The “Unholiness” of Sin

A number of years ago, I was conducting a Saturday evening chapel service at Grace Centers of Hope, a residential ministry to those struggling with homelessness and drug addiction.  I began the service by offering ten dollars to the first person who could tell me what the number one cause of death in the United States was. Cancer, murder, auto accidents, abortion, drug overdose, and suicide were at the forefront of the answers I received.  Such answers allowed me to keep my ten dollars, as the Bible tells us that the number one cause of death in the United States, or Canada, or Mexico, or Russia, or Israel or anywhere in the world is sin, referencing Romans 5:12 ^“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

I could have also referenced Ezekiel 18:20, Romans 6:23, or gone all the way back to Genesis 2:17, wherein God warned Adam of the severe consequence of disobedience to God’s one commandment being death – being cut off from the glorious life with God for which he and those who would proceed from him were created, banished from His immediate presence, now subject to physical death and ultimately confinement forever to the lake of fire which is referred to in Revelation 20:13-15 as the “second death”.  Such a penalty for sin displays God‘s hatred of it and His zero tolerance for it if one is to live with Him in peace and joy (Isaiah 59:2) (Habakkuk 1:12-13) (Proverbs 6:16-19) (Psalm 5:4-5).

Puritan writer John Owen colorfully describes how sinful man’s actions are experienced by a holy God, referencing terms used in connection with sin from the Bible such as abominable, disgrace, fraud, enmity, stench, dung, vomit, detestable, contempt, hatred, blasphemy, rebellion, injury and poison.

As revealed in Romans 5:12, everyone born (except Jesus) is born into this world with a nature – a bent or propensity toward sin (Psalm 51:5) (Psalm 58:3) (Job 14:1).  This sin nature was passed down to us by Adam, who was created in the image of God with His righteous nature and character, who with Eve was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with other bearers of God’s righteous nature and character (Genesis 1:26-28) (Ecclesiastes 7:29).  However, Adam, as the federal representative of the human race, chose to reject God’s purpose for and rule over his life.  In pride, he believes the devils lie and disobeys God’s one command and will now fill the earth with a race of beings born spiritually dead, no longer the objects of God’s love, but now the objects of His wrath (Genesis 3:1-6) (Ephesians 2:1-3).

Jesus calls us slaves to sin in that we now image the nature and character of the devil more than that of God (John 8:34) (John 8:44).  We are so insanely infatuated by sin that we continue in it despite knowing it deserves death, the destruction of the life with God for which we were created (Romans 1:24-31) (Ecclesiastes 9:3).

The Bible defines sin in a number of ways. 1 John 3:4 defines sin as the transgression or violation of the law, the law given by God to promote human flourishing and our individual happiness in Him. In 1 John 5:17, we are told all unrighteousness, all thoughts, attitudes, motivations and actions that lack conformity to the righteous nature/character of God are sin.   Romans 14:23 reveals that whatever is not done in faith – out of absolute confidence in the goodness, wisdom and power of God, is sin.

And Romans 3:23 states that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, referencing our utter failure to live for the purpose for which we were created – the glory of God (Isaiah 43:7) (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Sin, all sin, every sin is contrary to the holiness of God. Each is a direct affront to and blasphemous violation of His holy being and holy purposes in creation. Wherein His holiness proclaims that He is infinitely worthy of being known intimately, loved supremely, obeyed perfectly, trusted explicitly, pursued passionately and worshiped exclusively as the ever-flowing fountain of our ever-increasing joy and unceasing pleasures, we declare in our sin and unrighteousness that He is not (Psalm 16:11) (Romans 8:7-9) (Romans 1:25).

Thus, Jerry Bridges in his book The Pursuit of Holiness notes that “Our pursuit of holiness, (without which no man will see God), begins not with ourselves, but with God.  It is only as we see His holiness, his purity and moral hatred of sin that we will be gripped by the awfulness of sin against a Holy God.  To be gripped by that fact is the first step in our pursuit of holiness.”

JC Ryle in his classic book titled Holiness writes, “I am convinced that the first step toward attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.”

Both writers emphasize our need to grasp the gravity, the magnitude and destructiveness of sin on our lives, admit to our powerlessness over it and most importantly, understand its vileness and offensiveness to a Holy and Righteous God and its worthy wages of death and Hell.  Only then will we truly repent of it, begin to hate it as God hates it and run from it into the sinless arms of Jesus who alone can save us from sin’s power over our lives in this world, from sin’s eternal consequences in the world to come, and by the Holy Spirit make us holy as He is holy (1 John 1:8-10).

As a shameful “expert” on the subject of sin by virtue of my ignoble and deplorable past, my present ongoing battle with it and as a grateful beneficiary of God’s abundant mercy and amazing grace in forgiving my sins on the basis of Jesus’ atoning work on the cross, I have previously published a number of related posts (Ephesians 1:7).  God willing, I will be republishing some of these over the next few weeks with the prayerful hope that they will help us see the breadth, and length, and depth and height of our sin and its offensiveness to our Holy God, so that we may in turn comprehend the breadth, and length, and depth and height of the love of God displayed in Him forgiving us our sins in Jesus, so that we who have received that forgiveness will pursue holiness, and in doing so we will one day see our Lord Jesus in all of His glory, and be made like Him, holy and beloved by our eternally Holy God (Ephesians 3:14-19)  (Hebrews 12:14) (1 John 3:1-3) (John 17:24-26).

Grace and Peace ×