“Get right with God” is a popular saying often seen on t-shirts, bumper stickers, church marquees, roadside billboards and the like. Grammy award winner Lucinda Williams even recorded a song with this title. If you ask someone what getting right with God means, it’s highly likely that if they have an answer at all it will center around trying to be a “good person” or living a “good life.” However, any moral answer to this question that fails to address the issue of sin is incomplete.
Paul described sin as the bondage of humanity, not just the bondage of the individual. Sin is more than a moral lapse, more than a failure of the moral action of individual human beings, but describes the problem of a destroyed relationship—in the cosmic realm, sin is not an act, but a condition of separation from God that is a result of man following his own will instead of God’s. Sin, in this case, is a form of idolatry where we become our own God. As the Psalmist confesses to God in Psalm 51, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgement.”
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. –Romans 8:7-8
The Jewish Pharisees viewed sin in terms of moral misbehavior. Fearing a never-ending list of possible sins, Jewish leaders developed new laws containing prohibitions aimed at steering the people away from an immoral life. Jesus shook up the Jewish culture by continually going beyond moral laws and seeking relationships with people the Jewish leaders called sinners; instead of condemning such people, Jesus offered the communion of His healing and forgiveness. As He told the woman caught in the act of adultery in John chapter 8, “…go and from now on sin no more.” (John 8)
They criticized Jesus for his relationships with a tax collector, a prostitute, a Samaritan woman by a well, and a woman caught in the act of adultery just to name a few. The reason for Jesus’ relationship seeking is because sin is centered on broken relationships—with neighbors, friends and family. More importantly, sin at the cosmic level is centered on mankind’s broken relationship with the Creator.
Christ atoned for our personal sins by his death on the cross and glorious resurrection from the dead. More importantly, however, He restored the right relation that God desired to have with us from the beginning. German writer Thomas Weißenborn in his book Das Geheimnis der Hoffnung: Einführung in den christlichen Glauben (The Secret of Hope: Introduction to the Christian Faith) said, “…if guilt and forgiveness are only understood personally, the cosmic aspect of the New Testament is lost.” One of Christ’s gifts, for those who confess their sins and accept Jesus as their Savior, is restoration into God’s eternal family; Christ offers each of us a chance to become a prodigal son or daughter (Luke 15). “By the giving up of His sinless life sacrificially, Christ annuls the power of sin to separate between God and the believer” (Propitiation – excerpt from Vines Dictionary of New Testament Words). Only through Jesus Christ can we get right with God.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 8:38-39
Note: All Bible quotes are ESVUK.
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