Title: Where sin abounded, grace abounded more...
Contents
Sunday day sermon
Text: Romans 5:12-21
Title: Where sin abounded, grace abounded more...
When I was living as an unbeliever, I had a very loyal friend among the friends I met in society. That friend was truly a friend who could live without the law. This is because he was a friend who always suffered from others and never did harm to others. Then, by the grace of the Lord, I came into this path, and the friend still lived as an unbeliever.
As we went on different paths, we lived without news for several years, and then we accidentally contacted each other and asked how we are. At that time, like me, only his wife was going to church. So the first thing I said was, “Go to church with your wife!” When I told him, “God is really living,” the friend said in one word, “I cannot go to church because of my sins.” So I said, “Because I have a lot of sins, I need to go to church and get the forgiveness of my sins through Christ!”
After I set foot in church, I discovered something startling. It means that everyone has become good after going to church together. A person who enjoyed drinking and smoking before going to church stopped drinking and smoking after going to church, a person who was a thief stopped stealing after going to church, and a person who used to gambling stopped gambling after going to church. It seems like everyone is getting better with this.
Whether a person who used to drink or smoke should see it as a good thing just because someone who used to drink and smoke quit drinking or smoking after attending church, or whether a person who used to stealing should see him as a good person just because he stopped stealing after going to church? It is questionable whether we should be evaluated as a sincere person just because we stopped gambling after attending church. Of course, it can be said that it is good in the world concept. However, from God's point of view, all human beings are still under sin.
If you live by doing some bad behavior before going to church, and then just because you stop doing that kind of behavior after you go to church, if you evaluate it as a good thing, you're killing a human being twice. In other words, they are making believers double as children of hell. An idea, once nailed down, can cripple a person forever. Didn't the Pharisees' erroneous idea of the salvation of the law ultimately drive them to ruin?
When an unbeliever believes in Jesus, God sends the Holy Spirit to the unbelievers as a proof that original sins are forgiven through the grace of Jesus' blood shed on the cross. Therefore, when an unbeliever receives the Holy Spirit for the first time, many great changes occur. A person who enjoys drinking and smoking can temporarily quit drinking and smoking, a person who used to steal can stop stealing, and a person who used to gambling can stop gambling.
However, after a few years, when the fullness of the Holy Spirit falls, they find the old customs and do them again. For this reason, it is said that the Holy Spirit sent to Gentile Christians cannot be the Spirit of salvation. Of course, there may be people who have cast off old customs by relying on the Holy Spirit. However, it would be a mistake to believe that he was completely transformed into a righteous man.
However, if the Gentiles, who have already been corrupted in their hearts, stop doing some outwardly devastating act after attending church, they mistake it for goodness and connect it with salvation, which is really foolish. In the human world, the word “good” can be said according to their own standards, but at least on the part of God, the word “good” is not used recklessly to anyone. The concept of goodness on the part of God is a title that only those who have been reborn as Christ can receive.
My friend who is an unbeliever mentioned above said, “I hated going to church because of my sins”, while those who are currently attending church say, “Because they have already believed in Jesus and have become good, they don’t need Christ anymore.” However, my friend, who is an unbeliever, also has a wrong idea, but what is more frightening is that those who believe in “people who have already believed in Jesus and believe that they have been saved” believe themselves to be righteous even though their daily sins have not been forgiven yet. Because.
When the Pharisees prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, and not like this publican. Twice a week I fast, and I give tithes of my income.” While showing his righteousness, “The publican stood afar off and did not dare lift up his eyes to look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner. The Lord says that among these two, the publican was the first to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What we should not be mistaken for today is that we have to give up the idea that we should go to church and become good. Because if you think you will become good by going to church, you can become much better if you go to a hermitage in the mountains and do mental training. The church is to be a place where sinners seek Those who think they are righteous do not need to go to church. And the longer the church attends, the more it should realize that it is a dirty sinner. If the church is overflowing with the righteous, then it is the wrong church.
As always, the Son of God only came to save sinners, not the righteous. The same was true of the Son of God who came to the land of Israel, and the same is true of the Son of God who will come before Gentile Christians.
If the law served as a schoolteacher to find out the sins of the people of Israel and lead them to Christ, the law of the Holy Spirit (spiritual law) poured out on Christians also finds out the sins in the hearts of Christians today and guides them to the future Christ. You are playing the role of a teacher. So, where sin abounded, grace abounded is exactly that.
-He who has ears, let him hear...-