life on planet earth on Sins

My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The ey...

We read of the temptations of Jesus, but we never hear of a confession of sin on his part. He never asked for forgiveness, though he told his followers to do so. This lack of any sense of moral failur...

A number of years ago, when sabbath laws were still a contentious issue, a church group was picketing a stadium just before a Sunday game. When Tampa Bay Bucs coach John McKay arrived, the minister co...

The more enlightened we are, the more greatness and vileness we discover in man.

After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.” With its Latin roots, “across” and “...

The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ...

Some skeptics today speak about “evolving” from a primitive condition, but the Bible (Romans 1:18-32) sadly portrays a  descent  rather than an ascent. The result has been given the theological term “...

The man who prosecuted the infamous Manson family for their murders later wrote a book titled Helter Skelter. This phrase was taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Manson...

Whenever there is a separation between values and practice, things break down. In ancient China, the people desired security from the barbaric, invading hordes to the north. To get this protection, th...

A climber recently had to be airlifted off Japan’s Mount Fuji due to altitude sickness. That alone would have been a dramatic enough story. But four days later—still recovering—he climbed back up ...

What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have it… . To covet is to want somebody else’s good so strongly that one is tempted to steal it....

He may have been the hardest person I ever counseled. He was self-assured and controlling. He argued for the rightfulness of everything he had ever done. He acted like the victim when in fact he was t...

In this wonderful interaction with a neighbor-turned-friend, the widow Miss Maudie Atikinson, Scout Finch tries to understand why some Baptists, called “foot washers” in the book, seem to shun most of...

Even for those of us who follow Jesus on a daily basis, the reality is, our sinful nature has infiltrated our minds, and we often find ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, judging those aro...

It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into nothing. Murder is no better than lies if lying does the trick.

Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to com...

Of all the deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

“We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects.”

Like many popular adages, this one about all sins being equal before God is not entirely wrong. Every sin is a breach of God’s holy law. And whoever fails to keep the law in one point is guilty of bre...

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

Dear Lord Jesus, we feel our sins. They bite and gnaw and terrify us. Where shall we go? We will look to You, Lord Jesus, and believe in You. Although our faith is often weak, we look to You and find ...

Forgive us for our many sins. Like Eve, we are easily captivated by the objects that our eyes desire. We fall so often, and when we do, we run and hide in shame instead of running to you to confess ou...

We confess our sins to you, today, O Lord. We confess that we sometimes find it difficult to believe that you are actually involved in our day-to-day experiences, that you actually impact our circumst...

Reading Aquinas, I found the vices to have revealing and illuminating power. By contrast, many voices in contemporary culture, unfortunately, dismiss, redefine, psychologize, or trivialize them. Some...

We tend to drag up our old sins, that we tend to live under a vague sense of guilt…we are not nearly as vigorous in appropriating God’s forgiveness as He is in extending it. Consequently, instead of l...

No child of God sins to that degree as to make himself incapable of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

All His is mine and all mine—my sins, my death, my damnation—is His.

Merciful and Holy God, We bow before You in heartfelt confession, acknowledging that we are a broken people, living in a broken world. This world is dark with the stain of sin. Your design for creatio...