What is the essence of sin? (Part 1)

The mind is a place in itself, and inside it one can turn Heaven into Hell or Hell into Heaven.  Satan, from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The essence of sin is prideful imagination, and prideful imagination is the throne of Satan. 

Consider this.  Eve reasoned with independent imagination a rationalization of first sin.  She believed Satan.  Adam knew Satan lied, but disobeyed nonetheless.  Why would he do this?  Did he imagine that he and the woman could live forever in the solitude of rebellious love?  Was her love better than the love of God?  Were her words more pure than Purity Himself?  For God said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree I commanded you not to eat from…”  Adam listened to Eve, and Eve listened to Satan.  From Satan’s prideful imagination the man and woman believed they could be more like God than they already were.  We dare believe the same when we doubt Jesus’s name, the name above every name, the name above our names.  We claim for ourselves a place that belongs only to God:  the right to define reality, to determine the true and untrue, the real and unreal based on what we feel.  Our pleasure becomes the measure of life and death.  With every breath we defy our Maker and Creator when we imagine a world without Him.  A heaven without God.  A heaven of our own making.  We say in our minds, “My kingdom come, my will be done in my imagination as it is done in heaven…my heaven.”

Why you have to stop sinning.

This is what the Lord God says,
"The soul that sins will die." 


That's why.
This is why you and I must stop sinning.


We will destroy our relationship to God and those we love.
Yes, God forgives.  So do our loved ones.  But this doesn't change the death that comes from sinning.


Let's make sin real.  Practical.  Let's take it out of the theological hypothetical philosophical realm.


I'm married. 
I've been married for 12 years.
I've never committed adultery, nor has my wife.
But what if I did?  What if I broke the commandment, "You shall not commit adultery?"
What if my wife caught me, on our bed, with another woman, screaming in sexual pleasure.
Graphic you say?  Yes, it is.  Which is why my wife would most likely divorce me.  How would she ever get that image out of her head?  How would I if I caught her enraptured in another man's arms?


That sin would kill our marriage.
Sin kills.
Each sin kills.
Every sin kills.


Why don't we see this?
Why do we say things like, "We all sin every day, and we're going to keep sinning until Jesus comes back?" 


Can I tell my wife that?  Can I tell her that I'm going to keep committing adultery, or fantasizing about adultery, until Jesus comes back?  Could I have told her that at the altar, where we were making our vows to each other, vows to forsake all others until death separates us?  Because death separates us, and sin leads to death. 


This is why you and I have to stop sinning.

The Truth About SIN (Part 1)

Sin enslaves and murders you. This is the truth about sin. But first, we must define the slave master and murderer. ANYTHING that causes you to love IT supremely instead of loving GOD supremely, is sin. If you love a man or a woman supremely, you will expect him or her to be everything to you and for you. But he won’t. She can’t. So you try to manipulate, dominate, or control. Still, he fails to be God. She fails to be Goddess. You drink. You smoke. You work. You try to find the eternal in the temporal. The infinite in the finite. This becomes addiction and obsession and insanity. Slavery. You determine that creation will be The Creator even if it kills you. And it does. Your addiction becomes your extinction…apart from salvation, your destination is damnation. But JESUS is The Liberator Savior. He is love and freedom and reality. He made you and me for intimacy. It is written, “In Your Presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand there are pleasures evermore.” No woman can offer any man perfect joy and eternal pleasure. No man can offer any woman perfect protection and affection.