Your relationship with God; Your relationship with sin.

When a person is saved they are spiritually born again. This new self differs to the person that was before. By becoming a Christian the person has altered two relationships in their life; the first, their relationship with God; the second, their relationship with sin.

If you have accepted Christ and put your trust in Him not only will you develop a relationship with him, but also your relationship with sin will change. So many people today claim to hold a relationship with God, but then a couple of years or even months down the line they fall away and return to their old ways, not giving much of a second thought to God. This is because, although they began to develop their relationship with God, they did not alter their relationship with Sin.

Our Relationship with God:

Ephesians 2:14 “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation.”

There is a separation between God and us, for God cannot stand the sin that is within us. Isaiah 59:12 states “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear you.”

The effect of putting our trust in the Lord Jesus and believing in Him is that we are reconciled to God, for we are justified before Him. Before we put our trust in the Lord we were dead in our sins, for we had to be punished for the wrongs we have committed.

Imagine a man on death row, scheduled to be executed by electric chair in six months time. This man is still living, yet because of the wrong he has committed and the punishment he will receive he is dead in his lawbreaking. His death is imminent.

For us the Lord Jesus took the death that we deserve upon His shoulders, the punishment has been paid for our sin. A way out is available if we just accept it, if we just claim it for ourselves. Once we have claimed God’s grace for ourselves, we become reconciled to God, for our punishment has been paid and within us is the perfect Son of God.

Look now at Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit also helps our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

People claim that this verse is about the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues (a heavenly language). But that is not correct. Read Romans 8, Romans 8 is not about spiritual gifts; it is all about our salvation and our standing with God. Before we were saved there was a separation between God and us. He could not hear us because of our sin and our standing. But by being saved and born again we are filled with the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus is the mediator (middle man) between God and us, the Holy Spirit within us interprets our prayers to the Lord so that He may hear them (He makes intercession for us).

In John 14:16 Jesus promises us that we will receive the Holy Spirit after we are saved. (“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever- 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”)

By putting our trust in Christ the airwaves of communication between God and ourselves are opened. We are in direct communication with God.

We have a new relationship with God and a promise that He will never forsake us; once saved we will always be His.

Our Relationship with Sin

When we are saved there becomes a renewal of our minds. (Ephesians 4:23 “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” )

What we once did we now do not do, for there has been a change in our position from death to life, from darkness to light.

When we are saved we must realise that we are not doing God a favour by accepting Christ. A person may be inclined to accept Christ because he is lonely, or because he needs a friend, or because he is struggling with life on his own. His conversion may be genuine, but ultimately this is not the reason why he needs to accept Christ.  Ultimately we need to accept Christ because we, like that man on death row, are dead in our sins. Our execution is imminent. Christ is the only way out for us! This is ultimately our reason for accepting Christ. We see the depravity that we have succumbed to, we see the laws that we have broken against God Himself, a God who sees even lying as an abomination and even judges us by what we think, not just our actions (Matt. 5), we see how wretched we are in His sight and the imminent execution we are heading for and we jump into the arms of our Saviour and cling to Him as tightly as we can ensuring that we do not fall away again lest we be executed.

Hebrews 10:31 “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
 And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

As we develop our new relationship with God, and we learn about Him, we need to come to see that the Lord is a fearful thing with incredible power (Matt. 10:28).

Through this awesomeness and might of the Lord that we come to know we should begin to recognise the gravity and depravity of sin that we once lived so comfortably in.

As we become closer to God our minds reflect God’s mind. We should come to hate sin just as God hates sin. Not just because it brings death but also because we can see how impure and destructive it really is. We can understand that the things that we find attractive are not the way God wants us to live.

John 3:19 “and this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Think about when you are about to go to sleep and turn your bedroom light off. The room is plunged into darkness and you are unable to see for the thick blackness in front of you.  You know that after a while your eyes begin to adjust and all of a sudden you can see in the darkness. You can make out your room. The darkness is still the same darkness, but your eyes have come to accept it and adjusted accordingly.

This is the same with sin. As sinful people who are in the darkness that is sin, we cannot see the destructiveness and impurity and defilement that it brings. It seems normal to us. It seems natural to us. We are no longer sensitive to the darkness for we are used to it.

God is light, so when we develop our relationship with Him the darkness that we once were comfortable in is exposed so that we can see what it is. We can see how offensive it is to God and how destructive it is to us as people. The darkness is blacker than ever to us and we cannot stand it. We should develop a hatred for sin. If you claim to be saved and develop only a new relationship with God and not a new relationship with sin, then it is likely that you will return to the depraved state you were once in, because it is still home to you. It is still were you belong. There has been no real change. There has been no renewal of your mind.

Will we still sin?

We will still sin, because we are sinful beings. However even though we will continue to slip up and fall short of God’s glory, our desires will have changed to reflect God, so that we will feel the prang of guilt in our conscience when we do slip up, and so that we hate the things that we often succumb to.

To fully understand this read Romans 6 and Romans 7. Romans 6 tells us how if we are a new creation in Christ then we are ‘dead to sin and slaves to Righteousness!’. Our desire is to do good, it is no longer to do bad. But if we then go onto read Romans 7 we can see how, no matter how much we desire to do good, we still at times slip up.

Romans 7:15 “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”

However the difference for us now is that we have the Lord Jesus as our propitiation (our sacrifice on our behalf), the payor of our fine. Which is why Romans 8:11 states, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

1 Corinthians 4:16 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.”

The irony of our walk with Christ

If you have been saved, do not only ask, ‘how is my relationship with God?’, but also ask, ‘how is my relationship with sin?’ Do you hate sin? There is a certain irony in our walk with Christ in that we hate something that attracts us. We have a sinful nature therefore sin will always have a certain pull on us and we must always confess our sins and pray for strength and cleansing from God, each and every day. 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Yet, if you have a relationship with God then despite this attraction that you feel towards sin you should detest it. It should make you sick to your core. You should no longer desire to live in such a depraved way. If you are a Christian then you should hate anything that is against God.

Do you hate sin? If not, then you need to subject yourself to God’s light, so that the works of darkness are exposed, so that you become sensitive to the darkness.  If you do this you will see just how destructive it is. You will see how empty it is. You will see how the devil has deceived us all and you will despise it. The sight of sin will sadden you. Does the sight of sin sadden you?

We must see just how much the devil has deceived us. We must all die one day and stand before God on judgment day. (Christians will be judged too, you know). We will all be held accountable for things done on this earth. We need to open our eyes to the tactics of the devil for he wishes to lull us into a sleep so that we are of no effect to the Kingdom of God. The world is full of distractions.  The television is full of things that stop you from developing your relationship with God. The shops are full of unnecessary choices so that you can sit around all day and enjoy yourself wasting your time with things that are absolutely empty, when you should be out there telling people about the Lord and the fact that we are all sinners and need a Saviour. The devil makes sin attractive to us so that we may be filled with it constantly. For if we are filled with sin then our relationship with God will always be capped.

We must not only develop a relationship with God but also develop a hatred for sin. Open your eyes to the destruction that it brings. Look around at the emptiness of the world and be filled with regret for the amount of time you have already wasted on this earth occupying yourself with those things! How much time we are all wasting. Open your eyes and develop a hatred for sin so that you can take that hatred and cling closer to the Lord, for only in Him is there fulfilment and purpose. Open your eyes and encamp yourself in the light of the Lord so that we can see the world for what it really is and out of great anguish go out and seek to save those who are lost!

What is your relationship with sin like today?

Being a Christian in today’s world is like going to a nightclub sober. Even though you are there you look in disbelief at what people are doing to themselves from afar.

As a Christian are you looking on in disbelief or are you there in the midst of them, strengthening your relationship with sin for it never actually changed in the first place?

-BACChristian