Sin is a Monster
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23.
The recent chimpanzee attack on a Connecticut woman, Charla Nash, was somewhat surprising to me. Charla was trying to help her friend and ended up with severe life threatening injuries when she was attacked by the chimp. Hopefully, Charla will be able to recover from this horrific event. I knew that chimpanzees could sometimes be dangerous, but I had no idea of the monstrous strength of these creatures. The relative strength of a chimp to a human is five to seven times greater. The fact that Charla is even still living after being attacked by the angry, out of control chimp is miraculous!
The idea for this devotional came from Pastor James Perkins. After he commented on my devotional, “Do Not Feed the Monkeys,” which was sent the day after the chimp attack, I responded that I had no idea how strong chimpanzees were. Pastor Perkins then wrote this, “that’s the same attitude that many of us have about sin, we don’t realize how dangerous it really is.” How true! Sin is monstrous! Sin is horrific! Sin is a killer! But what do we do with sin? We play with it! We flirt with it! Is it really all that surprising that so many are hurt, devastated by sin?
Jesus indicates how seriously we should consider sin to be when He says in Mark 9:43-47, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched – where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched – where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Now, I do not believe that Jesus intended for us to literally pluck out our eyes, and literally cut off our hands and feet. If the early church had believed that, we would still be having eye plucking services today. But Jesus did intend for us to see a picture of how dangerous sin is to us and how we should take sincere steps, even radical steps, to protect ourselves from sin, and the consequences of sin.
Sin is serious business. Sin is so serious, so horrific, so catastrophic, so monstrous that Jesus Christ had to come down from the glories of Heaven and suffer and die on the cross for our sins.
Please do not play around with sin because, sin is a monster!
(Sin is a terrible horrific monster that wants to destroy you and everything that you care about.)