To understand Sin

The modern church at least in American has never really gotten the grasp of sin. Everywhere well-meaning Christians are greatly concerned that not all will be saved.

It is not fair that there will be those who are not saved. It is as if it is fair for us to be saved.

Strangely we haven't grasped the concept of sin. You see what is fair is hell and condemnation. There is a sense in which those who are saved have had something unfair happen.

The saved have had and will have something fair happen in a sense. That is heaven but you see it is what Jesus deserves not what they deserve.

The Christian through union with Christ gets what Jesus' perfect life and perfect obedience to death deserved heaven. And Jesus got what we deserved on the cross - of course as God the grave good not hold him.

You see we are so concerned with what is fair but we have not even inquired of the bible what is fair. I suppose we do not like the explanation in the bible of what is fair so we ignore it.

I suppose we can always continue in this way ignoring what the bible says and imposing our ideas in the church. You see we think our ideas make missions important.

If we think this is nonsense. Really the concept of finality pushes missions and the sense of it really might not be so bad because we do not want to think of God in this way impends missions.

The bible gives a clear picture of God and it is God as he wishes to be viewed. He wishes to be viewed as gentle and tender as a lamb lead to the slaughter and he also wants to be viewed as the lion of Judah.

You see God shows himself in many ways. In a gentile wind, in a small voice, in a flood of enormous proportions, in the sending of plagues, and the care of the poor and sick.

You see people often try to redact scripture or draw a dichotomy between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament as if they are different.

But Jesus spoke more of hell than heaven and his whole life as he spoke of it was predicated that he had a work to be done. The reality is that God is larger than we are and more complex than we are.

Our personhood is so small we cannot grasp the degree of his personhood. Sometimes we get a glimpse of the strangeness of emotion.

Maybe a friend gets a great opportunity in a place far away. We have sadness and joy mixed together. Emotion on top of emotion and emotion which seems contradictory.

You see if is right to feel many emotions about the same event at times. We draw lines in the sand between emotions and sharp contrast. This is because we are small and cannot understand what it means for example to have anger and compassion at the same time.