God’s View of Sin

2 Chron 21:12-15 Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father… but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel and have enticed Judah and the inhabitants into whoredom… behold, the Lord will bring a great plague on your people…
Psalm 130:3-4 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

What if we could see our sin as God does? How would that change the way we look at them? In 2 Chronicles 21 God looked at what Jehoram, the king Judah was doing, and he called it whoredom. Spiritual adultery… well, actually worse than adultery, he considered it harlotry and whoredom. The king led the people to go astray, to worship man made gods instead of the Lord God. In God’s eyes that was like leading the people to leave the Lord as God and shack up with a harlot on the street! That’s how God saw what they were doing.

Something I learned from a friend that has always stuck with me. He consistently prays that sin would be repulsive and distasteful and that God would give him a hatred toward sin.

As I have meditated on what God said of Jehoram and the people of Judah here, the Lord has reminded me that there are still certain sins in my heart that do not repulse me. They are sins that I entertain in times when I am discouraged, or times I am in conflict with my wife, etc. As I have been studying and teaching on idolatry, one of the definitions of an idol is something that I go to for comfort instead of God. I don’t think I would have ever defined it that way, I see that I do that. Which means those sins have become an idol to me. I am not repulsed by them. I have not been praying for a hatred toward them, and I harbor them. In God’s eyes those hidden secret sins are whoredom!

I have a list of verses I often read / pray through in the mornings. I need to add my friend’s prayer to this list. That these sins would be repulsive and God would help me to see them like He does… idolatry, whoredom, harlotry…

Eph 4:21-24 Throw off the old sinful nature and your former way of life which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature created to be like God.”
Rom 13:14 Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill it’s lust’s
Eph 3:17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith
Ps 119:36 Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain!
Ps 119:37 Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things

What are those sins in your life that you are harboring? Ask God to make them repulsive to you. Ask God to give you a hatred toward anything that does not honor Him in your life. Start off each day with the choice to die to self and put off the old man and put on the new man. This is my prayer for you today.