The Universality of Sin
Please forgive me for starting on a
negative note, but there is a very good reason to do
so. As a jeweler first lays out the black velvet backdrop
in order to showcase the brilliance of his finest diamonds,
so telling the bad news lays the foundation necessary
to fully appreciate the greatest good news in the world.
Someday you will be the defendant.
You can be sure of it because it is a certainty.
You say you have lived a good and honorable life compared
to other men and women. You do not lie, cheat or steal,
much less break the law.
But I am thinking of God’s law
rather than the law of the land, and we would do well
to evaluate our lives and conduct in the light of the
actual standard by which they inevitably will be judged.
A man once protested to the evangelist Billy Graham
that he had no need of salvation, because he was not
a “sinner.” Dr. Graham then asked him if
he knew what the first and greatest commandment was.
The man correctly replied, “You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind.”2
Graham then asked him, in view of the greatest commandment,
what then must the greatest be the greatest sin. The
man began to feel convicted as a sinner, suddenly realizing
that merely being an upstanding citizen doesn’t
mean conformity to God’s higher standard.
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