We’ve got a problem here, a heavy one — we’re sinners from birth. We are all filthy sinners, and yes, that goes for Mother Teresa too. And this isn’t a problem you take lightly.
Why?
Because sin is heavy.
It’s infinitely heavy. The weight of sin is unthinkable, incomprehensible.
But when we are unregenerate (not saved) we don’t see how heavy our sin is. Heck, we don’t “feel” a thing. In his article “Freedom from Sin,” on gty.org, John MacArthur shares a short story of a young man and a preacher that hits the nail on the head.
It is said that a flippant young man remarked to a preacher in mocking fashion, “You say that unsaved people carry a great weight of sin. Frankly, I feel nothing. How heavy is sin? Ten pounds? Fifty pounds? Eighty pounds? A hundred pounds?”
The preacher thought for a moment, then replied, “If you laid a four hundred pound weight on a corpse, would it feel the load?”
The young man was quick to say, “Of course not; it’s dead.” Driving home his point the preacher said, “The person who doesn’t know Christ is equally dead. And though the load is great, he feels none of it.”
This little story speaks volumes to the unregenerate person. When we’re not saved, we don’t feel our sin — we don’t feel truly how much weight our sin carries on us. Why? Because we’re spiritually dead — we’re as good as a corpse.
You don’t feel your sin because you’re spiritually dead. The corpse — the dead man — doesn’t feel the four hundred pound weight because he is dead. The literal weight is there, all four hundred pounds. But the weight that the dead man is experiencing, well, is none.
And that goes for the spiritually dead men as well. You will go about your life having all of sin on your shoulders, with infinite weight, but you will not feel it, because you’re spiritually dead.
The weight is there, it is influencing your decisions, it is influencing your relationships, and most of all, it’s influencing your eternity — but you can’t feel it; you’re dead.
Sin is heavy, guys, and it’s damning. You don’t feel it, but it’s crushing you. It crushed Jesus on the cross. The weight of your sin affects you whether you know it or not. It’s time to take it seriously.
What Can Be Done About Your Dead-ness!?
I know the first part of this post was not the happiest thing you’ve ever read, but I am a strong believer in talking about how much sin really destructs us. So take it serious.
That’s the bad news — the bad news that we are so sinful to the point we can’t even feel how heavy our sin truly is. Because we’re spiritually dead. We are dead in our trespasses (see Ephesians 2:1).
But we can change. We can become spiritually alive. We (God, actually) can “reverse the curse,” but how?
By Jesus’s finished work on the cross. Jesus makes us spiritually alive (see Ephesians 2:5).
Jesus also bore our sins on our behalf.
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24)
He bore our sins; He bore the weight; He bore our punishment. Why did He do that?
- Because He loves us. He loved us so much that He died for us — God died for us. Even though we were His enemies (yes, guys, ENEMIES), He still went to the cross (Romans 5:8).
- So that we might DIE to our sins and live for righteousness. In order to be a Christian, in order to truly shed our sin, we must die to our sin — no exceptions. If you do not die to your sin, you cannot be saved. We die to our sin when we place our faith in Christ’s finished work. That’ll change us. That’ll make us die to our sin. And live for Him.
What am I saying?
We have sin on us that is infinitely heavy, and we don’t feel it, because we’re dead. But we don’t have to have that heaviness on us, because Jesus took it 2,000 some-odd years ago. We don’t have to walk around with our sin; we should walk around in Jesus’ righteousness.
Shed off your sin.
Put on Christ.
Live for Him. Today is the day of salvation!
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