“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?… Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?”
Sometimes I act like Habakkuk. I forget that it is unwise to admonish God for allowing injustice and wrongdoing to persist - when I am the perpetrator of injustice and wrongdoing myself. It’s called a double standard.
It happens when I don’t see my sin as clearly as I see yours. I tolerate your sin as long as it looks like mine, and doesn’t go outside of my “acceptable sin circle” … The problem with that is that there is no such thing as an “acceptable sin circle”.
The wages of all sin is death. But instead of confession and repentance, we adjust the definition of sin, and call for tolerance and acceptance. But God has never tolerated nor accepted sin …
God sees sin as the mechanism that murdered His precious Son and His reaction to any sin is exactly what you would expect it to be… It is impossible to overstate His loathing and intolerance of sinfulness.
An honest reading of scripture clearly defines sin, and we must see it as God does. We cannot lower the bar …Yet at the same time, we must acknowledge that none of us can clear it.
God hates sin – yet loves sinners.
So, we must love the lost without supporting or tolerating their sin.
And we must hate sin - without despising those who are controlled by it. Missing the mark in either direction causes us to sin ourselves.
The litmus test is simple: If you confess and in faith battle sin in your life, you are on the side of Christ … If you redefine and embrace sin, you are not.
All men are in one of these two camps. There are no degrees of righteousness… you are either holy, or vile. And we all start out as vile. Only a blood-stained faith, with a repentant heart, can move me to holiness.
Scripture is clear that I am saved by grace, through faith alone, but the question remains …do I hate all sin like God does? … or do I tolerate my sin …and only hate yours?
“It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from empty professors” ― A.W. Pink
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