Sin–Original – What Does This Mean?

For Christ’s Sake

Encore Post: In the last post (So, Does God Hate Me?), I mentioned the mess that the sin of Adam and Eve made of the world. God intends to clean it up. But it isn’t easy. God is Holy and can’t just look the other way. Every sin must be paid for in full. Because we are all sinners from birth, (Psalm 51:5) we must die and go to Hell forever. Even worse, we cannot make up for our sins by anything we can do or say. In fact, no one else can even offer to die in our place, since everyone sins. (Romans 5:12-21) Someone without sin must die to save us.

So, because he loves us, God sent his Son to die in our place. (John 3:16) That is why the Eternal Son was born a man, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Because Jesus is God, he never sinned, but remained faithful to His Heavenly Father. Because Jesus is a man, He could die for us. When He shed his blood on the cross, the price was paid for our sins and the sins of the whole world (Redemption). Our sins are forgiven and God gives us his grace, adopts us as His own heirs, reveals to us what He plans to do. (Ephesians 1:7-10)

One day, when the time is right, Jesus will return from heaven, raise us from the grave, restore our bodies to be like his and bring an end to sin, death and the power of the devil. On that day, he will remake Heaven and Earth and we will live with him forever.

That is why we speak of the grace of God as something he gives us, for Christ’s sake.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Blog Post Series

So, Does God Hate Me?

Encore Post: So, does God hate me and you? He has plenty of reasons to do so. When God made the world, it was perfect, without sin, evil, sickness or death. He made us, male and female in his image (Genesis 1:26). He blessed us and called all He made “very good” (Genesis 1:31) But our first parents, Adam and Eve, believed the lie of Satan that they could become more like God by disobeying His command. (Genesis 3:4-6) This first sin (Original Sin), brought sin, sorrow, grief and death into the world. Since then, all men and women descended from them, including us, have been born as sinners. From the moment we were conceived in our mother’s womb, our every thought has been polluted by sin and evil. (Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, Matthew 15:19) So, God has every right to hate us.

Thank God that He is a gracious and merciful God (Psalm 103:8). In fact, St. Paul tells us that God loved us before He made the world. He picked us out to be made holy (Sanctified) and blameless (Justified) and rigged events so that we might be adopted as His sons through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. (Predestination).(Ephesians 1:3-6) So, God does not hate His children. He has always loved us. This attitude towards us is what we mean by the word: Grace. God is gracious to us because His Son was born of the Virgin Mary at just the right time in history, lived a perfect life for our sake, suffered, died on the Cross for the forgiveness of sins, rose again from the dead (Resurrection) and Ascended into Heaven so that we might live with Him forever. (Eternal Life)

So, grace is not some kind of substance that is given to us a little bit at a time or some kind of magical power that gives us a do-over. It is that God loves us and is bound and determined to save us — and does.

Blog Post Series

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

God Lets It Go, So Let It Go

Encore Post: Forgiveness is simple, really. You tell someone they do not need to pay you back something they owe you. It is sometimes the hardest thing you’ll ever do, when the thing you need to forgive is a deep hurt. What God is calling on you to do is let it go. When we pray to have our sins forgiven, God wants us to remember he is releasing you from the debt you owe him and wants you to do the same.

The Greek word Jesus used (ἄφες) in the Lord’s Prayer for forgive literally means “to loose, to release, to let go.” In financial terms, it is used to write off a debt and not expect repayment. We daily rebel against God’s will, break his law — sometimes deliberately. Worse, we were born that way. Even though every non-Christian religion tells us we can repay that debt — we cannot. We rack up even more debt faster than we could possibly repay. But God loved us and in Jesus suffered and died to pay that debt in full.

When others hurt us, deliberately or not, the pain can eat us up. If we hold on to that debt day after day, year after year, it can cast a shadow over the rest of our life. When we pray that God forgive us, knowing he already has, it can give us strength to forgive others. That is why we pray to be forgiven — so that we can forgive others.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Blog Post Series

God the Jealous God

Encore Post: In our tour of the Ten Commandments, we learned that God wants more than just a casual keeping of his law. He wants our heart and soul to match our behavior. “Love your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5) Of course, we know that we cannot keep the law perfectly in this life and God knows it, too. Jesus died to pay the price for our disobedience and earned us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. So, why should we try at all to be good?

The reason is that sin has its consequences in this world as well as the next. When Adam and Eve sinned, sinned multiplied and became a part of the lives of everyone of their children. It brought with it death, sickness, disaster, grief and pain. It destroyed the close relationship between people and between people and God. Since we were made to share our lives with God and each other, it harmed the very purpose for which we exist. It sin that God sent his Son to save us from, not to be a fire insurance policy against hell.

God describes the relationship he has with his people as a marriage. Sin amounts to being unfaithful with other gods, dividing our love for him by giving ourselves to others. So it is that God warns us in the First Commandment that he is a jealous God and there are consequences when we are unfaithful to him. (Exodus 20:5-6) God that the death of Jesus breaks the power of sin and death in our lives. With prayer and the help of other Christians, we can fight back against these sins and sometimes even be free of them.

After all, God’s warning comes with a promise. It is not only sins that travel from generation to generation, but blessings as well. With the help of the Holy Spirit, when we establish habits of doing good — attending worship faithfully, praying with our children, reading God’s word to them and caring for others, these, too, will be a part of their inheritance.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Blog Post Series

Fence, Mirror and Guide Book

Encore Post: “In the day you eat of it, you will surely die,” God warned Adam. (Genesis 2:17) And he did die and all of us with him. (1 Corinthians 15:22) The first sin disrupted everything. It set creation against itself, bringing decay, suffering, grief and disorder. The greatest disaster, however, is separation of God from his children. Now they were under sentence of death. Yet God did not destroy the world, nor damn Adam and Eve as they deserved. In his love and mercy, God promised instead to send his Son to crush the ancient snake (Genesis 3:15). With his judgment on their sin and the curses that followed, he began to reveal his law to Adam and Eve so that they might learn the consequences of their sin, cling to the promised Seed of Eve for salvation and learn to serve God and others once again.

To this day, the Law of God restrains our sin, drives us to the Gospel for salvation and show us how in faith we can serve God and our neighbors. The law does this in three ways.

First, it stops sin from running free in the world. Through human authorities — parents, governments, employers and others, the law praises and rewards good behavior and punishes evil deeds. It acts like a fence, to contain and restrain sin.

Second, the law tells us what God requires of us, threatens us with eternal death if we do not obey it in thought, word and deed. It reveals every one of our sins, evil motives and desires. It charges us with rebellion against God in his court. It shows us we are guilty and cannot free ourselves. It drives us to the Gospel and the sacrifice of God’s Son for our salvation. It acts like a mirror that shows us our sin.

Third, the law guides Christians, in whom the Holy Spirit has created faith in Christ. Because we love God and want to please him, the law reveals his God’s will for our lives and how he wants us to love him and our neighbors. It acts like a guide book or a manual that clears away the confusion of life in a sinful world.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Everybody’s Good at Heart? Right?

Encore Post: “He meant well,” you explain when someone you love really makes a mess of things. He may have tried to do something good, but his actions just complicated an already bad situation. You may have defended your actions with similar words. “I was just trying to help,” you say. Sometimes we can convince others not to blame us or our friends when our actions end up hurting others. This kind of argument often works because we all would like to believe that people are good at heart. No one really wants to hurt others, we think. There must be a reason why someone does even evil things. Maybe they are poorly educated or have been harmed by others or grew up in a violent neighborhood. deep down we like to think of ourselves as good people.

Unfortunately, this is more fantasy than reality. From time to time, mass murderers or other criminals show this to us by committing horrible crimes, even though they grew up with every advantage in life. We study their lives, but we cannot find even a motive for their evil.

And even so, they are not alone. We also were born as sinners. (Psalm 51:5) Our hearts and minds were filled with evil thoughts. (Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21 , Mark 7:2-23 ). We were dead spiritually, caught up in the ways of this world, controlled by Satan. Down deep, we really didn’t even want God to save us. (Ephesians 2:1-3, Romans 3:9-18) We spent our lives, like the rest of the world, chasing whatever makes us feel good and entertains us. What we really deserve is God’s punishment and nothing we can do will change that.

Yes, we were spiritually dead, filled with sin. Yet God loved us anyway. So He sent His son to die in our place. On the cross, Jesus paid the full price for our salvation. So, our sins are forgiven, our guilt removed and the power that the world, the devil our flesh has over us was broken once and for all time.

Now, together with Jesus, he raised us from the dead, spiritually now, but literally on the last day. He did this, so where Jesus is, we will be also. All of this is because of his grace alone.