A Crime Against God

"Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.”
I John 3:4-5 (NIV)

Once a week, you haul your garbage bin to the top of the driveway. You don't know how you and your family manufacture that much trash, but the can is always full. The next afternoon, you walk back up, and it's completely empty. Gone. You never see that garbage again.

That ordinary chore is exactly what John is describing when he tells you what Jesus did with your sin. But first, you have to understand what sin actually is. You almost never hear the word “sin” spoken in public anymore. The news won't say it, and psychologists avoid it. But John refuses to play that game. He gives you the most direct definition in Scripture. Sin is lawlessness, and not the breaking of human law. It's the breaking of God's law.

That difference is important. When you break a human law, you commit a crime. When you break God's law, you commit a sin. Not all crime is sin, and not all sin gets you arrested. But every sin makes you a spiritual outlaw on the run from the God you've offended.

John doesn't leave you there, though. Verse five continues, "But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin." That phrase "take away" means to lift something up and haul it off, never to be seen again. That's what Jesus did with your sin. He hauled it off as far as the east is from the west, and you'll never find the dump.

So the next time guilt tries to convince you that you're still carrying what you confessed last time, call it what it is. Tell God specifically about the lie you told, the resentment you've nursed, or the thing you keep replaying. Then thank Him out loud that it's already gone.

You're not still hauling that garbage. He already took it to a dump you'll never find.

Prayer: Lord, thank You for taking away my sin. I confess things I've been carrying that You already removed. Help me stop digging through the trash You already hauled away! Thank You for taking my sin as far as the east is from the west. In Jesus' Name, Amen.