To a great degree we have become insensitive to sin. We don’t lose our breath when someone next to us says a swear word. We aren’t shocked when friends talk about their weekend partying escapades. We aren’t sick to our stomach when an unmarried co-worker becomes pregnant. We aren’t horrified when we learn a friend has won $250,000 in a lottery draw. We aren’t repulsed when someone tells us they sold their car without telling the buyer it needed a motor job. Those who justify watching secular movies hardly notice when an actor exclaims: “Oh my God!” When the scene is obviously leading up to a sexual encounter in a bedroom the movie is not instantly shut down in disgust. “Why should it be? It never showed an explicit sex scene. Wasn’t it just suggestive – there was only partial nudity involved.” Our minds have been so warped by sin that we think it’s okay for someone to hint at sin. We think it’s clean if the picture doesn’t go all the way.

Wow! The polluted values of the world have wormed their way far deeper into our thinking than we could ever imagine.

Can my value system be recalibrated or realigned to the Christian standard? The more we read our Bibles the more sensitive we will become to sin. If I’m becoming less sensitive about things around me that once was considered sin, it’s because I am not appreciating my Bible. It is impossible for me to appreciate the Word of God and not be convicted of sin’s seriousness. Without the Bible we fail to understand how offensive all sin is to the Holy God. We lose sight of the catastrophic effects of sin.

In Genesis 1, everything God did was good. Six times over we read “and God saw that it was good.” And then we come to God’s final assessment of everything He had made and this is His summary:

Just a few chapters later, we read the expression ‘God saw…” again but the contrast couldn’t be greater.

What had happened? The catastrophic gap between Genesis 1:31 and Genesis 6:5 was caused by one act of disobedience. Never think lightly about sin of any kind. All sin is perverse in God’s sight. It’s all obnoxious and offensive to God.

We console ourselves by saying: “What I did may be wrong, but it sure could have been a lot worse.” That’s not how God reasons. He views all sin as an assault against His Holy character. A proud thought; a five second peek at an obscene image before clicking on to something better; an exaggerated story; the failure to do something good; the secret imaginations of our minds – all are offensive to God. It was precisely those very things and others that caused the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Had it not been for our sin, there would have been no crucifixion of the sinless, spotless Son of God. Sin was the cause.

As we read our Bibles and pray each day, we should ask the Lord to help us to hate what He hates and love what He loves. We need to ask Him to make us more aware of sin in our lives and sin around us. When we sin, we need to quickly confess to the Lord with sorrow what we have done. We need to burn anything we have in our possession that even hints of sin or anything that consistently and repeatedly leads me to struggle with sin.

Memorize this verse: “God hath not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness.” 1 Thessalonians 4:7. How closely will I really walk with God today?