Sin is a loaded word. For those outside the faith, it’s a funny and dated religious term. For Christians, we repeat it so often that it loses its bite. Scripture reveals that sin is worse than we know. Jesus is so serious about it that he says, “If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.” What is it about sin that’s so fatal it would require Jesus to go to the cross?
This Lent we do a soul examination, studying all the ways God describes the complex of sin. Lawlessness, adultery, rebellion . . . The cancerous nature of sin means that we need to go deeper than surface confession. The problem is worse than we know, which makes our Savior greater than we can imagine.
Invocation
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, who delivers us from all evil.
Invitation Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, stay with me. There is evil within me, and I am so often attentive to it. I am easily overcome by my own desire to get away from you and be free to have everything I want and to do everything I want. Lord, give me the real freedom of your life in me. By your victory over temptation, make me victorious. By the power of your love make me strong. Amen. (from The Lutheran Book of Prayer, CPH, 1970)
Word
1 John 3:1
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
Meditation: Dear Children by Pastor Paul Dickerson
It’s hard for me to read the opening verses of 1 John 3 without a sinking feeling in the pit in my stomach. It’s the same feeling I got when I was caught in a lie as a child. Or when a deadline is fast approaching and I’ve got nothing to show. It’s a feeling of knowing we don’t measure up in an important way and it’s going to be brought into the open.
1 John 3 gives me that same feeling:
- “No one who abides in Jesus keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.” (v. 6).
- “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil” (v. 8).
- “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning … and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (v. 9).
I can hardly hear these words without examining my own life and quickly coming to the realization that my sin cuts me off from God. Even worse, it seems to offer proof that my life of following Jesus is a sham and I am not, in fact, born of God.
Perhaps that’s why John starts this section with words of assurance that turn my gaze from myself and my sin to my Father and His love. It is out of his deep love – a love beyond comparison – by which the Father calls me child.
And when God speaks, that’s just the way it is. Not because of what we have done or left undone. But because our Father says it is so.
Merciful Father, when I am tempted to look only at my sin and doubt your great love for me, turn my eyes to Jesus. Forgive all my wrongs. Heal all my hurts. Guide me in the way of righteousness that I may prove to be your dear child. For that is who you say I am. Amen.
Sending
In the face of evil, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.