As I mused upon the flashing emergency lights on the climate action van that seemed a bit excessive and unnecessary, it occurred to me people can have a similar view concerning our sin. All this talk about the dangers of sin do not hit home because it does not seem like an emergency or dangerous at all, like when Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Life went on. Because our sinfulness is as natural to our flesh as breathing, eating and sleeping, even Christians may not see how deadly and destructive it truly is. People who are not comfortable in their own skin can be very comfortable in sin due to familiarity with it; it is naturally part of us and intrinsic to our character, attitude and outlook. In a sermon I preached on Judges 19, God's word lays the grotesque ugliness of sin bare for all to see to the end we might identify with the sinners rather than painting ourselves as innocent victims. All have sinned, and God's desire is for all to repent, receive forgiveness and new life.
In year 9, a classmate and I was tasked to contact Greenpeace, an organisation that at the time was highly publicised for their efforts to "save the whales." In the naivete of my youth, I was a bit taken aback by the rather militant and aggressive fellow who cursed us on the phone when he sensed disrespect by a comment made by my classmate. I assumed people who care for the planet and whales must have a gentle and kind disposition to callers, when he was a regular person like everyone else--someone who feels frustration and anger when his time is being wasted by young punks or when his cause is not taken nearly as seriously as it should. I imagine the man felt quite justified to give us a piece of his mind since we called him, and it is shockingly easy for all people--Christians included--to justify what God identifies as sin due to offence or how we feel. I once though I was free of guilt because I avoided overt sins like cursing, but when I began to understand that being unloving is a sin, I realised I was in deep trouble.
Often we must experience negative symptoms before we will go to a doctor, and then we must receive a dire diagnosis before we will take our heath, treatments, diet and exercise as seriously as we should. In a similar way, we need the word of God and the Holy Spirit to shine a light upon our sin with conviction and be brought to a place of broken desperation for forgiveness and restoration. We need to realise the spiritual and personal emergency sin truly is--worse than a cancer or heart attack--because it has eternal implications. Years ago I recall an ambulance with flashing lights and siren that was transporting a patient suffering a life-threatening emergency. The light was red, and the driver of the car blocking the ambulance wasn't sure if it was ok to run the red light to make way to allow the ambulance to pass through the intersection. As the fellow remained still, the ambulance driver shouted through a megaphone: "Get out of the way before my patient dies!" This is the sort of intensity we ought to have concerning our sin, for it is a spiritual emergency that requires divine forgiveness, healing and restoration. Praise be to God 1 John 1:9 is the truth for Christians: "If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness."