Nothing Changes

Christians as a group seem to be at a loss when they are confronted by the sins of mankind. I don't know why we should think lost people would act any "better" in this day and age than in times past. Without Jesus Christ taking up residence in a person's life, nothing changes from generation to generation.

Granted there was a time in my childhood when there did not seem to be as much violence or perversion but that doesn't necessarily means it wasn't there. We just didn't hear about it as much or as often. The sins of man were not plastered all over the newspapers and the TV. There was no "Inside Edition" or "TMZ" to broadcast - in real time and living color - the downfall of Hollywood celebrities; no "live, breaking news" to tell us of the abuse of a child; no internet to entice us with instant anything.

But the Bible confirms for us that people never really change. Paul, in his writings in the first century after Jesus' resurrection, speaks of homosexuals, drunkards, murders, adulterers, prostitutes and other sins (like the acceptable church sin of gossip). You can go all the way back to Abraham, more than 2000 years before Jesus. The story of his nephew Lot is full of the perversions of men - and women. So much so that God sent His angels to save Lot before He destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Or even further back than that to the days of Noah. Or even further back than that to the Garden of Eden when man and woman decided to do what THEY wanted instead of what God said.

The Bible is full of stories of greed and lying and lust and murder and adultery and idolatry. Real people, real sins. But contrary to the signs by one church that shout "God hates you", God's love for us is so great, so perfect, so intense that He made a way for us to break loose from the chains of sin. He made a way for us to be cleansed from ALL unrighteousness. That way is Jesus Christ. That way is the way of suffering. That way is the way of the cross.

We should be offended by the sins of mankind but that should remind us that we were once lost as well. It should fill us with a desire to tell the Good News as often as we can, to shout GOD LOVES YOU, not God hates you. Even if we don't carry a sign to a rally our attitudes and actions toward the lost will shout one or the other - love or hate.