Why did God Allow Sin?
RO26-01

Without the Bible, people know that something is radically wrong with human nature, but they can't explain what it is. We see the evils of various kinds that are in people. We see the immoralities that characterize people. We see the cruelties that characterize people. We see the wars between nations. We see the lack of peace, both personal and on a national level. We see the helplessness of people in the face of various personal problems. They simply cannot solve their personal problems. Every solution they seek on the advice of the best of human thinking only results in greater disaster. People yearn for a reality which is beyond this life. And because they yearn for something real beyond the life that they know, they are drifting off today into the world of Satan, and into the realities of Satan. And, indeed, those are realities.

So, they're off into drugs' they're off into the occult; they're off into astrology; and, they're open to all kinds of things (satanic substitutes) for seeking reality.

The Glory of God

We have learned from Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is no way that man can achieve God' absolute righteousness. He floats on a ship of relative righteousness, which means that you're not as bad as other people in some respects, but in other respects, you're worse than other people. But God says, "You have to be absolutely perfect or you cannot go to heaven.

This is the human dilemma. No one can go to heaven, therefore, who is not absolutely perfect, and who does not have AR (absolute righteousness). No one, however, can ever be perfectly righteous. No human being can ever be absolutely perfect by God's standards. No human being can actually ever achieve God's righteousness. What are you going to do? You can bring all of your good works, but every good work that you produce (all of your human good) comes from your old sin nature, so, its evil. It doesn't mean a thing. Yet people are thinking that somehow they're going to be able to grasp the absolute righteousness that they need. That's the human dilemma.

Everyone is in this boat. Everyone's a sinner. Everyone is a sinner because he is born with an old sin nature. He has imputed Adam's sin to him. When Adam sinned in Eden, you sinned with him, in God's eyes. You inherit a sin nature from your parents, and then when you get on your own, you begin committing sins, individual acts of evil, through your life. So, you're shot down on all accounts. This is a hopeless situation. And everyone who attains the age of accountability, which varies with people, now becomes accountable, and now becomes aware of God. Once you become God-conscious, you are now accountable. And unless this problem is solved, whether you're a child or an adult, you will spend eternity in the lake of fire. Nothing will keep you out of it.

How to solve this horrible problem is the greatest issue of life, but modern man is completely blind to the answers. Modern man cannot have the answers. The reason for this is because we may envision this circle with these two hemispheres. Man is in a lower hemisphere, which is the earthly things (the material world). God is in an upper hemisphere of spiritual things. Anytime that man comes up here, and tries to find out something about what is out there beyond our sphere, he comes up against a blank wall. No matter where he hits, he cannot come with any information. He just cannot come through, so he makes up all kinds of foolishness. That's why he tries to break through, and he does break through, as we said, with drugs. He breaks through with illicit sex. He breaks through with astrology. He breaks through with Satan worship. He breaks through with emotionalism. He breaks through with all kinds of things that he thinks are substitutes leading them to God, and all of them lead him to Satan. All of them lead him to the lake of fire. He cannot break through.

The only way he's going to get information from this side is when God breaks through, and He has. So, it is only as an omnipotent God has given us information that we know how to solve this problem. The information that He has given us is, in part, the written Bible, and one of the most dramatic parts of that information is this book of Romans.

Why Did God Allow Sin?

This is very clear in Scripture. But why was sin allowed into this creation? It was perfect. You remember what He said. When He finished creation, God looked upon it and he said, "It is a very good." And when God says "very good," He means "very good." He means "+R" absolute righteousness good in all respects. Yet, he allowed sin, with all of its tragic results, to enter the sphere.

Well, that does bring to question of the reasons for evil – the question as to whether God could have really created man and angels so as not to sin. Could he have done that? He created and preplanned everything that was to come. Could He have made man, and could He have made angels, so that they would not sinned, so the perfect creation would have remained perfect?

Well, some people say, "No," because they say, "if God had created angels and men under a condition where they could not sin, then men would simply have been robots." They would have been computers walking around. They would not have been able to make choices. They would not have had personality, which includes will to choose. I am a person because I can decide to do this or decide not to do this. If I did not have a will, I could not be a person. Man has will. He can choose. That's why he's a person. That's part of the image of God in them. Some people say, "No, if man was in a position, and if angels were in a position where they could not sin, then they could not be personalities.

Eternity

Notice in Revelation 5:11-12: "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands (angels here), saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing." These are angels praising God forever in verse 11-12. Notice verse 13: "And every creature that is in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying, "Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sits upon the throne, and onto the Lamb forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, 'Amen.' And the 24 elders fell down and worshiped Him that lives forever and ever."

Here we have a condition out in eternity, and we see the creatures of heaven (the angelic creatures) worshiping God and praising Him forever. We see the 24 elders. They are worshiping and praising God forever. So, we have this evidence that human beings in verses 13-14 are praising God, and yet they are human beings with freedom of choice.

So, God could have created angels, and He could have created human beings who had freedom of choice, and yet at the same time, put them in such a condition that they could never have chosen evil. He did not do that.

The Relationship of God to Sin

Here's the problem. Let's summarize it. First of all, the problem could be that God wants to prevent evil, but He can't. We know this is not true because God is omnipotent. He's all powerful. Secondly, it may be that God can prevent evil, but He does not want to do so. That cannot be because God is love. Third, God cannot prevent evil, nor does He want to do so. Then God would neither be omnipotent nor love. So, number three is wrong. Number one is wrong; number two is wrong; and, number three is wrong.

Number four says that God can prevent evil, and He does want to do so. That's the one. That one is correct. Yet the question is: why sin then? God can prevent evil, and He wants to do so. And yet, sin entered his creation.

Well, this much we can say: that God in His sovereignty (God in His absolute control) incorporated sin in the outworking of His plan without being responsible for the commission of sin. All that God created, Genesis 1:31 tells us, was perfect when He finished. Yet, God's plan included the provision of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross even before the creation was completed. So, way back there, before God ever created man, it had already been determined that Jesus Christ was going to die for the sins of the world. For the man that God was going to create, who was going to choose sin, God had provided a way.

Revelation 13:8 says, "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

Acts 2:22 spells this out again. It is a very specific fact that Jesus Christ was destined to die before creation was brought about. Acts 2:22 says, "You men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know; Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" (delivered by God's determined decision and God's foreknowledge, consequently), you have taken, and by wicked hands, have crucified and slain." On the one hand, God made a decision to send His Son to the cross. On the other hand, you in your freedom, with wicked hands, chose to kill Him.

So, on the one side, you have divine sovereignty. On the other side, the Bible says that you have human free will.

Now, what you want to know now is how you can have both be true, don't you? How can God be absolute king; sovereign; and, determining all these things, and how man can have free will as the Bible very clearly (as in this passage) again and again declares that both of these things are true. This is the case.

So, God knew that sin would enter His perfect creation. This was no surprise to His plan. Yet, God is not the cause of sin in either people or angels (James 1:13). God in His omniscience, knew that the plan He chose incorporated sin. Remember that. God chose a plan that incorporated sin. He knew that it was the best possible one.

God could have had various plans for creation. And the Triune God stood and He looked at all these plans, and He said, "We'll select this one," and this one included sin. This one included the death of Christ on the cross. God in His omniscience, because of who and what He is, knew that, of all these plans, this was the star plan right here. That was the best possible of all plans. So, God chose that. The fact that sin was there was no surprise to Him. He knew it. It was part of the plan. Even though God chose this plan, man still has real responsibility.

That's what our study in Romans is trying to establish. In the first part of the book of Romans, we went into details to establish that everybody's in that category of being a sinner and morally responsible. For example, in Romans 10:11-13, which we shall get to later, Paul says, "For the Scripture says, 'Whosoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the gentile, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." What does that Scripture say? That Scripture says that everybody can be saved. Whether you are Jew or gentile, you're saved the same way. It says, "That if whosoever calls upon the Lord (meaning whosoever trusts in Christ as Savior) will be saved."

So, whose responsibility is it? God says, "I pick this plan. It's the best of all plans for the universe, but it includes sin, and it includes the death of Christ, but it also includes your personal human responsibility for whether you go to heaven or hell. You are held morally responsible.

We have the same principle in the Old Testament. Let me read 1 Samuel 13:13: "And Samuel said to Saul, 'You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom upon Israel forever." This was King Saul, Israel's first King. God said, "Saul, God was ready to establish your dynasty over the Jewish people forever." Because of Saul's sin, it was taken away from him, and was given to the dynasty of David. And Christ was born in that line. And that's the kingdom that will rule forever. But here, God says, "You were a very foolish man, Saul. I was ready to establish your dynasty over the kingdoms of the earth forever."

Notice 1 Samuel 15:11: "'It repents me that I have set up Saul to be king. For he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.' And it grieved Samuel, and he cried unto the Lord all night." So, here you have God in His sovereignty that says, "Saul, I'm going to make your family the ruling family over the nations of the earth (your descendants). You will be the kingly ruling lying."

On the other hand, here was Saul's freedom of choice, and Saul went negative to God. So, finally God, "I'm going to withdraw myself from you, Saul. I'm going to replace you with another family, the family of David." So, God, in His sovereignty, said, "I'm ready to make you the ruling nation – your line (your family) the ruling kingdom, the ruling line of all the kings of the earth. On the other hand, Saul made the choice that undermined that. Did God know both? Of course. God, in His sovereignty, was ready to do one thing. Saul, in his free will, chose another, and suffered the consequences.

The thing that we don't know is why God incorporated sin into His plan. But we do know that, because He is absolute righteousness, what He did was compatible with His character. God did the best of all things when He did this. Sin is not a force in the universe apart from God. There are some heathen mystical Eastern religions that say that there's a great God of evil, and there's a great God of good, and that these two gods are equal – fighting one another. That's what the ideas of Hinduism and the oriental religions teach: a god of good; and, a God of evil. The Bible makes it very clear that such dualism does not exist. That is pure human viewpoint baloney bunk, and it doesn't mean a thing. Don't ever fall for that notion that there's a power of good and a power of evil. The only power of evil is Satan, and he's under the control domination of God. There are not two equal ones.

The Bible makes it clear that God is sovereign, so He is supreme. There is no other source of things. Later, you may read on your own Job 42:2; Psalm 135:6; Isaiah 46:9-10; Ephesians 1:11; 2 Kings 19:25; and, Proverbs 16:33. All of these verses establish for us very clearly that there is no chance in the universe. God has determined. God has planned. And that's what is taking place.

Now, getting back to your question: why sin? Why did God permit this in the universe? Well, the Bible does not give us a specific answer. The Bible doesn't tell us why God permitted sin, when he could have created people who could have made choices and yet not made a choice for sin.

Possible Answers

1. God can Display His Grace

   Because sin does exist, God can display His grace in saving rebellious sinners. For this reason, Paul writes in Ephesians 2:7 that: "In the ages to come, He (that is, God) might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." We know that God is grace. But how can He demonstrate that grace? Grace means giving a person something he doesn't deserve. How can He do that unless he has a condition to do that? How do we know you're a gracious person? Unless we do something, and you treat us in a way that we don't deserve to be treated, we don't know that you're a gracious person. Your grace is demonstrated only when you have an opportunity to demonstrate it on somebody who should get the back of your hand instead of your giving him a hand of blessing. That's what God has done. At least we can say this about sin: that sin did give God a chance to demonstrate to all His creatures that He is a God of grace, because we as rebels don't deserve the fact that He has made absolute righteousness available to us. He's made it possible for us to be as good as Jesus Christ, and thus to go to heaven.

2. God can Show His Infinite Love

   Because of sin, God can show His infinite love toward those who rejected Him. In Ephesians 2:4-5, we read, "But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins (spiritually dead), has made us spiritually alive, together with Christ. By grace you are saved." Now, the love of God could never be demonstrated until He had an object upon which to show it. And we are the objects of that love. We, who are sinners, have rejected Him and turned away from Him. You remember how previously in Romans we read all those terrible things that the Old Testament said about people in their natural state. They don't seek God. They don't care. They are murderers, and whole thing. Yet God says, "Now people like that – I can really show them that I'm a God of love, because those are the people I love."

   You and I are nice toward people who are nice to us. It's not too hard to be with pleasant people, and to be kind toward them. But when you have to be with finks and ugly people, and people who turn you off, then it is a little harder to act in love. God said, "I am the kind of love such that, those who are unloving, those are the people I love." The people who are the unlovables are the people that I love.

   So, maybe God permitted sin to be able to demonstrate His love.

3. God can Demonstrate His Holiness

   A third reason is perhaps, because of sin, God can demonstrate His Holiness by His judgment upon evil. God is going to demonstrate His Holiness. When the Bible says, "God is holy," it means that God never does anything that's wrong, and that God always punishes what is wrong. He never does what is wrong. That's absolute righteousness. And he always punishes what is wrong. That's perfect justice. He doesn't just wink and ignore it.

   Now, God can demonstrate His Holiness because sin exists. Adam and Eve never could have known the holiness of God. Had they never done a thing wrong, they would never have seen God in absolute righteousness and in perfect justice performing. So, maybe that's another reason for sin.

4. God can Display His Sovereignty

   God uses evil to execute His plan to display His sovereignty. The Bible many times tells us that God actually uses evil to display His sovereignty. We have many Scriptures that would be well worth your pursuing. We'll just look at one here in 2 Samuel, demonstrating that God uses evil to execute His plan. 2 Samuel 12:11: "Thus says the Lord, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. I will take your wives before your eyes and give them unto your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun."

   This is one of the judgments that God pronounced upon David because of his sin of adultery with Bathsheba. Notice David's evil of adultery. God pronounces judgment. Here is one of the judgments of several that came upon David because of this sin.

   Now, turn over to 2 Samuel 16:21: "And Ahithophel said unto Absalom, 'Go in unto your father's concubines, whom he has left to keep the house. And all Israel shall hear that you are abhorred of your father. Then shall the hands of all that are with you be strong.' So, they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house, and Absalom went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel." Here God is using evil (Absalom's evil and David's evil) to bring about the downfall of Absalom. The result of this was that Israel was chastened; David was chastened; and, as you know, Absalom died. Absalom was killed. God took their evil, and He used it to perform that which was good.

   We had this demonstrated in Revelation 17:17. Let's read that one for a moment: "For God had put in their hearts to fulfill His will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast until the Words of God shall be fulfilled." Here is an amazing thing, that in the end times, the rulers of the world (the nations' executives) will give their kingdoms (will give their countries) to the antichrist. God has put it in their hearts to do this evil thing to fulfill His will: "For God has put in their hearts to fulfill His will, and to agree, and give their kingdoms unto the beast." Here, God is using the evil of the antichrist and of these nations to fulfill His plans.

   In Proverbs 16:4, we read, "The Lord has made all things for Himself; yea, even the wicked, for the day of evil." So, here we have a clear declaration that even evil is included in the plan of God.

   In Acts 2:23, we read, "Him being delivered by the determinate council and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands, have crucified and slain." So, out of the very death of Christ, and evil deed, came the provision for our eternal life.

   So, one of the things that God uses evil for us is to bring about His plan.

5. Mankind Learns Right and Wrong by Experience

   A fifth reason, perhaps, for allowing sin is that mankind learns by experience the contrast between righteousness and evil, which God knows. Mankind didn't need to know that. But he has learned it by experience.

6. Sin sets forth the Glory of God

   Maybe a sixth reason is that sin ultimately sets forth the glory of God in contrast to man's evil. In Ephesians 1:12, we read, "That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ." Throughout eternity, everybody who has believed in Christ as Savior is going to be a trophy of God's grace. It is going to be to His glory to see sinners such as ourselves actually walking the streets of heaven.

So, here's what we're up against. On the one hand, we have divine sovereignty. The Bible is very clear. God has preplanned and preordained. He chose the plan. It included sin. On the other hand, we have human freedom to choose. Can human freedom frustrate God's choice (God's sovereignty)? Can human freedom come up with something that surprises God? Can human freedom go in a direction that God does not want him to go? The link is the thing that bothers us. There is some kind of a link here between these two. There's a chain linking the two together, and we don't know what the link is. This is the point that we must understand. We must realize that both are declared to be true. God is sovereign, and man is free, and man is responsible for that freedom.

These appear to be contradictory to us. This is what we call an antimony. An antimony is two things that are both true, that appear to be contradictory. Both these things are true. God does the selecting; and, man is free to choose. But how these two are related, we don't know. But we don't throw one out, and go to the other, in order to explain why sin exists in the universe. We simply stop at that point and say, "Here's a problem with our thinking. It's a problem with our minds. It's not a problem with God's mind. It's a problem of our limitations as to why this looks like an antimony, and why this looks like a contradiction, and yet it is not a contradiction. They both are true.

We have this demonstrated in John 6:37, John 6:44, and John 6:65. I think this will show you how the two fit together in the fact that both exist. John 6:37 says, "All that the Father gives me shall come to Me, and him that comes to Me I will not cast out." This is the sovereignty of God: "I pick you. I choose you for eternal life."

Notice John 6:44: "No man can come to Me except the Father who has sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day." Isn't that interesting? God says, "Are you a Christian? You're going to heaven? Do you know why? It's because I reached down and tapped you on the shoulder and said, 'Hey, I want you.'" It wasn't because you said, "God, I want you." You remember that we've learned earlier in Romans 3 that: "There's nobody who seeks after God. No, not one." That is amazing. The sovereignty of God chose me to go to heaven.

Notice John 6:65" "And He said, 'Therefore I said unto you that no man can come unto Me except it were given unto him of My Father.'" Nobody comes to God unless God says, "Hey, come here, I want you in my heaven."

However, you may say, "Oh well then it's not my fault if I'm in hell. Then I can blame God for that. Well, let's look at the other side of the antimony. We've read one side. But we'll notice also that there is this other side. Compare that with John 6:29: "Jesus answered and said unto them, 'This is the work of God: that you believe on Him whom He had sent.'" How are you going to believe? Well, you are going to decide to believe. You are going to decide to accept Him. So, there you've got human responsibility again – free will. Yet, He has just said, "Nobody's going to come unless I call you."

Let's look at John 6:35: "And Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. He that comes to Me shall never hunger. And He that believes on Me shall never thirst." Now, that verse is saying, "He that believes." That means "He who relies – he who accepts Me." That's the person who will never thirst spiritually. Well, how do I do that? It is by an act of my human will.

Notice verse 40: "And this is the will of him that sent Me: that everyone who sees the Son and believes on Him may have everlasting life. And I'll raise him up (physically) at the last day." The resurrection is promised to those who, by an act of their will, accept Christ as Savior.

One more: John 6:47: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believes on Me has everlasting life. You have to decide to believe. You have to decide not to believe. You can add Luke 22:22 to that.

So, here you have both sides in Scripture. What are the connecting links? The Bible never tells us. So, while we may wonder, and while we'd like to know, we know all these individual factors are true, and that God does what is right and what is compatible with His perfect character. In Deuteronomy 29:29 we find perhaps a little clue as to why we can't put these two factors together. Both of them are true, but we can't explain them.

Maybe this is it. When Moses spoke to the people of Israel, Moses knew that God's revelation was going to fill with an antimony like this, with things that were both true but which appear to be contradictory. So, Moses was led by the Spirit of God in Deuteronomy 29:29 to say, "The secret things belong unto the Lord, our God. This link (this chain) is a secret thing. But those things which are revealed (divine sovereignty and human freedom responsibility) belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of the law."

So, the secret things right here belong to God. But what we know belongs to us, and that we act upon, The relationship of these two things are incomprehensible to us, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that they are irrational. They are not irrational. They're just incomprehensible. Someday, God's holiness is going to be very clearly vindicated in this plan. Philippians 2:9-11 tells us this. God is going to be shown that He did pick the best plan. The important fact is to recognize that all of us are sinning, and that we go from there.

So, here's our impossible problem. God has made a provision. That is the provision for what we need. It is a provision for something that we cannot help ourselves in. Yet, we do have the freedom to either choose that provision or to turn our backs upon it. Whatever the reasons are for God permitting sin into His creation is really beside the point. The thing is to recognize that you're in this boat. You do not have the absolute perfect character of Christ, which you must have to go to heaven. But God in His sovereignty says, "I have selected you for eternal life. You, in the freedom of your will, are now to choose the basis upon that provision, which is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ – accepting His sacrifice in your place.

So, the result, as we have learned in the book of Romans, and as we shall now learn in greater detail, is that being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Receiving Him as Savior is the answer to getting out of this boat. And once you have received Him as Savior, because you have listened to the information that God has poured through to our side through the Scripture, you will then find yourself in that very happy circumstance that we began with in this session of being in eternal fellowship with God. All of this was provided by God, and it is simply "believe" and "faith." Let's read Romans 3:21 again: "But now an absolute righteousness of God, apart from any law (that is, from any human doing) has been revealed, being witness previously by the Law and the prophets, even an absolute righteousness of God which is by faith in Jesus Christ unto all that believe." It is by faith in Jesus Christ unto all that believe. It is an absolute righteousness of God apart from human doing.

Aha. So, how do I go to heaven? I keep the Ten Commandments. No. The Bible never says. You said that. How do I go to heaven? By keeping the Golden Rule. No, the Bible never says that. If you keep the Golden Rule, you'll go to hell. Hell is full of people at this moment of people who kept the Ten Commandments. That will never get you to heaven. I'll have water baptism that'll wash my sins away. Hell is full of people who have water baptism. I'll become a member of a nice church. Hell is full of those too. Hell is full of immoral people; moral people; and, religious people. Mostly moral and religious people go to hell. Those are the hardest kind to reach because they've come up with their own solutions, and they don't understand that it is at the cross of Christ that God has done it all. When He put His Son on that cross, He did it all.

Do you know why He did it all? To keep our contaminating, sin-drenched hands off of the business of salvation. If you could do one little speck of anything to go to heaven, then your salvation would never be certain. Then it would only be good enough as long as what you did stood. God says, "I want to wipe out who you are. I don't care what you are. I'm wiping it out. The only thing I'm interested in is My Son, Jesus Christ. He's absolutely perfect. You receive Him as your Savior, and I'll give you His absolute righteousness. That's the glory of the gospel. You take Him as your Savior, and you trust Him as the one who died on the cross for you personally, and I'll give you absolute righteousness.

Now, what did you do to get that? You didn't do a thing. There's no merit in believing. All you did was said, "OK, I think you're telling the truth, God. I'm going to take that. I accept that. That's wonderful." And God listens to you when you say that, and then here's what He says to you: "For He has made Him (Jesus Christ) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the absolute righteousness of God in Him." Now that's great. God says, "I will take your sin, and I will swap you for My Son's absolute righteousness. Where can you get a better deal than that?

Well, you may say, "But I'm a Christian. What if I do something wrong? Am I going to hell again?" Well, if you had done anything to be saved, that would be true. If you had gotten yourself baptized, that would be true. If you took the Lord's Supper to be saved, that would be true. If you had done anything, then you could undo it. But that's why we started this session showing you that all you do is step out of your fellowship in time with God, but you never lose your eternal standing. You never lose your place in the family of God.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is for you to go home today, and to think how you can get yourself physically unborn. That's why the Bible says that to be saved is to be born-again, because there are some people who are so stupid, they're never going to be able to understand that once you're saved, you're always saved. So, God says, "Well, let's see. How will I tell it to you so that maybe you can understand it? Well, it's like being born physically. Can you undo it?" That puzzled Nicodemus. Nicodemus, when he heard the stuff of the new birth, he said, "Now, wait a minute. Are you saying that I can just shrivel up, and go back, and become a fetus and a zygote, and go all the way back, and disappear again in my mother's womb?" And he says, "That's irrational, Jesus." And Jesus says, "No, I'm not talking about reversing physical birth. I'm talking about producing spiritual birth." And you can't reverse that one either. That's why Jesus used the term "birth" – so that He could get it through the dull skulls of people that they can never get back out of the family of God. So, if you're in the family of God, you are going to heaven.

Now, since I know that some of you have a real good old sin nature, and that may come as a great relief to you, to know that you can live like the devil and still go to heaven, it's necessary that I remind you of what is known in the Scripture as the sin unto death. The sin unto death is the result of people who willfully and persistently stay out of temporal fellowship. And they build callouses spiritually upon their souls until they cannot have any communication with God at all, until they are so out of touch with any usefulness for their lives, that God takes them to heaven. This is what happened to Saul. He suffered the sin unto death, and God simply took him to heaven. Saul would have lived for many, many more years. Some of these people that die in the circle of your acquaintances suddenly dies. One of the reasons sometimes is that that young person, while having many years of life before him, has now gone so persistently into sin, and has so failed to use the confession of sin technique, that God has taken his life, and taken him home to heaven. Oh, he goes to heaven, but he has no further usefulness.

The reason you're taking a breath right now is because God is shouting from heaven, "I've got use for your life. I've got a purpose for you. I've got some straightening out to do in your life, and I've got some blessing to put in your life, and I've got some good things to do for eternity through you." That's why you're taking the next breath. And When He no longer has that purpose for you, you're going to have your last breath.

So, that's the glory of what we're studying in the book of Romans. Why sin? I really don't know, but it is the best of all plans because God, because of who He is, picked that plan. It's the perfect plan. In any case, it has the solution for our problem that we are in a sinking ship, but He has given us the way out. Yes, you can be as good as Jesus Christ, because when you receive Him as Savior, God says, "I give you the absolute righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1975

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