Growing in Christ calls us to grow in our understanding of who He is, what makes Him glad and what doesn't make Him glad. So many churches and ministries today are afraid to or even refuse to talk about the things that grieve God - sin- because they don't want to sound too harsh. As a result we have so many Christians getting trapped in sin because their view of it is distorted and somewhat watered down.
My daughter, Alexa Margaret, once went through a stage where she loved playing with things that creep and crawl. Less than a year ago it was often a challenge to stop her from picking up worms and bugs. One of the many bugs that I would catch her playing with was cockroaches. She would very often place them with her toys and even sometimes try to feed them.
Today, she's thankfully now afraid of them, and she knows better. The breakthrough came when my wife and I made her understand the concept of germs and all the sickness they bring. We told her that cockroaches are full of these germs that will make her very sick and we would have to bring her to the hospital.
You know in some way or another, we're the same with God. We used to love sin just like Alexa loved cockroaches. We play with it and sometimes even feed it thinking it's harmless, not seeing it for what it truly is - a consequence-infested bug that will make us sick and that needs to be squished as soon as possible.
Colossians 3:5-6 tells us, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming." There is a wrath of God that follows the existence of sin. Not wrath towards you because God loves the whole world (John 3:16) but against the sin that exists in our hearts.
But the beautiful wonder of God's love is that in His immense regard for us, He took His Son Jesus and laid upon Him every disease-infested cockroach called sin and hung Him on a cross so that we can walk in freedom from both the consequence and occurrence of sin in our lives. That's the beauty of God's grace.
A right view of sin will lead us to value God's grace more because then we understand that we must be rid of it and that only God and His power can remove the clutches of sin in our life.
