The Severity of Sin

“They are waiting for you.” A corrections deputy greets me with these words as I walk into one the largest housing units in our jails. Looking ahead, I see a small sea of chairs filled with inmates, all ready for the viewing. I like to believe it is not me they are waiting for, rather they are waiting to see the King.

                Leading up to Easter Sunday a request comes across my desk that men in a certain housing unit are asking to watch the movie The Passion of the Christ. After an initial stun my mind floods with thoughts that God is up to something special in our jails. To add a bit of context, we are in a region of the United States known as the “Unchurched Belt.” Our state is considered one of the least religious in the nation. General statistics may tell one story about believing and nonbelieving adults in this state, but on this day the numbers tell a different story. Roughly 50 men gather around a TV in a 79-bunk dorm to revere their Savior’s journey to and from the cross over 2,000 years ago. 

               Before the movie I tell the men that this is closest depiction of Christ’s suffering we have on screen, but it still does not capture the severity of his physical beating. At the close of the movie, two overriding sentiments fill the room. The first is gratitude as many men shake my hand. They are thankful to receive the message of God’s extensive and sacrificial love for them. The second is a sense of grief. After the showing a couple of people say, “Man, that was gruesome.”  In these moments I find my only response to be, “Yeah, that’s how God sees sin.”

                I hope that statement strikes us all like a lash on the back. These are not empty words, rather they tell the truth of God’s nature. For so many, sin + grace = forgiveness, and the Christian walk is irreverently boiled down to a math equation that allows one to live without further contemplation. The truth is we are not to be enslaved to sin (Rm. 6:6-7), and there is no condemnation in the love of Christ (Rm. 8:1-2), but I hope we do not underappreciate the value of grace because it is a free gift. Well, it is a free gift to us, but not to God. Grace cost the Father His Son’s life.

                Let us praise the Lord for 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” However, let it not be our only life-verse. We must also mediate on those Scriptures that are harder to swallow. Isaiah 53:5 says, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” In Romans 6:23 the Apostle Paul tells us that the wages of sin are death.  What if we were to view our sin with the severity that God sees it? What if, at the thought of transgression, we instead see the suffering Son standing-in for our atonement? Then our dishonesty, for example, can no longer pass over as trivial. A lie is no longer just a lie. It is something that sent Christ to his death so we may be reunited with our Lord. The goal here is not to digress into guilt, rather to reckon our sin by God’s scales instead of our own. When we truly value Christ’s life over our own pleasures, then our hearts can instruct our hands in the way that pleases the Lord.