Why is sin a recurring subject in the Bible? If gospel is all good news, why this preoccupation with the concept of sin, which clearly is bad news?
The truth is, being ignorant of one’s sinful condition is part of what separates a person from salvation. The fallacy of every human philosophy more or less relates to ignorance or misunderstanding of sin as human nature. On a personal level, every excuse for unbelieving or rejecting God relates to the person’s ignorance or misunderstanding of his sin.
On the other hand, being conscious of one’s sin is not the same as knowing and understanding one’s sinful nature.
Further, feeling guilty in itself does not bring salvation to a person. Adam and Eve felt guilty the very day when they disobeyed God, but it took God many thousands of years of personal dealing, first with selected individuals and then with an elected people (the Israel), to manifest the true sinful condition of the fallen race.
It’s not because people have been gradually and progressively becoming more sinful than before, that God had to wait thousands of years for the sinful condition of man to grow into its maturity. In the eyes of God, people are as sinful today as ever, even from the first day when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.
The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Death is then the final manifestation and conclusion of sin. Death is really the true face and real condition of sin. Therefore only when you see the fixed equal sign between sin and death (SIN = DEATH) can you say that you truly understand what sin is.
Death of course is the ultimate embodiment of the total hopelessness. One who sees death objectively (not merely subjectively) sees total hopelessness. In other words, seeing no hope in oneself and thus standing hopelessly before a just and holy God is the only truthful conclusion of sin. Only then do you know that, being a dead man, your only hope is resurrection, which is of course the ultimate symbol of impossibility for a natural man.
But you have now been brought face to face to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is summarized by one word: Resurrection.
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 Peter 1:1-3
Due to God’s holy nature, and the contrast between God’s holiness and man’s sin, God cannot save man arbitrarily without first solving the ‘Sin’ problem. Sin has to be judged, and the result of the judgment is death. Thank God, death fell upon God’s son Jesus Christ not on us. But when Christ represented the mankind in bearing sin, he then also represented the mankind in death. Therefore, our hope also rests upon the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus did not rise from the death, it would mean death won after all. We may still be thankful to Jesus, but we would still be hopeless.
But God promised and eventually demonstrated this resurrection in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The promise seems impossible, just as the promise to Abraham seemed impossible to him. But that is very thing your faith must rest upon, and it is the essential merit of your faith which God can count as righteousness to you.
The decision is yours. Before you choose, you must be aware of the fact that you are brought face-to-face to the gospel by the necessity of your life’s condition, not by a curiosity in your mind.
According to the gospel, the sinner’s sinful life dies with Jesus when Jesus died on Cross bearing the sinner’s sin (because He died for the sinner). The sinner has thus paid the dues of his sin without suffering the actual outcome of his sin. But the sinner receives the resurrected new life from Jesus when He was resurrected from the death due to this connection made in faith.
God has promised you something which seems impossible, and if you believe that God did not lie, your faith will be counted as righteousness to you. Stop doubting by reasoning that what was promised is impossible. Impossibility is the very quality of the promise that can save you, because the impossibility is overcome by the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God made such a hard-to-believe promise because he must, as nothing short of the resurrection power can save you from sin and death. If it could take less to accomplish that, God would not have made such a hard promise. You complain that it is hard to believe, but have you ever thought that it was infinitely harder for God to make such a promise?
The hardship with this impossibility all falls on God Himself. The hard nature of the promise required God to give away His beloved Son for our sake. Do you think God would let His Son suffer the death as a cost of sin if it were not necessary?
Dear friend, take this to heart: Nothing short of that will do. What you think may be easier to believe is not worth believing; But what is worth believing, is necessarily hard to believe due to the nature of our problem.
Why do you base your doubt on the very basis of the only thing that can save you? Abraham believed. Many others did too. Will you?
“[Abraham was] fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore “IT WAS ACCOUNTED TO HIM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Rom 4:21-22.