Do We Overlook Sin?

eDevotion

Encouragement for your daily walk with God

Do We Overlook Sin?

The simple answer to this important question is YES and NO. Yes, we tend to overlook it in our personal lives and no, we don’t overlook it in the lives of others. We easily discount our sinfulness and elevate the sinfulness of others. Likewise, my sins are usually “average or low-grade,” while yours, on the other hand, are, without a doubt, “abominable to God.”

My sins are easily forgivable. They are simple mistakes and can be rectified with a little more effort on my part. All I have to do is try a little harder. Your sins are not like that. No efforts of self-correction will make up for your horrible missteps. 

I’m allowed to have relapses of the same sinfulness because, you know, it happens to sincere people like me. You, though, have one chance, and one chance only. 

You get the point. We see another's sin as blatant disobedience to God. Our own we tend to discount as not trying hard enough. We simply vow to do better.

Jesus said something very interesting about looking at sin this way. It was in His famous Sermon on the Mount. 

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Matthew 7:3-5

How do we move on, then? Let’s go to the Cross. The Cross always has a message. Excruciatingly, the Son of God bled for all sins because there was not a single sin that was not devastating.

When we gather at the Cross, sinner after obnoxious sinner finds grace to keep moving on - not perfectly, of course - but certainly forgiven one more time.