Basic Bible Concepts: 3 The Law Of Sin And Death

Below is the transcript from the video.

Welcome back to the Basic Bible Concepts study 3. We talked about the nature and attributes of God last time and this time we’re going to talk about God’s nature and the law of sin and death. So we’re going to use what we learned last time to discover, okay this is God, who God is, and what are his laws. We’re going to kind of do that two ways. We’re going to talk about the spiritual laws, we’re going to jump right into that, okay, and figure out what is the law of sin death.  Then we’re going to compare that to some physical laws and see how God teaches us about the spiritual through the physical. Then, finally we’ll talk about the dilemma this creates for man because it does create a huge dilemma for us and that’s why this is so important because we do not want to be ignorant of the dilemma that we have created for ourselves so let’s jump right in. 

First of all if we say the law of sin and death that means if you sin you die. What does that mean? So, first of all let’s talk about what sin is. The Bible says in First John 3:4- 5, whoever commits sin transgresses the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. Okay, so we talk about sin being the transgression of the law. What is the law? Isn’t that the logical next question? Well, let’s talk about what the law is. Jesus said, well first of all let’s back up. We were given  the Mosaic law, right? The law in the Old Testament where God gave the Ten Commandments. He gave a whole bunch of laws to the Israelites to be the house of witness. And we then go to the New Testament and Jesus said what is the law. Well, he said the laws can be summed up in 2 Commandments: love God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. And so the transgression of the  law would be to not be loving. And so that brings us back to what’s God’s nature: righteous, just, and loving. 

So if God’s nature is love and we have violated his love that means we have violated the very person of God because in First John 4:8 the Bible says God is love. So when we violate the law of love we have violated God. If we think about that from the last lesson we learned that God is infinite. He’s infinitely righteous, he’s infinitely just, and he’s infinitely loving. So when we talk about violating God’s law, which is the law of love, we have done that on a scale that has infinite magnitude. And the Bible says, well let me back up a minute, you know when you talk about our sin, our violation of love being against God, a lot of times we think well you know that person’s sinned against me he violated my love, he cheated on me, or he slapped me, or she did this or she stole from me or whatever the case may be, right? But truth be told all sin is actually a violation against God’s love and this is Illustrated so perfectly by King David. When he sinned, he sinned with Bathsheba, he committed adultery with her and then he sent her husband to the front lines to make sure he would be killed. And when Nathan the Prophet busted him out and said you committed this horrible crime and as a result your first child is gonna die, David is praying to God in Psalm 51 and let’s just read his prayer. It says: Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. David was acknowledging even though his sin had been physically committed against Bathsheba, against Uriah, he’d you know he’d just done some horrible things, he’s saying ultimately my sin is against you God and I need your forgiveness because of course he was in such a bad place. 

So what we need to understand is that our sin isn’t against other people but on a different level, a spiritual level, it’s against God. And the consequences of that sin are infinite.  You know if I steal from somebody the consequences of that sin are finite, right? I can pay them back, I can go to jail, whatever. There’s a consequence. But when we sin against God we have sinned against an infinite creator and because his love is infinite we have violated the infinite law of love and it requires an infinite payment, an infinite punishment. In James 2:10 and 11 it says, whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point, has become guilty of all of it.  For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So the law is taken as a whole and because God is again perfectly righteous, infinitely righteous, it only takes one sin to infinitely transgress against his law. 

Now to give you another example. You know if I borrowed a million dollars from a bank and the innate characteristic of a bank is to have accurate accounting, right? Shareholders are going to want to know where every penny is spent and that every penny that they’ve invested is actually in the bank. We put our money in the bank cause we trust the bank is going to keep track of our money every penny of it, right? So that’s the nature of a bank. It is to have good accounting principles not to mismanage their clients funds. So if I have a loan for a million dollars and I default on that loan, how much is going to have to be paid back to that bank to keep them accountable to their shareholders? Well, it’s going to be every time isn’t it? Otherwise the bank’s reputation is going to be diminished in the eyes of shareholders if it gives bad loans. And God because of his nature being perfectly righteous, meaning he’s never wrong, he’s never going to default, right? He’s also just, perfectly just, and he’s perfectly loving. The price for sin is an infinite price. And what does that look like? So we need to talk about that price being an infinite price in terms of us as humans because we’re finite beings clearly. 

I don’t want to jump too much into the next lesson which is going to be human design. That will explain this even more. But Jesus said, when he was explaining the final judgment to a crowd of people in Matthew 25, he talked about if you sin, if you don’t do something that you should do for me then you’re going to have eternal punishment. And they said,well you know the question they asked was, well Lord when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked ,or sick, in a prison and didn’t minister to you. And he said, if you don’t do it to the least of these you’ve done it to me. And he said and these will go away into eternal punishment. So the crime for violating God’s love is eternal punishment. And that’s something that leaves us in a horrible dilemma. 

Now, I’m going to say that at this point you’re probably thinking, you know, well it’s God’s law. But okay, these are spiritual laws. We can’t really see them. We can’t really experience them. You know what, God’s got that. He understands our limitations. That’s why he gave us a great way to understand his laws. And that’s in the physical realm. Our universe is controlled by physical laws and these laws control principles and relationships. They order events in the physical realm.They’re precise, they’re predictable. I’m talking about the laws of physics and chemistry, the laws of the universe. That they always apply in every place to every person. They’re universal, right?

And we need to  think about that as an example. And also another thing about our physical laws is they applied even before they’re written down. Okay, so for example apples were falling on people’s heads before Newton discovered the law of gravity. The law of gravity was around even though Newton hadn’t discovered it and codified it right? So what’s amazing is that God’s Word says the same thing about his law. If you look at Romans Chapter 5, it says, therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, talking about Adam and Eve, and then death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. And so he’s talking about the law of Moses, because the law of Moses was God’s given law to Moses for Israel and for the house  of witness. It was to show the people, hey, this is how you have to live, right? But what’s amazing is that, and I just get so excited about this, the physical laws, we have to learn those, right? You have to learn you can’t just walk off of the 10-foot cliff and expect not to fall, right? You may have to learn as a child, don’t touch a stove because it’s hot, because you don’t know it’s hot. But the Bible says that God’s law is written in our heart and so it’s something we know innately. 

 This is one of the most amazing scriptures I think in the Bible when it comes to talking about understanding and knowing the law of sin and death. Romans Chapter 2 says, and let me give you some background. So Paul was talking about the Gentiles. And the Jews, of course, were given the law of Moses. So when he’s speaking here, he’s talking about the Gentiles who didn’t have a given, written law. But Paul says, no it’s not true. He says for when Gentiles who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these although not having the law are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their heart. Their conscience also bearing witness. So we are given a lot that God writes in our heart. That is his law, and our conscience tells us, hmm, I don’t think it’s really right to murder somebody. We know innately it’s not right, and that’s to me, that’s amazing. 

You know you hear people say, and I hear this all the time, it might be people in my office. They come in, they say well, you know, if people go to hell and they say how is that fair? What about the people in some country where the gospel is never preached and they’ve never heard the law? Well, it’s written in their heart. And you know, going back to the physical laws, you know we can say, well, if I don’t know the law gravity applies and I step off the deck, how is that fair? Well, because it’s a law. I’m sorry you don’t know the law but it’s true. If you drink and drive and you get pulled over you’re going to get a DWI. Because, guess what, it’s a law  you have a responsibility to know. And the beautiful and merciful thing is that God puts it in our heart to know the law, that we know the things that we’re doing are wrong. And I think that when we talk about people who say, well you know it’s my sincere belief that there is no hell. Well, God allows you to have that sincere belief. But that’s pretty dangerous. Just like it’s dangerous not to believe in the laws of gravity. If I say my sincere belief is that there is no such thing as gravity and I step off my 25-foot deck, guess what? I’m going down. You also hear people say, well, you know I didn’t know and okay you don’t know that’s fair. But that’s why it’s so important for us as Christians to be spreading the gospel  and to explain to people what they need to know about the law of God and about grace and His mercy. 

And so I’m getting off topic just a little bit but I want to make this point. We can understand God’s law as being just as real as  the physical laws. Because the physical world’s going to pass away someday. But if we really do have an eternal price to pay because we have committed sins and violated the love of an eternal and infinite God, then we should be very concerned about that. It should help us understand that we have a huge dilemma because if that’s true, that sin causes death, then we have indicted ourselves by violating God’s love and by committing one sin we have indicted ourselves. What does that mean? That means we’re hopeless. You know, we’re condemned to an eternal death and if we are, we’re going to learn about this in the next study, about human design, about the part of us that is dead. 

The Bible says in Hebrews that we don’t have any hope. The Bible says we have no hope without God in the world. When we are condemned, we don’t have hope and that’s why Jesus came, right? So we look at this and we say okay if we’ve sinned, we are going to die because the Bible makes it clear. Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death. So what does that mean? What we’re going to talk about in the next study is what part of us this affects. Because we’re talking about how we’re designed, what part of us actually dies, what part of us died in the garden, and so we’ll look forward to seeing you in the next study.

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