Sin - the Suicidal Exchange

The pursuit of sanctification for the Christian brings at least two things to mind: the glory of God and the abhorrence of sin. The glory of God should weigh heavy on our hearts and minds as we consider that it is God alone who deserves glory as the Creator, and all of creation was designed for the purpose of glorifying Him since all things were made by Him and for Him and exist only because of Him.

Jonathan Edwards writes, "The end of creation is that the creation might glorify God. Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory he has displayed? The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified."

The pursuit of sanctification is a pursuit of joy, not of drudgery. It is we, and not God, who make Christianity to be less than what God intended, which is a life full of happiness. But happiness is not something that can be generated with ourselves in the place of primacy. True happiness can only be experienced when God's glory is my greatest desire and that life is not so much about me as much as it is all about God receiving the glory and the majesty and the honor and the praise.

John Piper writes in reflection of Jonathan Edwards these words:

"The love of God for sinners is not his making much of them, but his graciously freeing and empowering them to enjoy making much of him. As Edwards says, "God is their good." Therefore if God would do us good, he must direct us to his worth, not ours. The truth that God's glory and our joy in God are one radically undermines modern views of self-centered love. God-centered grace nullifies the gospel of self-esteem" (God's Passion for His Glory, pp. 34-35).

To find our greatest happiness, we must seek the greatness of God. It is only when we strive to grasp the transcending glories of God that we start to understand the majesty and wonder of who we are dealing with, not some two-bit deity morphed out of some Greek mythology book but rather the Creator of the universe who in His super-abounding grace and mercy reached out to us in Christ and provided the way of salvation to save miserable souls destined for hell. Left to ourselves, hell is exactly where our free will takes us. We CHOOSE to go to hell because we CHOOSE to reject the glories of God and, in what Piper calls "the suicidal exchange," we settle for the broken cisterns of created things.

This perspective really is something that we must consider. Sin is not simply just falling short of God's standards of right and wrong. It is to want something less than the glory of God, which is utter folly. It is, as C. S. Lewis wrote, to settle for mudpies in the slums when you can have a day at the beach. It's not that we want so much but that we settle for so little.

Romans 1:23 says that people will exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of corruptible man and birds and animals and crawling things. This is sad but all too true. This can be seen in the lives of so many people, who make unbelievable choices to settle for anything and everything except God, that they would stoop to worshipping inanimate objects that have been fashioned by man!!

This is what sin is. It is to fall short of desiring the glory of God and settling for junk. It is to look at the Creator and see His loving heart and wisdom to guide us and reject that for the shallow "love" of the world and worldly thinking that only leads to destruction.

I would encourage you to consider the mindset of what drives you as a Christian. Do you take sin seriously? You will only when you are filled with the wonder of God's glory and see sin as a suicidal choice to settle for something less. Don't be a fool. Seek God's glory. Then you'll not only be holy but happy. =)