Tonight in Jim's sermon on Romans 5:12-21 we hit a passage of scripture that became precious to me a few years ago. While this is a fairly complicated passage of scripture, it is nonetheless worth digging into.

As John Piper once said, "If you rake, all you get are leaves. But if you dig, you just might find diamonds." This has been my experience with this passage. Jim did an excellent job of explaining the core concept: our main issue is not the sins that we do; rather, our main problem is the sin that we are. One of the sweet implications of this truth is that the main issue in my life now is not the sin that I do, but that deeper tendency in me--the residual DNA of Adam--that points me on a trajectory toward sin. And that is what Christ crucified on the cross.

Now, this may sound like fighting against sin is unnecessary if the problem is not the sin we do, but the sin that we are and Christ has paid for it. Christ's sacrifice, however, does not make fighting against sin unnecessary--it makes it possible. We see in so many verses throughout scripture that the root of obedience is faith in Christ. Romans 12:1 says "in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as a a living sacrifice"--that is, now that you see how deep the love of God is in Christ, and are united to him in faith, offer yourself to him in joyful obedience.

But as Jim pointed out, our propensity to beleive that our main issue is the sin we do rather than the sin that we are, can have terrible effects on our motivation for obedience.

Here is a test to see possibly where your heart leans in this area. When you read Jesus words in John 14:15, "If you love me you will keep my commandments." What is that verse saying? (Dont read further yet until you can articulate it in your own words.) What does it mean? There are two primary ways of reading it. Way one--the way I used to read it--is that the way I prove my love for Jesus is to keep his commands. When read this way, it is like Jesus is saying "Listen, if you loved me, you wouldn't act like that. You're acting this way, so you must not love me." To which we react by dutifully obeying lest we be caught not loving Jesus.  The second way is subtly but significantly different. It says "If I love Jesus, the effect will be that I obey his commands." 

Do you see the difference? One option--the first one--makes obedience the root and then love the fruit. The other makes loving Jesus the root, and the fruit is obedience. When the sin that we do is what we beleive to be the main problem, then we will read that verse like we are supposed to stop sinning (i.e. start obeying) in order to show our love. But when we allow the free gift, (that is not like the trespass--Romans 5:15-17), to overwhelm us, and we trust our good God who stooped low in descending to earth, endured suffering at the hands of his , to bring us to himself, obedience springs forth out of joyful adoration and trust.

And trust is the the part that makes the title of this blog important. Because the Bible is fairly silent on the state of children who die and don't know Christ, there is little about this specific question we can confidnetly assert. What we can proclaim with all confidence is that God is both just and good. No one in heaven will look at his judgments and in any way see them as unjust. There are mysteries now, and where God is silent, we must trust his heart. "The secret things belong to the Lord" (Deut 29:29).While we were sinners, Christ died for us. There is no greater love. So he is trustworthy.

I am grateful to God for this weekend's worship service as we mediated on the Word, as we shared scripture together, and sang about these deep and powerful truths. May our God use it in our midst to bring glory to himself in our joy in him.