature and purpose to equal it in your life, but you discover that your strength is insufficient to reach the goal. So despite careful aim, you fall short of the glory of God.
What Is The Sin?
However, for the moment, let’s forget these evident sins. They are only the outward evidence of the sinful nature that dwells in all of us. A man may be forgiven these sins through faith in Jesus Christ, but there is one sin that is deadliest of sins. It is respectable but deadly. What is this sin? It is the sin of unbelief or a lack of faith in God through Jesus Christ. It is to this sin that Jesus referred in our text: "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:18).
What must you do to be lost? Not a thing in the world. For, you see, outside of Christ, you are already lost. Because of our sinful nature, we are separated from God. It is impossible, in our own strength, to live according to God’s nature as holiness and righteousness. For that reason, God sent His Son to die for our sin, to be raised from the dead, that He might provide the righteousness we cannot achieve for and in ourselves.
In Romans 10, Paul spoke of the zeal for God on the part of his Jewish contemporaries. He said it was not a zeal according to knowledge. They ignored God’s provision for righteousness through Christ.
Listen to what he wrote in Romans 10:3-4: "For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." This statement applies to all people, Jew and Gentile alike.
If unbelief or lack of faith toward Christ is a respectable but deadly sin, what do we mean by unbelief? The word unbelief actually means "no faith." Now every one of you lives by faith: faith in your wife, other people, your wife, in the laws of nature, in economic principles ... to mention only a few. So it is not so much a matter of faith as it is a faith in whom or what. The lack of faith under consideration is lack of faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior from sin.
Faith has three basic meanings. It means to believe intellectually. You read something and accept it as true. Such belief does not affect your way of living.
For it to do that, you must believe it volitionally. It must pass from your mind to your will. In so doing, you trust in it and commit yourself to it as a way of life.
For example, you have some money you want to deposit in a bank for safekeeping, so you read the financial statement of a bank. It shows the bank to be strong financially. You believe what it says, but that is only believing about it. You believe in it when you trust your money to it. You commit your money to it by making a deposit in the bank.
In the same way, you read the gospel stories about Jesus who is able to save and safeguard your soul. You believe intellectually, you accept the stories as true.
Up to this point, you are believing about Jesus. You believe in Him when you trust your soul to Him and commit yourself to Him as your way of life.
Paul said exactly this in 2 Timothy 1:12. When he was speaking about Christ he used banking terms. He literally said, "For I know in whom I have believed and am fully persuaded that he is able to guard my deposit against that day."
Believing that Christ could save him, he deposited his soul with Christ, knowing that He could keep his soul safely until the final day of judgment.
Please take note that he did not say, as the KJV renders it, "I know whom I have believed..." He said, "I know in whom I have believed," and that little preposition IN makes all the difference. He did not believe about Jesus but in Jesus as his Savior.
That is what we must do. God has promised to save all who are in Christ, and you come to be in Christ by believing or trusting in Him and committing your life to Him.
Now let’s return to our text. Jesus said, literally, "The one believing into [with respect to] him is not judged." These will not be judged before the judgment bar of God, for already they have been judged in Christ when He died on the cross for our sin. When you believed into Him, you both died to sin and were raised to a new life in Christ.
On the other hand, "The one not believing in him already has been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." Refusing to accept His redeeming work for your sin, you stand judged and guilty before God, and with no Savior, you shall forever be separated from God.
Why So Deadly?
Now why is unbelief so deadly a sin? Respectable among men, it is the worst of sins before God. The reason is that in unbelief, you are calling the holy, righteous God a liar. God says you are lost in sin and need a Savior, but you say, "I don’t believe that." God says He will save you if you trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior, but you say, "I don’t believe that." Thus, you malign [injure, discredit, slander] the very character of God.
You may recall that in the garden of Eden, God told Adam that to eat of the forbidden tree would be to die, both physically and spiritually. But the serpent said, "You shall not surely die" (Gen. 3:4). He called God a liar. Adam and Eve believed in Satan rather than in God.
In John 8:44-45, Jesus said to the unbelieving Pharisees: "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is not truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me."
Now the Pharisees were the most respectable of all people in Jewish society. Yet, Jesus accused them of being children of the devil because of their unbelief. They chose to believe the lies of Satan rather than the truth of God.
Respectable though you may be, if you do not believe in Jesus, you also are giving the lie to God as you reject His truth for the falsehoods of Satan. Oh, you do not mean to do this, but in your unbelief, you do it just the same, and this is the way of eternal death.
That is why God calls on you to believe in His Son as your Savior. That is why we plead with you to respond to His call. Man’s righteousness before God is as filthy rags, but God longs to clothe you in righteousness that is in Christ. His only condition for doing so is your faith in His Son.
How To Escape
So I challenge you to examine the gospel’s claim about Jesus, to believe them in your mind, to trust Him in your will, and to commit yourself to His will and way.
Having done so, you will not only be respectable before men, you will be acceptable before God. God did not send His Son to condemn you but to save you. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."
Do you believe this to be true? I am convinced that you do. Then believe in your heart, your will. Having done so, you can sing in truth:
O happy day that fixed my choice
On Thee, my Savior and my God...
Happy day, happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away!
--- Philip Doddridge
We can pray that you will be more than an intellectual believer, that you will also believe in Jesus in your heart.
