Birthright of a Sinner

There are a lot of sites on the internet where you can go to search for the members of your family; to find the roots of your ancestry. It takes little time and with the click of the mouse and the payment of a fee, you can see if your great-great-great granddad was a king or a chicken thief.

The results, however, are the same. Whether you were born to royalty or to a common man, you were born to sin….and in our day and time, that’s a topic that no one likes to discuss…..yet, with all that is going on in our country, it’s high time we began to call sin….SIN.

You know, it wasn’t that long ago when sin used to slink down the back alleys …now, it seems to parade down Main Street, head held high and too often, cheered by the crowd.

Where are we Christians as sin marches through our neighborhoods in the form of drug dealers and across our TV screens disguised as entertainment? Christ taught his disciples that we should hate the sin yet loved the sinner. I find that EXTREMELY hard to do...until I read the story of the adulterous woman in John 8:1-11.

The Pharisees sought to trap Jesus with the sins of this adulterous woman; yet his reply stopped them dead in their tracks and indeed caused them to turn and walk away when He said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

We are to abhor sin…to run, flee, expel and castrate sin from our lives. We are to be an example to others in all we say and do that we belong to Jesus…and that begins with the way we treat sinners.

In Romans 5:8, Paul writes, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” …and that is how we are to treat those caught in the trap of sin…with God’s unconditional love. We must see those that miss God’s holy mark as God sees us…with an aching heart that longs for their salvation.

Adrian Rogers, that great pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church near Memphis, Tennessee used to say in many of his radio broadcasts, “Sin will take you farther than you want to go…keep you longer than you want to stay …and cost you more than you want to pay.”

That statement was true for each of us before we heard God’s call to come to Him and it is true for everyone we know that is ensnared by the glitz and glamour of sin. We are to love the sinner and point them to Jesus…we are to be salt & light to this wicked and vile generation ….and we are to love God with all our heart, body, mind and soul….that love, God’s love, is what we need to make a difference for Jesus today.

Loving Him…loving sinners through Him,

WPQ