The Cross of Christ,
Chapter 1: Crucify Him! (part 5)
(5) The final point is that the unconscious sin behind every sin is crucifying Christ. This needs clarification. We usually look at l John 3:4, to define sin: “Sin is the transgression of the law.” The problem is that we look at the text at its face value and make the same mistake as the Jews. We look at the law in terms of rules and when we break a rule we call that sin. We need to go further and look at the spirit of this text because Jesus did not define the law in terms of rules. He defined the law in terms of an attitude, a relationship; the spirit of the law. He said, “Love for God and love for man.” That is the law. The fundamental principle of the law of God is love.
1 John 4:8,16 tells us that God is love. Therefore, sin is transgression against God, who is love. Therefore, sin is putting Christ on the cross. In Romans 8:7, Paul tells us that the carnal mind, the mind controlled by our sinful nature, the flesh, is enmity with God, therefore it is not subject to the law of God which is love. Now what do you do with your enemy? If you hate somebody without a cause, what do you do with him? You murder him.
Then how does every sin become an act of crucifying Christ? How many sins do you have to commit for the law to condemn you? Just one. It doesn’t have to be a big sin. Therefore, in order for Christ to save us, He had to bear every single sin that you and I have committed and will commit. Without the cross, even the smallest sin would condemn us. In other words, under the law, the law condemns the sinner. But we Christians are not living under the law. We are living under grace. It is grace that took the punishment of our sins. Do not look at a small sin and say, “What’s wrong with that?” If you allow that sin to develop to its full fruition it will end up crucifying Christ. At the heart of every sin is self. When is self satisfied? It is not satisfied until it gets to the top, to the very place of God.
Before I entered the ministry I was an architect. I was working for an Italian architect, on the sixth floor of Mansion Building there in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. At the entrance of the building was a leper. He was always there in rags, begging day in and day out. His family brought him there in the morning and took him back home in the evening. His job was begging.
When you are working as an intern you don’t get too high a salary. I was getting approximately two hundred dollars a month when I began, which in those days was not too bad. I said to myself, “When I get rich, I’m going to buy him a suit.” Of course, my idea of “rich” was getting five hundred dollars a month. Three months later, my salary jumped to five hundred. Did I buy him the suit? No. Not that I broke my promise. My definition of richness changed to nine hundred dollars a month. A few months later it jumped to a thousand a month. Did I buy him the suit? No. Two months later it jumped to two thousand dollars a month. Now I was really rich, but did I buy him a suit? No. Not that I broke my promise but my definition of richness had changed even then. You ask Rockefeller, “Are you satisfied with all the money you have or are you still trying to make some more?”
Man is never satisfied. He always wants to climb up and up, until he reaches the top. If God had put no restrictions to sin, man would want to take the place where God is, because that is the highest point. To reach that point you have to get rid of everyone who is in your way. So the smallest sin allowed to develop to its ultimate fruition will end up crucifying Christ. That is what God revealed on the cross. It is true that every time you fall you don’t become unjustified, but remember that sin was implicated on the cross of Christ. Therefore, we must hate sin not for what it does to us but for what it did to our Savior.
If I told you sin is breaking a rule, that’s not so bad. But if I told you what the Old Testament told the Jews in the sanctuary service, that sin is putting a knife into Christ the Lamb, sin becomes murdering God. In the Old Testament, every time a sinner brought the lamb to the sanctuary, the priest gave him a knife and the sinner had to kill that lamb! Every time that you and I sin it is implicated in the cross of Christ. Therefore, we must hate sin for what it did to our Savior and what it does to Him.
Sin is saying “Crucify Him!” and that is what was revealed on the cross. That is why I hate sin; not because I become unjustified or am pulled out of Christ. The Bible does not teach that. But I hate sin because it crucified my Savior. And if I sin deliberately then I am doing what Hebrews 6:4-6 says: “If you Christians give up Christ and go back to the world, you are doing two things. You are now deliberately crucifying Christ afresh and you are putting Him to open shame
willfully.” May God forbid that we will ever do that.
It is my prayer that you will know the truth about the cross in terms of Satan and sin, and that it will do two things for you:
It will cause you to realize that Satan is a murderer from the beginning. Not only did he murder Christ on the cross but he wants you to join him in the lake of fire to die with him. Misery loves company. Don’t you ever believe his lies when he offers you the trinkets of this world.
Do not treat sin lightly any more. Don’t say, “This is such a small sin.” There is no such thing as small sins and big sins. That is Roman Catholic theology which teaches venial and mortal sins. Every sin, the “smallest” sin, given the chance, will end up crucifying Christ.
May God bless us that this truth of the cross will give us a new view about sin, and about Satan, and that we will be loyal to Jesus Christ who loved us and endured the cross for us (Heb 12:2,3).
Studies
Pr Jack Sequeira
