Sin is Eternal

Here's an interesting thought for consideration.  Perhaps you have wondered how the punishment of eternity in hell is a fitting penalty for a sin committed on earth.  One sin to us doesn't seem like such an awful thing.  Everyone sins, so it must not be that bad, right?  But consider the perspective of the eternal God, the Judge of All.  Because He operates outside the confines of time, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years a day.  A sin committed on earth is not a single moment from God's perspective outside of time:  it is an eternity.  It is therefore just and reasonable sin be punished eternally.

C.S. Lewis wrote, "We have s strange illusion that mere time cancels sin.  I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter.  But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.  The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood fo Christ:  if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.  As for the fact of a sin, is it probably that anything cancels it?  All times are eternally present to God.  Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern?" (Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pg. 49)

Each sin committed is an eternal offense against the unceasing righteousness of God.  The sins of my youth demand punishment as much as the sins I have committed this week.  But thanks be to God, who in His love for fallen man has sent Christ to seek and save the lost and once for all become a divine sacrifice for sin.  From God's vantage point, Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8).  After we repent and are washed in His blood by faith, all memory of our sins from God's perspective is put away.  It is written in Hebrews 10:14-17:  "For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. ¹⁵ But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, ¹⁶ "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,"¹⁷ then He adds, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."  We live now in this day of the New Covenant of Christ's blood, and we are very privileged to do so.

Wounds sometimes heal over time, but the stain of sin lasts forever.  Only repentance and the blood of Jesus can cleanse us by grace through faith.  When He cleanses us, we are washed and purified forever.  How grateful and blessed I am that God has chosen to remember my sin no more!