What Are The Consequences of Sin?

I am continuing my series on the relevancy of The 10 Commandments. You can read part one here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.

In summary, keeping The 10 Commandments will make your life here on earth easier, but you cannot earn your salvation by keeping them. You earn no points with God, and He doesn't stop loving you when you break them. None of us is able to keep them perfectly and so they were never given to show us how to be saved. They were actually given to show us how miserably we will fail and are in dire need of a Savior. Christianity is about freedom. God came to set the captives free. We have been slaves to sin, we had no choice. But God sent His Son to redeem us (buy us back) and His Spirit to empower us to conquer sin.

Some may think I'm condoning sinning since I preach grace. I say you have the choice to battle sin in your life and rise above it (and it is God that gives you this ability). I say you have the choice to be free from it. But many don't and God still loves them the same. I truly think that those people are ignorant of the power that God came to give them, to break the bondage of sin. If you are one that justifies all your actions by saying, "it's okay, God has to forgive me", I question whether you are really saved at all. If you have any concern about pleasing God, then you probably are saved.

No, I don't preach liberty in the sense that you think. We have liberty in Christ to live free, joyful, peaceful lives, but the paradox is that this liberty is stronger the more we submit to His will and not our own. After all, we were bought with a huge price, our lives are no longer our own. (I Corinthians 6:19-20)

So what are the consequences of sin?

1. Repercussions from this world.

2. It opens the door to the devil.

3. Our flesh grows stronger.

4. Our soul is tarnished.

Think about the world we live in. If you steal, you suffer consequences in our society. You risk being injured or killed by your victim. You risk being arrested and convicted by our justice system. Let's talk about adultery. The natural consequences of this world we live in are such that your marriage will most likely fall apart, you may lose your children, you will definitely ruin your witness with your children, your chances in another marriage are greatly diminished, and you may catch a disease.

Secondly, sin opens the door to the devil. If he knows you bow to temptation easily, he will ruthlessly tempt you all the more. He also likes to throw scriptures in your face (used wrongly, of course) to beat you down and condemn you. He will tell you you're not worthy, unloved by God, and make you even question your salvation and entrance into heaven.

Now for the third category, we have the flesh. That is the part of ourselves that wants to do wrong. Before we're saved, we are slaves to it, but God sets us free, if we believe on Jesus. Unfortunately this part of us doesn't go away. It hangs around and tempts us. If we continuously give in, it grows stronger and stronger and becomes harder to resist. (I give more detail in my last post, click here to read.)

I will explain point four in detail next time. It will take a bit of space.

What are not consequences of our sin?

1. God stops loving us. (See Romans 8:38-39)

2. God punishes us.

3. God is unable to bless us or protect us. (Now it may seem that way, because you have opened the door to the devil, but God is able to do whatever He sees fit. Read all the Old Testament stories where people were in direct disobedience to God, yet He showed them grace, especially Ahab in I Kings 20. Ahab was a wicked king, but we see God calling to him, helping him win a battle, even in the midst of his sin.)

4. You can lose your salvation. And this is the controversial one. Some believe that there is a point where you can sin and lose your salvation. I don't believe that. Some believe that if you are one that has reached a high level of maturity, in Christ, and genuinely know what you're doing, you can reject your salvation. I'm still not sure about this one. But I do know that in general, people mess up, some mess up really, really badly. They still believe in the work that Christ did on the cross, they are not in danger of losing their salvation.

Tune in next time where I explain Romans 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death. Does this contradict what I have presented here?

I also encourage you to read through Romans and Galatians in light of what I have presented here. Don't take my word for it. Search the scripture for yourself.

Character

I'm going to reach back a bit and fill in some gaps.  With my 3rd grade son this year I decided to study various character aspects of God.

What you think of God will have a big impact upon your life.  What does God's Word have to say about His character?

I sat down and listed all the character qualities I could think of and then researched each one.  We spent a few weeks on each one.

I had my son take certain notes so that it would help the information stick in his mind.  If kids are doing something with the information they are learning it will help them retain it better.  Now he has that notebook to refer back to, also, and refresh his memory.

For each character quality I had him copy the definition out of the dictionary (one day) and then copy down a theme verse (separate day).  Then each day I would read him a Bible story that illustrated that quality, he then kept a list of the stories on his notebook page.

Our first character aspect was faithful.  The theme verse was Hebrews 10:23 "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for He who promised is faithful."  I found various stories of God making a promise to someone and keeping that promise.  The ones we read were -  Noah (promised to preserve from the flood), Abraham (promised a son), Peter & John, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego; Paul (God promised him he would go to Rome, we read all the stories of how God kept him from harm so he could get to Rome, including a shipwreck).

Then I thought we would cover some of the promises in God's Word that He is faithful to perform (Jer. 1:12 & Is. 55:11).  I looked up various verses about - protection, provision, strength, healing, joy, wisdom, and peace.

I know there are many more that I didn't find.  Each day we covered a separate promise and I had my son list all the scripture references in his notebook so that he could use it as a reference whenever he needed.

Next we learned that God is our Healer.  Our theme verse was Ex. 15:26 "I am the Lord who heals you."  We went through all four gospels (and the beginning of Acts) and picked out every single story on healing that we found.  I had my son write down each reference each day so that he could have it as a reference.

Next was God our Deliverer.  Theme verses were Psalm 91:14-15 "Because he has set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.  He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him, I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him."  We read stories of deliverance - Gideon, Jacob & Esau, Moses in the basket, the Israelites from Egypt, Deborah the Judge, Rahab in Jericho, Israel from Balaam's curse, Samson, David from Goliath, David from Saul, Shadrach, Meshach & Abed-Nego, and Daniel in the lion's den.

Next was God our Provider.  Theme verse Philippians 4:19 "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."  Story of creation (order of importance, man was created last so that everything he needed was already here), Elijah and the ravens, Elijah and the widow, manna, water from the rock, Book of Ruth, feeding the thousands (loaves and fishes), consider the sparrows and the lillies/do not worry passage, tax money from a fish, David provided with the showbread to eat, Goliath's sword for a weapon, and a hiding place for his family, when on the run from Saul; and Joseph and his family during famine.

This brings us up to date (we did character qualities from July through October).  We have taken a bit of a detour (because I was lazy and didn't research a new character quality) and read through some Psalms and Proverbs (month of November) and are now on a prophecy kick.  See later posts for details.