Our sense organs 45

All unbelief is sin, as we read in Romans 14:23:
“everything that does not come from faith is sin.”
In our time occult practices like fortune-telling,
pendulum swinging, and spiritism, have increased
to an alarming extent. In many bookshops there
are extensive collections of esoteric literature,
and the souls of many readers are poisoned by
these books. God warns against these abominations:
“do not learn to imitate the detestable
ways of the nations there. Let noone be found
among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in
the fire, who practises divination or sorcery,
interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts
spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who
consults the dead. Anyone who does these things
is detestable to the Lord” (Deut 18:9-12).
But the chief sin in the eyes of God is that people
do not believe in His Son and do not follow
Him. Jesus says that it is the one greatest sin if
“men do not believe in me” (John 16:9). The real
nature of sin and its effects becomes clear in the
Greek word, hamartia, used in the New Testament.
It means to miss the target. Through our
sin we miss our life’s purpose as intended by
God, like an arrow which does not hit the centre
of the bulls-eye. If we enter eternity with our
sins, then we are lost, and will experience perdition
and eternal death (Prov 14:34b, Rom 6:23a).
God has said that He will not admit one single
sin into His heaven: “No longer will there be any
curse” (Rev 22:3). If God were to allow sin in His
heaven, then even this place of glory would soon
be devastated. Were sin to enter, the same fate as
on earth would befall heaven: strife and fighting,
enmity and jealousy, illness and suffering, distress
and death. But heaven must remain heaven;
a place of eternal joy and a place where everyone
loves each other. How many people really love us
here on earth? In most cases we can count them
on the fingers of one hand. And, when asked,
many people would say: “Nobody loves me; I am
alone.”
God Himself solved the problem of sin through
Jesus: “God made him who had no sin, to be sin
for us” (2 Cor 5:21). No human being can bear his
own sin, because sin cannot be compensated for
nor be erased by means of good deeds or religious
rites. There is no medical remedy for sin,
but the one Person Who could erase sin, did
exactly that. We read that Jesus “himself bore our
sins in his body on the tree” (= the cross on Calvary,
1 Peter 2:24). Because of this sacrifice, the
possibility of salvation is there for everyone,
without limit, be they:
– young or old
– rich or poor
– male or female
– illiterate or a Nobel prize-winner
– black, white, yellow, or red – God does not distinguish
between races
– American, British, French, German,
or Russian – with God, there are no national
boundaries
– speakers of Arabic, Chinese, English,
or German – God knows no language barriers
A wider range can hardly be imagined. God’s plan
of salvation, based on love and a free will, is not
just available for 5 % or 10 % or 20 % of all
human beings, but for all 100 %: Jesus “is the
atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for
ours, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1
John 2:2). The great tragedy is that only a relatively
small fraction of all people find salvation
by turning to Jesus (Matt 7:13-14, Luke 12:32).
The rest stay on the old, wide road leading
inevitably to damnation.
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