-       THE  EFFECTS  AND  CONSEQUENCES  OF  SIN       -

The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible declared that God is Creator - the only being capable of making something from nothing - The book of Genesis also declared that God created humanity as "male and female." - Genesis 1:27 - Together they formed the blessed pair needed to replenish and subdue the earth.

Since God created the universe out of nothing, it is His and will always serve His purpose. As God shaped creation without any interference from anyone, He will bring creation to its desired end. No power can frustrate God in His purpose to complete the process started in creation and revealed in Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. God is Spirit - not a material substance - it must mean more than physical resemblance. To be created in God's image means that human being, though a creature, is akin to God. Our hope rests in the sovereign power of Him who created the world and then recreated us through the saving power of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Mankind was created without sin, morally upright and inclined to do good. But sin entered in human experience when Eve and Adam violated the direct command of God. "Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, 'You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.'" - Genesis 2:16-17 -

By sin, death came into the world, and sin had destroyed the plan of God's creation. Humankind was created without sin, morally upright and inclined to do good. "This then you must know, says Qoheleth, is the sum of my investigation, putting this and that together. I have made other researches too, without result. 'One man in a thousand I may find, but never a woman better than the rest.' This, however, you must know: I find that God made man simple; man's complex problems are of his own devising." - Ecclesiastes 7:27-30 - But sin entered into human experience when Adam and Eve violated the direct command of God. - "The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, 'Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?' The woman answered the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, "You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death", Then the serpent said to the woman, 'No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loin-cloths. Genesis 3:1-7 - By sin, death came into the world, and sin had destroyed the plan of God's creation. Thus, a new creation was necessary. 

In the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible sin is viewed in several ways: Sin is an immoral act and a transgression against God / divine law as an offense against God which requires a pardon; as defilement which requires cleansing; as slavery which cries out for emancipation; as a debt which must be set right by reconciliation. However, sin is viewed, it is through the work of Christ Jesus that the remedy is provided. The Lord Jesus Christ has procured the pardon, the cleansing, the emancipation, the cancellation, the victory and the reconciliation. 

When sin is viewed as an offense against God, it is also interpreted as a breach of His law. The law of God, like law in general, involves penalties against the lawbreaker. The Apostle/Saint Paul conducting his argument along these lines, quoted one uncompromising declaration from the Old Testament: "A curse on him/her who does not maintain the words of the Law by observing them." And all the people shall say: Amen. - Deuteronomy 27:26 - "On the other hand, those who rely on the keeping of the Law are under a curse since sacred scripture says: Cursed be everyone who does not persevere in observing everything prescribed in the book of the Law." - Galatians 3:10 - 

But Saint Paul goes on to say that Christ, by enduring the form of death on which a divine curse was expressly pronounced in the law, absorbed in His own person the curse invoked on the lawbreaker: - Deuteronomy 21:22-23 - Christ redeemed us from the cursed of the Law by being cursed for our sake since sacred scripture says: Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree. - Galatians 3:13 - Since Jesus Christ is truly man and truly God and is fully human and fully divine, He partakes in the nature of both God and humanity. He represents God to humanity and He also represents humanity to God. Thus, God is both Lawgiver and Judge; Christ Jesus represents Him. 

In the hour of His death, Christ offered His life to God on behalf of mankind. The perfect life which He offered was acceptable to God. The salvation secured through the giving up of that life is God's free gift to mankind in Christ. The work of Christ is to set humanity in a right relationship with God.

When sin is considered as defilement that requires cleansing, the most straightforward affirmation is that 'the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from sin. "But if we live our lives in the light, as he is in the light, we are in union with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." - 1 John 1:7 - The effect of His death is to purify a conscience that has been polluted by sin. Spiritual defilement calls for spiritual cleansing and this is what the death of Christ has accomplished.

When sin is considered as slavery from which the slave must be set free, then the death of Christ is spoken of as a ransom or means of redemption. Jesus himself declared that he came 'to give His life a ransom for many'. "For the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. - Mark 10:45 -

Apostle/Saint Paul not only spoke of sin as slavery; he also personified sin as a slave-owner who compels his slaves to obey his evil orders. When they are set free from his control by the death of Christ Jesus to enter the service of God, they find this service, by contrast, to be perfect freedom.

The idea of sin as a debt that must be cancelled is based on the teaching of Jesus' parable of the creditor and the two debtors - Luke 7:40-43 - the creditor forgave them both when they could make no repayment. But the debtor who owed the large sum, and therefore had more cause to love the forgiving creditor, represented the woman whose "sins which are many, are forgiven" - 7:47 - This is similar to Paul's reference to God in Colossians 2:14-15 - "He has overridden the Law, and cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay; he has done away with it by nailing it to the cross; and so he got rid of the Sovereignties and the Power, and paraded them in public, behind him in his triumphal procession."

Colossians 2:15 speaks of the 'principalities and powers' as a personification of the hostile forces in the world which have conquered men and women and hold them as prisoners of war. There was no hope of successful resistance against them until Christ Jesus confronted them. It looked as if they had conquered Him too but on the cross He conquered death itself, along with all other hostile forces. In His victory all who believe in Him have a share. - 1 Corinthians 15:57 -

Sins is also viewed as estrangement or alienation from God. In this case, the saving work of Christ includes the reconciliation of sinners to God. The initiative in this reconciling work is taken by God. "Because God wanted all perfection to be found in him and all things to be reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross." - Colossians 1:19-20 - "In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men's faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled." - 2 Corinthians 5:19 -

Those who are separated from God by sin are also estranged from one another. Accordingly, the work of Christ that reconciles sinners to God also brings them together as human beings. Hostile divisions of humanity have peace with one another through Him. Saint/Apostle Paul celebrated the way in which the work of Christ Jesus overcame the mutual estrangement of Jews and Gentiles. - "For He is the peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in his, own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law." - Ephesians 2:14 -

The sense of sin is a reality everyone knows. It is more than just a violation of law; its poignancy would not be present except for man's intuition that sin also involves a breaking of a relationship between persons. Some people who steal from a great corporation do not feel that they have done anything very wrong (although they actually have) because they cannot think of the corporation as anything but impersonal. They have a flickering intuition of a truth - that the essence of sin is not a negation of a code but a rejection of a person toward whom one feels bound through his/her goodness and his/her love. Sin is an affront by one spirit against another, an outrage against love. That is why there is no sense of sin without the consciousness of a personal God. 

True prophet Isaiah had a deep sense of guilt when he saw God and said, "Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King the Lord of hosts." - Isaiah 6:5 - "I knew you then only by hearsay; but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent." - Job 42:5-6 - "When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, 'Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.'" - Luke 5:8 - 

- The Christian's Spiritual Life - The reason, therefore, why those who are in Christ Jesus are not condemned, is that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. God has done what the Law, because of our unspiritual nature, was unable to do. God dealt with sin by sending his own Son in a body as physical as any sinful body, and in that body God condemned sin. He did this in order that the Law's just demands might be satisfied in us, who behave not as our unspiritual nature but as the spirit dictates. 

To brings a person into right relationship with God requires the initial change of character, attitude and behavior, that is, conversion of heart. True conversion of heart involves turning away from evil deeds and false worship and turning toward serving and worship God in spirit and true. Only by true conversion of heart makes a person's entrance into a new genuine relationship with God.

Closely related to conversion are repentance. In a general sense, repentance means a change of mind, or a feeling of remorse or regret from past sin. But true repentance is a turning away from sin, disobedience, rebellion and turning back to God. True repentance leads to a fundamental change in a person's relationship to God.

In the Old Testament, the classic case of true repentance is that of king David. In the New Testament, the keynote of John the Baptist's preaching was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand." When Jesus began His ministry. Jesus took up John's preaching of the message of repentance, expanding the message to include the Good News of salvation.

Sin involves the denial of the living God from whom human beings draw their life and existence; the consequence of this revolt is 'death' and the torment of 'hell.' Death is the ultimate penalty imposed by God for sin. Sin is a real and positive evil. Sin is more than unwise, inexpedient, calamitous behavior that produces sorrow and distress. In another word, it is rebellion against God's commandments. Sin is thus the faithless rebellion of the creatures against the just authority of his/her Creator. For this reason, breaking God's commandments at any point involves transgression at every point. Sin is actually a contradiction to the holiness of God, whose image mankind bears.

That is why you must not let sin reign in your mortal bodies or command your obedience to bodily passions, why you must not let any part of your body turn into an unholy weapon fighting on the side of sin; you should, instead, offer yourselves to God, and consider yourselves dead men brought back to life; you should make every part of your body into a weapon fighting on the side of God; and then sin will no longer dominate your life, since you are living by grace and not by law.

Does the fact that we are living by grace and not by law mean that we are free to sin? Of course not. You know that if you agree to serve and obey a master you become his slaves. You cannot be slaves of sin that leads to death and at the same time slaves of obedience that leads to righteousness. You were once slaves of sin, but thanks God you submitted without reservation to the creed you were taught. You may have been freed from the slavery of sin, but only to become 'slaves' of righteousness. If I may use human terms to help your natural weakness: as once you put your bodies at the service of vice and immorality, so now you must put them at the service of righteousness for your sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you felt no obligation to righteousness, and what did you get from this? Nothing but experiences that now make you blush, since that sort of behaviour ends in death. Now, however, you have set free from sin, you have been made slaves of God, and you get a reward leading to your sanctification and ending in eternal life. For the wage paid by sin is death; the present given by God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:12-23 -

Thus, there is a need for regeneration or born again, that is, the spiritual change brought about in a person's life by an act of God. In regeneration a person's sinful nature is changed and he/she is enabled to respond to God in faith and love. The need in regeneration or born again grows out of humanity's sinfulness. It is brought about through God's initiative. God sees and works in human heart. Therefore, regeneration or born again is an act of God through the Holy Spirit, resulting in resurrection from sin to a new life in Christ Jesus.

And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God's work. - 2 Corinthians 5:17

The condition of despair induced by unrepented sin often reaches a point where there is a positive fanaticism against religion and morality. Anyone who has fallen away from the spiritual order will hate it, because religion is the reminder of his guilt. Husbands who are unfaithful will beat their wives who are faithful. Wives who are unfaithful will accuse their husbands of infidelity. Such souls finally reach a point where, they want to increase evil until all distinction between right and wrong is blotted out. Then they can sin with impunity and boasted, "Evil, be thou my good." Expediency can now replace morality, cruelty becomes justice, lust become love. Sin multiplies itself in such a soul until it becomes a permanent residence of Satan, cursed by the Lord Jesus Christ as one of the white sepulchers of this world.

Such is the history of "nice" persons, who believe they never sin.

The nice people do not come to God, because they think they are good through their own merits or bad through inherited instincts. If they do good, they believe they are to receive the credit for it; if they do evil, they deny that it is their own fault. They are good through their own good heartedness, they say; but they are bad because they are misfortunate, either in their economic life or through an inheritance of evil genes from their grand parents. The nice people rarely come to God; they take their moral tone from the society in which they live. Like the Pharisee in the front of the temple, they believe themselves to be very respectable citizens. Elegance is their test of virtue; to them, the moral is the aesthetic, the evil is the ugly. Every move they make is dictated, not by a love of goodness, but by the influence of their age. Their intellects are cultivated - in knowledge of current events. They read only the best-sellers; but their hearts are undisciplined. They say that they would go to Church if the Church were only better - but they never tell you how much better the Church must be before they will join it. They sometimes condemn the gross sins of society, such as murder; they are not tempted to these because they fear the opprobrium that comes to who commit them. By avoiding the sins that society condemns, they escape reproach, they consider themselves good par excellence.

Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ to invective was not badness but just such self-righteous goodness as this. We find no words of condemnation spoken against Magdalene, who was overwhelmed by the problem of sexual promiscuity, or against the penitent thief, who found it difficult to respect possession; but we find Him inveighing against the Scribes and Pharisees, who were nice and self-righteous men. Against them the Lord Jesus Christ pronounced His woes: - Matthew 23:13-36 - The Lord Jesus Christ said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, "Amen I say to you, they have received their reward." - Matthew 6:2 -             

It is a fact of human experience that the more experience we have with sin - our own sin - the less we are conscious of it. In all other things, we learn by experience; in sin, we unlearn by experience. Sin gets into the blood, the nerve cells, the brain, the habits, the mind; and the more it penetrates a person, the less he/she knows of its existence. The sinner becomes so accustomed to sin that he fails to recognize its gravity. This was the sinister idea behind Satan's temptation of Eve. Satan told her that if she possessed the knowledge of good and evil, she would be like God. Satan did not tell her the real truth - that God knows evil only negatively, intellectually, as the physician who has never had pneumonia knows it as the negation of health.

But a human being, knowing evil at all, must know it experimentally - that is, evil would enter into his system and become a part of him. As a cataract in the eye blinds the vision, so sin always darkens the intellect and weakens the will and leaves a bias toward the committing of another sin. Each sin makes the next more easy, conscience less reproachful, virtue more distasteful, and the attitude toward morality more scornful. In some persons, sin works like a cancer, undermining and destroying the character for a long time without any visible effects. When the disease becomes manifest, it has progressed so far that one almost gives up the hope of a cure.

*** The difference between a habit and an instinct is that a habit is acquired, whereas an instinct is infused. A duck never has to acquired the instinct to swim but a man has to develop it. Habit then means not only the facility of doing a thing because one has done it frequently but it also implies the impulse of the will to do the action. Because of the lack of will, no inanimate creatures ever develop habits.

A clock does not go by continued repetition of its movements. But habit is developed by the will. A drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying: "I won't count this time", he may not count it but it is counted nonetheless. The nerve cells, fibers and the molecules are counting it, registering it and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. A man becomes a permanent drunkard by separate drinks and he becomes a permanent saint by separate acts of virtue.

No man becomes bad at once. Evil is not native to the soul; it has to become domesticated. Any evil desire or affection repeatedly acted upon receives less and less attention from the conscience until at last it almost becomes automatic, like reaching for a cigarette after one has acquired the habit. At first, an act of vice requires an effort and is speedily followed by regret. This voice of conscience is more and more diminished after the evil deed is multiplied.

A man may eventually reach a point where he has a memory of the knowledge of morality, as well as the memory that it exercised over his conduct at one time. But the power of moral cause is gone, though he may falsely justify himself by calling moral precepts superstitions or the relic of a bygone age or a mark of his immaturity.

It would seem that Our Blessed Lord did not recommend a gradual breaking of a habit but immediate: "If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna". He did not actually mean a physical plucking out of the eye but a complete break with the evil habit. A short time ago a drunkard stopped me on the street and said: "I am a bum; I have no job and I drink too much. What would you recommend?" I said to him: "The first thing that you must do is to want to be sober and decent and hardworking". He said: "Oh, no. That is too hard: Though Dr. Jekyll made up his mind to have done with the hateful life he carried on in the form of Mr. Hyde, he did not destroy the cup and the liquid which enabled him to transform himself onto a safe disguise. It is the destruction of the cup and the will to be better which is the condition of breaking the evil habit.

J. Arthur Thomson well emphasized this necessity of suppressing the animal in us in order to encourage the angel: "Man often seems like a creature whose wings have been smirched with oil or bedraggled with mud, so that it cannot fly... There are gratuitous handicaps which can be got rid of, so as to leave the developing human spirit to go forth with a new freedom on this quest after adventures in the kingdom of the spirit".

So many say it is their weak wills which keep them from rising. It is not just the will that is weak; it is rather the refusal to accept the truth that the will has the power to rise, particularly when there is power supplied from the outside, namely the power of grace. In breaking evil habits, man does not act alone; he acts in conjunction with help from God, if he but claims it. The wise of Pythagoras used to say: "Choose that course of action which is best, and custom will soon render it the most agreeable". If we kept a tiger alive and expect to manage him, the best thing to do is to feed him; but if we desire to kill him, the only thing to do is to stop his food at once and for a little while he will roar and tear but will soon grow weak.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               *** BY VENERABLE / ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 ) 

  -     WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY     - 

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -

Your generous contribution and support is profoundly cherish. I sincerely pray that: God blessing be upon you, always. Amen! Bank transfer: Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah - Public Bank Berhad account no. 4076577113 - Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.