Essentials for Students, 7-Days of Digging Deeper Into Your Faith

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Genesis 3:6

but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

James 1:14-15

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

Romans 8:7-8

Have you ever broken a bone? It can be one of the worst situations ever. The treatment plan is long, and the pain is ridiculous. Have you ever considered how difficult it would be to fix a broken bone if you didn’t know where the injury was? This is where the importance of getting an X-ray comes in. The x-ray helps the doctors, nurses, technicians, and the rest of the medical team know the problem. While knowing the problem can be difficult, the same applies with sin.

Let’s take a minute and think about what your life would look like without sin. Seriously, think about it. Is it even possible to consider such a beautiful thing?

Sin is such a hard thing to wrap our minds around. It is ingrained in us and separates us from God. But what exactly is sin, how did it get here, and why am I separated from God because of it?

Sin is oftentimes considered the same as doing “something bad” or “wrong,” but sin is not that. It’s worse. Sin, by common definition, is a transgression against divine law. We can take this definition a step further and say that sin is actually rebellion against God. When we sin, we are indirectly saying, “I am going to do this my way.” Look no further than the third chapter of Genesis to see this clearly. Eve is deceived by the serpent and sees that “the tree is desired to make one wise…” just as God is wise. Eve wanted to make her own decisions for herself and without God.

Adam soon follows, and the rest is history. Our decision to sin is a reflection of our flesh going our own way.

God is holy. He is set apart, pure, and perfect. When God created the world, he brought order and structure to all things.

This resulted in harmony, peace, and flourishing. He created man in his own image, which means we are to be representatives of Him on this earth. He created us with purpose and a calling. Unfortunately, we come from the lineage of Adam and Eve and have the deep-rooted desire to “make ourselves wise” in the worst way: we think we have no need for a Savior. This is ultimately the result of being in a broken world with selfishness, pain, and suffering.

God couldn’t stand the thought of us leading ourselves astray in our brokenness and impurity, so again He brings order and structure to the chaos in the form of one man: Jesus. Jesus came, lived the perfect life, died on the cross, and rose again which provided a way for us to be restored to our original relationship with God the Father again. When Jesus went to the cross, we see in Isaiah that He took on all of our sin and was crushed because of it. He was innocent but became guilty for every single one of us.

It is easy for us to rush past the realization that we are broken because we hate thinking about our wrongdoings.

But like an x-ray, we can’t know if something needs fixing unless we take a long and clear look at it. Take time today to examine yourself and know that we cannot do enough good or work our way to God. We cannot make ourselves better to get back to Him, but instead, something needs to take place. Specifically, someone needed to take our place.