Does it ever break your heart? Whether we’re watching the news, driving through rush hour traffic, listening to the fears of a sick friend, attending a funeral, or interacting with those in our own homes, there are constant reminders all around us that the world is broken. Sin tints and distorts everything that once was whole. There are few things that it has not touched.
It has infringed on our bodies. We hurt. We bleed. For some, cancer and other types of sickness leave their crippling handprints over what was once healthy. Even just waking up in the morning with an aching back is a reminder that there is pain in this world. And then we die. People die. One moment, they’re breathing, life whispering through their veins, and the next moment the breath of life has been reclaimed and they are no longer souls, just empty shells of decaying sinew and bone. And we grieve them.
Sin has blinded our intellects. We are forced to take every thought captive and question each thing that enters our minds because evil so easily infringes upon us. We see things with murky understanding, like staring at the reflection of truth in a dim mirror.
It influences our choices. Left to ourselves, we choose wrong. We don’t care how our decisions influence other people. Our minds have been turned from the interest of others to the interest of SELF. “Who cares if it hurts her if it benefits me?” Or the same question but in a milder and more dangerous disguise: “I know this other person wants, but I need…” Do I really need?
Sin has destroyed the natural world. While once ocean waves roared praise to God, now they also destroy communities and steal lives. Trees fall and kill. Mist that once watered Eden now pelts the earth, and hail breaks and injures. Bugs once made to tend flowers cause deadly diseases. Predators prowl and devour.
Perhaps worst of all, sin has closed our hearts. We no longer have the automatic capacity to feel complete love, to experience true peace, to maintain perfected joy. Sin shrinks our hearts and in turn teaches us to shrink what is good until we minimize it and cram it down. We don’t believe at our cores that true love is possible. We think God is a small God who withholds love, forgiveness, and grace.
Sin has turned us against grace and thoroughly convinced us that it does not truly exist. That if someone tries to give us a gift, we are obligated to return it. Why else do we feel compelled to return a gift to a friend on Christmas or birthdays? Gifts are not given as a means of getting. But we act like it.
In short, sin hurts our bodies, intellects, choices, world, hearts, and acceptance of grace. And in the end, it kills us. Ephesians 2:1-3 sums it up, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
This passage hits hard, and that’s because we don’t really agree with it. We’ve convinced ourselves we’re not sons of disobedience, or children of wrath, and look, we’re not dead. (Yet.) We ignore the sin inside. But if we really look deep, we begin to see just how full of brokenness we really are, the flame of evil filling our insides with blackened ashes. The occasions that I have tried to make a list of my sins and shortcomings, I have been overwhelmed. You can begin digging, and you’ll keep uncovering more till doomsday.
Alright. That was depressing. Hard to read. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the sin in this world and the brokenness. We cannot ignore it. I wish we could. I wish it wasn’t there. I wish we weren’t heading toward death faster than a Japanese bullet train can speed down its tracks or a Peregrine Falcon can dive through the air. Our world is absolutely split with brokenness. Just like our hearts.
You know what? The story DOES NOT END THERE. Because there are two words that change everything: But God. Possibly my favorite two word phrase. It turns the whole world right side up.
“BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7, emphasis mine).
Jesus came to earth to wipe the world clean of the filth dripping from every atom. And He starts with US! He is using us to make all things new. He rescued us so that He might use us to rescue others.
But God (😉) doesn’t stop with rescuing us. Reading in Hebrews recently, I came across this passage and I think it is the most sehnsucht-inducing piece of Scripture I have ever read.
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all (!!!) know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:10-12).
Here’s why this thrills me.
1. Jesus will put the Law into our hearts and minds so that obedience and glory to God will come naturally. I am so forgetful. Like a leaky bucket, God fills me with the Truth of the Gospel but only a few hours later I have forgotten. Verse 10 is a promise to stop my leaks. I will be able to obey God!
2. As a result, we will be clean! Sometimes I feel so stuck between the already and the not yet. Yes, the homes occasionally converge now, but it only makes me long more poignantly for true perfection, when I and other believers will no longer be enslaved to the sinful desires of the flesh. My sins are forgiven, yes, but I keep piling up new sins for God to forgive! Jesus promises that on that day, I will have no more sins. I’ll have stopped sinning!!
3. We will not have to teach or evangelize because everyone will know the Lord. (Verse 11.) Can y’all even imagine how wonderful that will be? Living in complete harmony with one another?! My mind floats to an image of cozy cottages stretched over a woody mountain hillside. People coming out from the gates of their houses and instead of worrying about facing the sin in the world, simply glorifying God together.
4. He will be our God, and we shall be His people!! (Verse 11.) No longer will we wander from His ways. No longer will we have to fight day by day against the tide of a society slithering with sin. The battle has been won by God Himself. Therefore we shall be His people, set apart, blameless through Christ, giving Him NOTHING but glory and joy!
5. And He will remember our sins no more. (Verse 12.) Yes, we will have stopped sinning. But that doesn’t changed that we have sinned in the past. That’s where this passage in Hebrews connects back to the Ephesians 1 verses. Through grace we have been saved. Saving us means forgiving our sins. The debt is canceled. We will be free.
Hasten the day! Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Fulfill our yearning and bring us into that far country which we can only glimpse dimly this side of heaven.
Note: I apologize for the lateness of this post. It’s been a bit of a crazy week.
Image credit: Pexels
What a beautiful reminder, Ella Em! ❤️❤️❤️
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Oh, Ella Rose! Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful post. You emphasize the filth and brokenness sin brings in such a real and heartbreaking way. But then, oh joy!! BUT GOD!!! And the joy He’s given you fills every word in the rest of the post, so much so that that joy leaked out of the words and sentences I read and flooded my heart anew with gratefulness to God. Thank you for this post, Ella Rose. And praise the Lord for his grace!! ❤️
Oh my goodness I am so honored that you felt that way! May all glory be to God! ❣️🤗