I wish for a life without sin. I think about what that might be like and how much good I could do and I long for it. With this wish also comes a realization: only Jesus Christ is capable of doing what I wish for.
I know this because He, Jesus, has already done it. He did it for you and for me so that by identifying with Him and his death, burial and resurrection, we might be made alive to God. We are freed from sin’s power over us through the Spirit of God that now resides in our hearts. The barrier between God and man has been removed through Jesus Christ and the doorway between this fallen Earth and God’s perfect heaven now stands open ready to receive all who would come.
As glorious and wonderful as this is I have often wondered why God chooses to “save” us but then leave us in these imperfect bodies of flesh that still seem to crave sin. Why do I, a born again, blood-washed believer still want to do things that God hates? Why do any of us?
The answer, I believe, lies in the heart of God and His desire for the redemption of all mankind. Consider the following verse:
Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:11) NASB
In Ezekiel 33:11 God is pleading with his chosen people to turn from their wicked ways and back to God. Imagine God the Father, God the Creator of All and the one to whom all power and all Glory belongs on His hands and knees crying and weeping for those He loves, His precious creation, to turn from their sin and live. God is laying his heart bare but notice how He is delivering His message. See the first three words of the verse? “Say to them”.
Who is God talking to? Ezekiel the man. God entrusts his message of love through His chosen speaker Ezekiel who must then go and tell his countrymen what God has said. Quite simply and much to my amazement God chooses to use us as His messengers in exactly the same way!
He does this both for our benefit and so that we might be living examples of His redemption to those around us. The unsaved, the world around us, can see that we are still human, just like them. They can identify with us, with our weaknesses and the tough situations that we face but if we are living the way that we should live then they should also be able to see God in us.
We are the same and yet we are different. We have been changed in such a way that the world has no answer for. They might try to explain it away because they, at times, do not want to face the fact that God is real and powerful but in their hearts they will know the truth of God’s work and be without excuse before Him. They can look at us and see a visible, walking and talking testimony to God’s grace and His desire to save the whole world.
The time for me to live without sin will come. One day God will call me home and give me a new body that does not know sin or imperfection. I look forward to that day with great anticipation. But for now I need to be here so that God can use me as His messenger. I need to be weak so that His strength can show perfectly through me and I need to live in such a way that the Gospel is played out in my life every single day.