We talk a lot about it and work even more to try and keep on top of it. Many of us spend much of our lives trying to modify it and get rid of it altogether as we think this is what our walk with God is all about. Yet so few of us actually know or understand what sin really is much less how it affects us.
I would like to use a simple illustration which God shared with me a few years back as I was getting ready to share with a group of leaders how sin affects us. This picture came to me after several days of meditation and asking for a simple metaphor that most if not everyone could relate with when shown. I received the following picture of the way a computer works to reflect what sin does to us and what is capable of curing it and how.
- Our heart is the motherboard
- Our spirit is the software
- Our mind is the hard drive
- Our body is the hardware
- Sin is a virus that deactivates and pollutes our software (spirit)
The only antivirus available to us is Yeshua’s blood which is capable of deactivating sin and curing our condition, not our identity, as it opens the way for our spirit to be resurrected so we can be spiritually aware once again. When this happens a new openness creates a path for new awareness and the ability to see what was already there and true about our lives, which sin blinded us from seeing by deactivating our spiritual eyes.
At the basic level sin is doubting that God loves us unconditionally and is always with us. Being unaware of this leads all of us to act in ways that fall short of who we really are – children of one God. When we suddenly become aware and know that we are loved much of what we do that causes us to sin goes as the need to find meaning, happiness, and peace begin to vanish. And the most beautiful thing about all of this is that it is no longer up to us to keep it going, through our performance, as this is based on what Yeshua did and completed for all of us on the cross, no exception, where he served notice to the universe by shouting “It is Finished”!!!
It is imperatively healthy that once we regain this awareness we don’t allow anyone to start dictating the terms of our relationship with God apart from the Holy Spirit and the Bible. Leaders, mentors, coaches, and others if they are to be trusted must always share their journeys vulnerably with you. Not from a place of “authority” but a place of love and transparency where they own their darkness (sin) and share with you how God and his love is healing it.
Any other approach will be based on fixing us and trying to turn us into a spiritual clone of themselves often modeled on the box of the tradition we are a part of. This is very different than Gods way which is based on healing us so we are able to not only see but also accept who we really are, and to whom we have belonged all along. This process is clearly seen in the story of the Prodigal that even though he was away from home and lost he nevertheless stopped being a son as his fathers DNA was always within him and a part of who he was.
There is a very good reason why Yeshua told Nicodemus in Aramaic, not Greek, that he needed to go back to the beginning instead of saying that he needed to start all over all again and become something he wasn’t. You see Yeshua knew that as we returned to our beginning in God we would not only be able to understand that we had all along been a part of Gods family, but also that in the deepest parts of our being we have always had more in common with Christ than we ever did with Adam.
Remember – We are sinners because we are born into a reality that falls short from the one we come from and we sin because we try to live and process our lives from a place within us (our minds) that was never created for this purpose.
-pablo-
Photo by Unknown
