Pollution of the Soul // The Price He Paid for You, Part 3

Sin is such a funny word. Short – but judgemental. And yet this thing called “sin” lies at the heart of Easter. Jesus died to pay for our sin. So what does that actually mean – “sin”?

 

Sin By Another Name

This week we’re still doing a retrospective on Easter and I thought we should ask a question. What makes Easter? Why did God do it? Why did God send His Son to die for you and me? Last week we saw that you and I are so incredibly precious to God. The Psalmist back in Psalm 8 asks the question. He says:

I look up your huge skies, dark and enormous, you handmade the sky, the jewellery, the moon and the stars are mounted in their settings. Then I look at little old me and I wonder, why do you bother with us? Why do you take a second to look our way, God?

It’s a good question. And the answer is that we’re so incredibly precious to God. And the more precious something or someone is, the more we do for that something or someone.

Sadly in our world today, people pick the wrong things and make them precious. People pick wealth or they pick fame or they pick career or they pick status – always these external things – and they end up sacrificing their lives to them to no avail. But you and I are different. You and I are precious in the sight of God, in God’s heart. And Easter is about Jesus on the Cross. Easter is about the most incredible sacrifice; the Son of God crucified, punished on our behalf.

We’ve had a look at that already on the program over the last couple of weeks. But He was punished for you and for me. And for a long time I wondered, why? I mean, why did God go to those lengths? Look at me, look at you – we’re not that bad. Okay, we’re not perfect, at least I’m not, but isn’t the whole ‘Easter, Cross, crucifixion’ thing just a bit extreme?

Christians talk a lot about "sin". Now for most of my life I thought of "sin" as being this really old-fashioned, stuffy, church concept. I mean, "sin"? Really? These days? Old fashioned, moralising, guilt trips. It belongs to a view of religion of the past that’s not relevant today. People are writing books about it. A well known scientist by the name of C. Dawkins wrote a book called "The God Delusion" and someone who was writing that book up said this:

The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly.

And part of that is this notion that we have in the world today, that sin is some man-made religious concept. We live in a society that denies sin, whatever that might mean to you. Right? Wrong? Well they’re fluid concepts, their circumstantial. It kind of depends what works for you.

But the word "sin" – which I, for many years thought of as this stuffy, outdated concept – the word "sin" in the Bible literally means "to miss the mark". Today we say ‘missing the point of life’. And because of the society we live in – the society that puts ‘me’ at the centre of my world, puts "you" at the centre of your world – we do whatever feels good to make us better and have more fun and more comfort.

Okay, there’s some social responsibility, but by and large we live in a selfish world. And in that society we kind of don’t notice somehow that sin’s going on. We notice the shotgun murders and that sort of thing, but in our lives day by day people deny the concept of sin.

There’s a wonderful parable called, "the boiling frog syndrome". You’ve probably heard of it. The notion that if you have some boiling water and put a frog in it the frog will jump straight out because it notices the water is hot. But if you begin with cold water and you gradually, gently heat the water the frog ultimately will die because he doesn’t that the water is getting hot and