It is true to say that I am loved by God despite my sin. The difficulty comes in the reason why. God just doesn't love everyone equally without any differentiation in His love or as one person likes to say, "God doesn't love everyone with peanut butter love." God loves His people because of His Sovereign purpose in joining them to His Son. He simply doesn't love men redemptively outside of Christ.
Therefore to say that God loves sinners while separating the sinner from their sins is to separate a man from his deeds. It is to say that men are basically good in their hearts, but they just keep doing these bad deeds.
Psalm 11:5A tree is known by its fruit. Gods hates sin, therefore He hates the sinner. Jesus said that it is not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes forth from the heart is what defiles him. Man's heart is continually evil. That is why we do particular sins. That is why men are sent to hell and not their particular sins.
The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.
So Jesus' death on the cross not only forgives my particular sins, but goes even farther. He secures the whole person. It is not just my sins that need salvation, it is my heart, my soul, all of me. He saves me.
Unbelief is the condition and action of the unregenerated soul. Therefore we need a Perfect Savior with the ability to save and save perfectly. Have you come to Christ?
2 comments:
Great points. Nietzsche was so desperate to divide sin from sinner that he actually posited that the sinner doesn't exist, that there's no doer behind any deed. He held that nouns are illusions, that all things are in flux and therefore only verbs. Why punish a person for committing murder? That person no longer exists -- in his/her place is another, fundamentally different from the perpetrator.
I wonder how Nietzsche felt upon death, facing a God who demanded an account of his life.
To qualify your post somewhat, the Bible indicates a separation between believers and sins in Romans chapter 7:
"As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
Of course this applies to believers still struggling against sin -- not to unbelievers with no desire to separate from sin.
That is a good point. God does love the Christian despite his particular sins. The problem is whether or not there is consistency.
A Christian does not "practice" such things. 1 John describes a Christian as one who struggles as does Romans 7, yet John clearly shows there is a difference between one who practices sin verses one who sins as a believer and struggles with the sin in his members (as Paul puts it).
Thanks for the clarification.
Also another point that was driven home to me was when a homosexual said that God must have made him "that way" since he prayed to have those sinful desires removed.
His struggle with his sin was only too real. If only we who lust after other women or what ever we may deal with, would realize the necessity of preachers proclaiming the Word with clarity.
In this way, perhaps God's people would be better preserved. God gives us Elders and Deacons and other members to help us in our daily struggles with sin.
God Bless
Howard
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