Identifying the problem

I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! –Romans 6:19-21 NIV)

It’s all around us. The world has lost its ability to reason. Things that were accepted for thousands of years as good and right and practical for constructing a civilized society are now ridiculed, censored, and discarded. The results haven’t been pretty.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…. Because of this, God gave them over…. –Romans 1:22, 25a, 26a (NIV)

While the situation is not hopeless, the hour is late. We must be willing to call sin “sin”. Recognize it for what it is. Not for the purpose of instilling guilt, shame, or fear, but for the purpose of identifying the problem and turning to the only source of help we have – Jesus.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. –Matthew 5:13 (NIV)

God is quite serious about sin. When I understand how deadly sin is, I begin to understand why God went to such lengths to provide a way back to Himself. When I see my need for a Savior and understand the cost involved in providing for my rescue, I find a gratitude that leads me to seek Him and call Him Lord. I cannot minimize or cover up or deny sin. Indeed, any honest discussion of sin starts with me admitting my own.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” –John 6:68-69 (NIV)

Consequently, we do not judge the world. That is not our job. However, we do commit ourselves to live differently than the world – to the extent we are allowing the Spirit of Christ to transform our hearts and minds. That differentiation validates the presence of the Spirit in our lives and may even be used by Him to help convict those who are in the world, pointing the way to something more purposeful and worthwhile than the lies they have been pursuing.

This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. –Romans 3:22-24 (NIV)

As gracefully and humbly as we can, we MUST sound the warning. Judgment is coming, not because God is cruel, but because He is holy. He has been patient, but the world we have allowed ourselves to be deceived into tolerating is not the world He has in mind for His children.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 6:22-23 NIV)