Pastor Seyi Osanyinbi
[biblegateway passage=”Genesis 6: 3″ display=”Genesis 6: 3″]
The issue of sin goes beyond doing wrong; what God calls sin is a life/nature that gives birth to wrong-doing. So, a person is not a sinner because he/she fornicates, the person fornicates because he/she is a sinner. When man sinned and fell, he became flesh and as he progressed in his development, the number of years he was capable of living began to drop exponentially.
In the Old Testament, the priests were the only people who had the knowledge the wisdom of how to deal with leprosy. They were the only ones who had the wisdom and understanding of how to deal with leprosy. Leprosy is a type of sin: sin is something veiled, it’s only its manifestations that the ordinary eyes can see. However, when Jesus got hung on the cross, He unveiled and demystified it. In the New Testament, the priests began to craft and unveil sin in a way that we can all understand.
[biblegateway passage=”Genesis 6:3″ display=”Genesis 6:3″] Everyone that has a problem with sin, first of all, has a problem with his/her imagination. The imaginations of man are very powerful. The greatest wickedness of man is in his imaginations because no one can see it. It was Eve’s imagination that first gave her away when she started considering eating the fruit. The three components of sin (the imagination, desires and the pride of life) resides in the heart of men. [biblegateway passage=”1 John 2:16″ display=”1 John 2:16″] These things are operative from the mind.
[biblegateway passage=”Hebrews 9:7–14″ display=”Hebrews 9:7–14″]
That is why when salvation was going to take place and Jesus had to deal with sin, He started from the conscience being the root of the problem. The whole essence of our salvation is to stand before God without any issue or blame.
The conscience is very crucial in our salvation. Those who abandon their conscience make a shipwreck of their faith. We cannot serve God if our conscience is defiled. It is from the conscience that dead works emanate from. So, God, in Christ went to the source of the problem of sin and with His blood, purged our conscience from dead works.
[biblegateway passage=”Romans 12:1–2″ display=”Romans 12:1–2″]
The conscience is formed by knowledge. Before we got saved, our conscience was according to the knowledge of the world, but when we got saved, our conscience received another kind of knowledge and we were able to turn from dead works. However, there are still certain things that we are yet to turn away from, which we know are not good but we are too weak to. This is when we need the grace of God that can strengthen us. Grace is not unmerited favour, but an instrument for being able to overcome sin and death; without grace, we will not be able to live.