Last night I was teaching a Bible lesson, again to a class of one. This little girl paused in the lesson to ask a question that didn’t quite relate, but it was important anyway. She knows that God loves us no matter what, and seemed to be asking just to reassure herself. “God loves us even when we say poopy, right?”
Knowing that this was very serious, I told her yes, God loves us even when we do and say bad things, but that doesn’t mean we should do bad things anyway. When we do bad things it makes God sad, and because He loves us and we love Him, we shouldn’t do bad things. We had a very brief discussion that made me think of more details that I’ll share here.
Paul touches on sin and grace in many verses surrounding Romans 6:1. You should go read those chapters around there. God in His love has given us so much grace, continues to give, and will continue to give, but we aren’t supposed to go sinning anyway. As Christians, we aren’t made to sin because we have been made new. We are made for good things, so it would be a horrible contradiction to do anything else. In light of God’s grace and love, don’t we love Him back?
In all these thoughts I have been reminded of a phrase I’ve heard: “Love makes you not want to sin.”