No 1) Sin

Sin. God hates sin and we as Christians should too. The only problem is that there’s so much of it. We ourselves are drenched in sin. By all reckoning, God should hate us too. Avoid us as if our sin is extra bad, Soul Survivor not-washed-for-a-week B.O.

The weird thing is that he doesn’t. Sure, sometimes he can’t abide the “smell” of us, but he still loves us. More than we could ever know. There’s two problems with all this though: Why does God love us? and How can he forgive us? (Because he definitely does!) I don’t think we’ll ever know the first one (at least not on this Earth) so I’ll focus on the second one. God sent Jesus to die for our sins- we all know that:

Mark 10:45 "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

That means that we’re forgiven! Yay! Celebration! Wooooooohhhhhhhh!

But wait! Didn’t I just say that God hates sin? Why do we still sin then? And why don’t we just carry on regardless if we are truly forgiven?

We sin because we are human. God gave us the amazing ability of free will but we abuse it. Everyone has sinned. Except one man- a Nazarene who’s name begins with J. Ever since Eve took the apple (although I’m not blaming her!) the human race has sinned but with sin comes knowledge of sin. We know when we sin. I sin a lot (being human- hard to believe I know!) and 99% of the time I know it. Even if I don’t know at the time, I do later on. We could all say: “oh well, we’re forgiven, it doesn’t matter” but no, it does matter. Every time you sin, you break God’s heart, you spit in his face. Do you really want that?

Its no use saying that you're blameless either. I've heard people say that the concept of heaven and hell is unfair as a mass murderer could accept Christ and go to heaven whilst a normal person goes to hell. I have an analogy here!

Think about snow, not hard considering the recent weather! Think about fresh, clean, untouched snow. Beautiful yet, at the same time, you really, really want to walk on it. But as soon as you walk on in, the magic is lost. the more that you walk on it, the more dirty it becomes, the more mucked up. Even if you try to put it back the way it was, hide it, it's still ruined. Just like our lives really; we ALL sin, doesn't matter if you lied to someone or killed them. You've still walked on the snow, still destroyed any chance you had of getting to heaven. But what if, if you asked him to, God puts the snow back to how it was- a perfect life again. But he does more than that, he gives you a contact. A man who will come and put fresh, untouchable snow down, taking the old snow away. God doesn't keep a record of the sins, he knows you sin and he hates it, but he forgives you all the same. You can walk on the snow, but Jesus was punished instead of you. Allowing you to get to heaven and have a relationship with God. God sees sin as sin, not as law. The law says that murder is worse than stealing. To God it doesn't matter, without Jesus you still can't reach heaven. 

So, accept that you sin, let God forgive you and celebrate that he loves you. Try not to sin and strive for a perfect life but don't forget that you will fail eventually. Jesus is the only way to heaven and to a loving relationship with God and that's what's important in this life. It's who you know, not how you live!