God loves us. Even before we are aware of it, God loves us.
That’s a basic, fundamental starting point for the entire Christian faith. God loves us. The Scriptures witness to that love on every page. Our lives were not an accident: We were created by God’s plan, out of God’s joy. God placed the very image of God in us and celebrated our life. Even when we turned away and separated ourselves from God’s presence, God pursued us, his love reached for us.
Human beings were created to live in that love, but we choose our own way, put ourselves, our ambitions, our desires at the center of our lives in the place of God. And, in so doing, we separate ourselves from God. Further and further we have fallen from God as we have chosen our own way and stepped further from that image God placed upon us.
Through Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, God invited us back, called us back, planned a pathway for us to return to the loving arms of our Creator. God wants us to remember his love and return; To remember how we were made to be and know the peace and joy of living in the love of God every day of our lives.
But, here’s the thing: the God who created us will never force us into that relationship against our will. God does not treat us like puppets with whom he can simply pull our strings and make us do whatever he wants. God created us with freedom: we have the freedom to choose to have a relationship with God or to not have a relationship with God. And the choices we make every day determine whether or not we have that close, intimate relationship with our Creator.
It’s not unlike the relationships we have with our families, and other people. Having a good relationship with our families means that we have to make decisions that include them in our lives. We have to spend time with them, talk with them, say and do things that bring them closer to us: Go to a ball game together, share meals, talk about important things that you are going through, work through disagreements and problems together.
Right now, my family mostly consists of my wife, Monica, and I. But I make decisions every day to be sure I get to spend some time with her and share important parts of my life with her. Sometimes I even have to decide I’m not going to do something else because my relationship with her is more important than getting all my work done or weeding my garden.
If, however, I start neglecting my relationship with Monica, stop doing things that keep me close to her, our relationship would start to weaken. At first she might just be hurt that I didn’t show up for dinner or stayed at work late to get things done, but that creates distance between us. And if I continue to make those kind of decisions over time, we would slowly lose touch with one another’s lives, when important things happen I wouldn’t be a part of them, and over the years, we would grow apart and end up not knowing each other nearly as well as we do now. Our relationship would deteriorate and maybe even die.
Just so, every day of our lives, we can choose to say and do things that bring us closer to God or we can choose to say and do things that take us further from God. The problem is that even though we were created for that relationship and are better off when we are in that relationship, often we choose to say and do things that create more distance between ourselves and God. And it’s those decisions to put something else at the center of our lives that we call Sin.
We are focusing today on what Christians believe about Sin and Salvation. Our beliefs about what sin is and what salvation is about are among the most important things for Christians to be clear about because almost everyone in the world believes that there are things we should and shouldn’t do, but Christians are very clear that sin, at its root, has to do not merely with what we do wrong, but primarily with our relationship with our Creator and our rebellion against him.
Any time we choose to say and do things that take us further away from God, it’s Sin. Any time we make ourselves or anything else that’s not God the center of our lives, we Sin. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul talks about people exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images that resemble mere human beings and how worshipping the Creature has led people into serve only their own interests, lose track of real value, and abuse sex, parents, money and relationships.
The basic problem in Sin, the source of all our problems, is that we human beings tend to put things other than God at the center of our lives. When God is not at the center of our lives, there are many symptoms of that one main problem – pride, anger, envy and hatred all stem from it. It’s like a disease that infects the entire body.
Sin is like an illness. Like a nasty virus that invades a person’s entire body. That virus causes all kinds of symptoms: headaches and fever and dizziness and upset stomach.
The thing with a disease, of course, is that you can often treat the symptoms without treating the disease itself. You can take a pain killer for your headache, you can treat the fever with another medicine.
The problem is that even if we can treat all of the symptoms, the patient still could die. Unless we treat the real problem – the disease itself – we can’t cure the illness.
But, if we successfully cure the illness, then all the symptoms go away on their own! The fever, the headache the upset stomach, they all go away. It’s not that the symptoms are unimportant, it’s just that, as unpleasant as they are, those things are not the real, underlying problem.
Sin is like that. The real, underlying problem is that we don’t trust God. We don’t place God at the center of our lives. We, by the things we say and do and the priorities we set, separate ourselves from God.
We trust something else. We replace God, we exchange the glory of the immortal God for money, power, friendship, even our own talents. We build our lives on these things, put our trust in these things – not God.
And it’s not necessarily that those are bad things in and of themselves. It’s just that, well, they make lousy gods. And when you put all your trust in money or power and place it at the center of your life, your pursuit of that defines who you are, and you become greedy, and selfish, and ruthless. Even when you put your friends and family at the center of your life you become defined by them and who they say you are, instead of the person God created you to be.
You can’t build your life on those things. They make lousy gods. None of them can take the place of the one true God.
That illness of not trusting God as God has symptoms. The big Sin of not placing your trust in God leads to the sins we see around us every day. All around us we see the symptoms of Sin – hatred, fear, greed, prejudice, self-centeredness, lack of caring, arrogance, being judgmental, jealousy, anger. The list goes on and on.
We can try to treat all these symptoms, and we may even have some success. But even if we treat the symptoms, we still have the disease. The sins we commit are things we do wrong because we don’t trust God and we don’t do what God asks us to do and not do.
Sin is, fundamentally, about relationships, especially our relationship with God, but also how our relationship with God affects our relationships with others. And our relationship with God and with others can be broken, harmed or neglected. And there are consequences, symptoms, of that broken relationship.
Unfortunately, more often than not, we human beings choose our own way. We put ourselves, our ambitions, our desires at the center of our lives in the place of God. And in so doing, we separate ourselves from God. We are better at sinning than we are at not sinning.
Still, God loves us.
The way of sin is easy to fall into. We seem to prefer to trust in things we can see and touch and control, even when they let us down, rather than trust in an all-powerful God we can’t see or control.
But God loves us. And God wants us to turn to him, and trust him, and place God at the center of our lives again so that we can recover that image of the immortal God that was placed inside of us and live the lives God intended for us: Lives without fear or shame or regret.
It’s true that God hates sin. But God’s hatred for sin is a direct result of God’s love for us and the desire for us to return to the loving arms of our Creator.
I remember the huge science classes my first year of college. The University of Michigan is a large school, and the Physics 101 and Chemistry 101 classes had about two hundred students in them. Now, of course, that doesn’t mean that two hundred students actually came to the lectures. In fact, the best attendance of the year would be the class right after a big midterm exam. Almost twice as many people would show up as usual. Why? Because that’s when they would post the grades on a bulletin board just outside of the classroom. Hundreds of students would crane their necks and work their way toward the front of the crowd, just trying to see their name and a number between 1 and 100 that told them how well they measured up.
It’s funny, more students would come to find out the results of their exam than ever came to learn from the professor. Well before you even think about college, most of us are pretty much used to the whole pattern. Study for the test, take the test, then wait for the grade. Because as soon as we’ve handed in the test, we’re pretty much powerless. We don’t know the real outcome of the test until the teacher has graded it. And once the teacher has given their verdict and put the score on the top of the exam, that’s pretty much it. There’s not a whole lot we can do to change the outcome.
Which is why usually I was more nervous about receiving the grade than I was about the test itself! After going through that pattern over and over again as kids in school, we often look at our lives this way. We think God is testing us and seeing if we are going to pass or fail! Every sin we commit is another red mark on the exam, and if we sin too much, we’ll get a failing grade and we’ll flunk out. And we think that when we die, it’s the final exam, and God will sit there with a big red pen, looking over everything we did in our lives, and will mark every sin with an x. If we have enough good things in our lives, God will let us into heaven. If we have too many red x’s, we’re frightened of the alternative.
Let me say this as plainly as I can. This is not the Christian belief. The Christian faith does not believe that when we die, we will face a final exam and be judged based on whether we did more good things than bad things in our lives. The Christian faith does not believe that heaven is for people who are good enough to deserve it and hell is for people who are bad enough to deserve it.
God knew that by ourselves we would never pass such a test. Left to ourselves, we humans seem to have a natural tendency toward sin. We tend to drift away from God’s presence. We tend to wander off the path God has laid out for us. We tend to get into habits that are destructive to ourselves and others. We tend to disobey God much more eagerly than we follow God. Given our natural tendency to make poor decisions, a test that was trying to figure out if we were good enough to enter heaven would be a disaster! We’d all have good reason to be nervous about the results of that final exam!
To go back to what we were talking about with the kids earlier, the only question on the final exam to get into heaven would be, “Is there rottenness in you?” “Here in heaven, we are not fond of rotten casseroles, so we’re wondering, are you rotten?” If asked that question, we might stammer about how we used to have six rotten eggs for every dozen, but now we’re down to only four rotten eggs per dozen. But the fact would still remain – four rotten eggs in a casserole is still pretty disgusting! The boldest among us might claim to have only one rotten egg per dozen. But you can just imagine the response: “Throughout your life, you’ve done eleven good things for every one bad thing? Well, that’s pretty good. But really, we’re not fond of rotten casseroles, and even one rotten egg per dozen ruins the entire thing!” If that’s the final exam, we’re all in big trouble. Because every one of us has the big disease called sin. Each one of us has that sinful rottenness in us.
But to say it again, it’s not the Christian belief that there is a final exam about whether we are good enough to enter heaven. Because God knew that each of us would fail that kind of exam. That’s why the Bible says as plainly as it can: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God loved us enough to send his Son, Jesus Christ, so that we wouldn’t have to take an exam about whether we were good enough to deserve heaven. Jesus showed us what a sinless life looks like. Jesus demonstrated to us how to live the way God had always intended. He didn’t just live without the symptoms of sin, he lived without the disease itself. And he came not only to show us how to treat the symptoms of sin, but he came in order to cure the disease of sin itself!
Please take a look at the handout for today. Flip it over and see where it says “But God is more powerful!” This is where we find out the full extent of God’s power over sin. Will you please read these next few lines with me:
God—through God’s Son, Jesus—took sin head on when Jesus died on the cross.
And three days later, Jesus showed who had the ultimate power over sin—God!
The Resurrection is God’s way of saying, “I love you so much, I will conquer sin for you.”
Because Jesus took away sin—the one thing that separated us from God—He made it possible to be at one with God again.
That’s God’s grace!
We don’t deserve it.
We can’t earn it.
We can only accept it and live it—every day!
Jesus Christ is our Savior.
Through his death and resurrection, he defeated sin forever.
Those ten lines are at the core of the Christian faith. We’re in the midst of a sermon series called Back to the Basics that explores the basic principles and beliefs of the Christian faith – well, you’ve just read about the most basic, most foundational belief that the Christian faith is built upon. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, he took the sin that separated us from God, and he defeated that sin forever, allowing us to be reconnected and reconciled to God once again. And Jesus didn’t just conquer sin once, he conquered sin forever. Jesus didn’t just treat this symptom or that symptom of sin. He cured the disease of Sin itself. And he didn’t just take the exam for us. He essentially abolished the exam! If we reach heaven and we’re asked about rottenness inside us, we don’t need to respond about good or bad things we’ve done. We can simply ask, “What rottenness?! Jesus cleaned it out of me entirely!”
So how do we share in the victory over sin that Jesus won? One of the great stories from the Bible on this subject was about a man named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and not just any tax collector – he was a chief tax collector. Tax collectors aren’t particularly popular today, but at least we can take some comfort in the fact that it supports the functioning of our nation and we can see many of the benefits living in this great nation that our taxes make possible. In Jesus’ time, Zacchaeus would have been a tax collector for the Roman government, a foreign power that ruled over Israel. What was worse, those taxes were paying for temples for pagan gods and paying for a Roman army that oppressed the people of Israel. The taxes themselves were despised, and the tax collector was despised as well. He could charge virtually any amount he wanted, and he had the power to send Roman soldiers to collect any unpaid taxes, all while pocketing a significant percentage for his own profit.
Yet even though Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and a rich one at that, he knew there was something he was missing – something he was searching for that he was having trouble finding. And his search led him to look for Jesus. He heard that Jesus was going to pass nearby, so he went to the streets, trying to catch a glimpse of him. He was too short to see over the crowds, so he climbed a tree to get a better look. When Jesus saw him in the tree, he told him, “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today!”
Now, so far, Zacchaeus hasn’t really expressed any remorse for anything wrong he has ever done. He hasn’t said he’s sorry for any of his sins. He hasn’t apologized for his job, which requires him to regularly harm other people, stealing their hard-earned money to fund an immoral and destructive empire. All he has done is to realize that he was in need of God and was searching for God. And sometimes, that’s all God needs!
Jesus was the one who really took the initiative and spoke to Zacchaeus. Jesus was the one who bridged the divide between himself and this sinner, this tax collector. As Paul wrote in Romans 5:8: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus reached out to Zacchaeus when he was still a sinner, and he said, “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Everybody else was grumbling, asking why Jesus would go to eat at the house of a sinner. But take a look at the response of Zacchaeus: he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. Jesus offers the invitation, and our response to accept the invitation. Jesus says, hurry down, for I will stay at your house today. Zacchaeus responds by hurrying down and he was “happy to welcome him.”
Even though Jesus has conquered sin forever, he is not able to truly share that gift with us unless we are willing to accept it. He can offer the invitation, but we must receive it with gladness and thankfulness. This is why we don’t say that we declare Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is the Savior whether we declare it or not. What we say is that we accept Jesus as our Savior. For when we have accepted Jesus as our Savior, we are accepting the victory over sin He has won. We are receiving the gift of salvation he offers us.
In Zacchaeus’ case, it’s only after he has accepted Jesus into his home and into his life that his life is turned around. He realizes that the ways he has harmed other people has been at odds with God’s plan for him. He understands that his ill-gotten wealth doesn’t match up with the salvation that Jesus is offering him. He said to Jesus, “I will give half of my possessions to the poor, and with the remaining half, I will pay back anybody I have cheated, four times as much as I took from them.”
That’s what I love about this story. By realizing he had to change his entire lifestyle to be a Christian, Zacchaeus knew it would take him some time to track down everybody he had cheated, explain to them why his life was completely different now that Jesus was leading it, and watch their faces as he gave them back four times as much money as he had stolen. I firmly believe that the moment Zacchaeus accepted Jesus into his heart, he received eternal salvation and was assured of his place in heaven. But salvation isn’t just about getting us into heaven – salvation is also about getting heaven into us. From that day onward, Zacchaeus would never be the same. He knew that accepting Jesus means accepting his love for us. And when we live our lives knowing we are loved, it creates in us a desire to love in return – to love God and to love our neighbors. But that’s not an instantaneous thing – as we grow as Christians, or as Philippians says it, as we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” we learn to love God better and better. And we learn to love our neighbor better and better. Our relationship with God grows just as we grow closer to other people.
On the day that Zacchaeus accepted Jesus as his Savior, Jesus told him, “Today salvation has come to this house. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” And on that day, Zacchaeus received the eternal salvation that Jesus offers. But that day was only the beginning of the rest of Zacchaeus life, as he grew and developed and matured into a stronger and better Christ-follower. It took him a lifetime to grow into the fullness of the salvation Jesus offered him in that instant.
[Sermon concluded with an invitation to accept Christ as Lord and Savior.]
