Tag: Sin

The Insanity of Sin

Sin is insanity.

It is wanting light while hating to pay the bill. It is wanting rest while only working. It is wanting things to get done by only resting. It is wanting to snow-ski in the dessert and sun bath in the tundra. It wants things that cannot be because of the way things are. It wants a kingdom without the King. It wants glory without the God of all glory. Sin is looking for life in a graveyard while wanting the one who is Life to stay dead. Sin wants to exile God from the Garden, but instead we are exiled.

Explaining Viticulture with Masonry

Jesus explains the vineyard by taking us to the stone quarry. He illustrates viticulture with masonry. It’s when you go to the construction site, that the farm is made sense of. When we turn from green living vines to cold hard stone, we understand the judgment that comes against the Jewish leaders. You cannot be fruitful unless you have a massive stone in your garden.

The leaders abuse everything that is “His,” that is, the owner’s. They withhold “his fruit,” beat, kill, and stone “his servants,” and murder “his son,” because they want “his (now the son’s) inheritance.” Indeed the only thing they can do is abuse “his” stuff, because all that they have has been given to them. Sin is always stealing. The sinner always has to borrow to rebel. How does masonry explain this? Let me illustrate it like this, as characters in a story, all that the tenants have is given to them by the author. If Jesus doesn’t think it up, it does not exist. Likewise, God is the author of the story we find ourselves in. If He does not speak it, it simply isn’t. All that is, is through and for the Son (Colossians 1:15-20). The leaders want to keep the stuff in the story, and murder the Author. They want to remain part of the cabinet while assassinating the president. They want to reject the Cornerstone, of all that is, expecting all to still stand so that they can have it for themselves. They are just like Adam. We are just like them. We all want to be God, so God must die.

This is the insanity of sin. As Francis Schaffer said, we are trying to plant both feet firmly in mid air. We want the lamp to put out light, but hate the idea of plugging it in. When you rebel against light what else can you expect but darkness? When you hate the God of all wisdom, folly is your lot. When you rebel against life, there is only death. We are worse than physicists who reject the existence of atoms, or carpenters who reject wood. We want all that is His without the Him, but without the Him there is nothing. Jesus is the foundation to everything. Build all you want in the make-believe world of sin, but it won’t stand. Reject Jesus and you will find nothing under your feet, only a bottomless pit. The Pharisees want the castle while rejecting the only foundation that can support it. You cannot have the kingdom while rejecting the King. God’s reign of salvation has come in Jesus. He is its Cornerstone. This is God’s doing. May it be marvelous in our eyes.

The Pilgrim: Romans 14:23

By this, therefore, you see the miserable state of the people that have not faith ‘Whatever they do, they sin’; if they break the law, they sin; if they endeavour to keep it, they sin; they sin, I say, upon a double account, first, because they do it but imperfectly; and, secondly, because they yet stay upon that, resisting that which is perfect, even that which God hath appointed. It mattereth not, as to justification from the curse, therefore, men wanting faith, whether they be civil or profane, they are such as stand accursed of the law, because they have not believed, and because they have given the lie to the truth, and to the God of truth. Let all men, therefore, that would please God make conscience of believing; on pain, I say, of displeasing him; on pain of being with Cain rejected, and on pain of being damned in hell. ‘He that believeth not shall be damned,’ Mark 16:16. Faith is the very quintessence of all gospel obedience, it being that which must go before other duties, and that which also must accompany whatever I do in the worship of God, if it be accepted of him. —John Bunyan, Justification by an Imputed Righteousness

The Implosion of the Tilt-A-Whirl

The earth is rotating at approximately 1,000 mph on its axis, while revolving around the sun at an estimated 67,000 mph. The sun, and thus our solar system, is revolving around the center of the milky way at roughly 500,000 mph. On top of this the Milk Way is skipping through the universe at roughly 60,000 mph. As N.D. Wilson says, we live on a tilt-a-whirl.

What is it all revolving around? The true center of all the universe is God. He created and upholds it all, and all that, for His glory. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” But we are glory thieves. We, want to take God out of the center and make everything revolve around us—even God.

We don’t have enough mass to pull it off. Imagine trying to replace the hub of one of those huge wind turbines with the hub from one of your ceiling fans. Now magnify that by the galactic specs I just gave you. If you think this would only throw a slight wobble into the mechanism recompute.

Sin tries to play god and build a universe to revolve around self. But that universe implodes like a black hole because we aren’t that big a deal.

When we keep our place in this tilt-a-whirl, when the lap-bar is in place and we follow the directions given to us, there is no greater joy. This is life. When we lift the bar, there is only death.

The Pilgrim: Tainted Love

I still see sin, new sin, mixing itself with the best of that I do; so that now I am forced to conclude, that notwithstanding my former fond conceits of myself and duties, I have committed sin enough in one duty to send me to hell, though my former life had been faultless.  -John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

The Pilgrim: The Chief Affliction in Affliction

Nothing can render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin; would you, therefore, be fitted for afflictions, be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside, and then what afflictions soever you may meet with will be very easy to you. – John Bunyan, Mr. John Bunyan’s Dying Sayings

The Pilgrim: The Magnitude of Sin

Sin turns all God’s grace into wantonness; it is the dare of his justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love. -John Bunyan, Mr. John Bunyan’s Dying Sayings

The Pugilist: Mysticism Too Spiritual

The Quietist’s preoccupation, in other words, was not with sin but with nature. The Protestant, whose preoccupation was with sin, did not look for the annihilation of nature, but for the eradication cf its sin. But what the Quietist sought to be delivered from was self. It was not a purified nature he sought but a superior nature. …To the Protestant when sin is gone, nature remains — the whole of nature; sin is merely an accident to nature. To the Quietist it is only when “nature” is gone that “sin” is gone; what he is thinking of chiefly when he says “sin” is that limitation of “nature” which constitutes its essential character. There is no cure for this evil but passage into the All. -B.B. Warfield, The Mystical Perfectionism of Thomas Upham