A Violence

This past week I've had a bit of a break from the onslaught of school work and have been able to get in a lot of time with God and ponder different things. And one of the things I had been pondering was just how damaging sin REALLY is, because sometimes you just need to really deeply think about that. I started to imagine what it might look like if we could actually *physically* see sin on our bodies.  Pretty terrifying thought, No one would look very appealing. The example I thought of  was an example of leprosy being a curse from God because of sin, as was believed by many of the pharisee's in the New Testament and in the case of Miriam in the Old Testament. Now, leprosy is pretty gross, and I wouldn't recommend going onto Google images to confirm that a bacterial infection can look pretty bad... But for some reason this just didn't get to me and so I was still left with the question to ponder... what would  physically seeing sin on someone look like?


Well shortly after this, I was reading a book, and it was giving a vivid description of Jesus carrying His cross to the hill where He was to be crucified. For all the times I've read over the gospels and known what happened to Jesus - where it describes a brutal beating and intense physical pain - I don't like to picture it because I am very squeamish at almost everything to do with blood, cuts, wounds, but the description just got to me....more than it has in a long time, and I discovered that THIS was the exact picture of what sin would look like on a human body. Absolute violence against it that makes you turn away, close your eyes, not wanting to look on something so horrid (again, especially if you're squeamish!)


It looks like a slow death... because that's exactly what sin is. It looks disgusting.

That's what we look like to God.

That's the bad news, however the bible is full of 'But God..." statements. But God chose to show us what sin physically looks like on the human body when Jesus took it on for us.

And that's just caused me to think about those times when I don't really care or take pleasure in my sin and that it's like getting joy out of someone violently beaten and killed, because that's what happened, even though because of Jesus it didn't happen to me. God hates violence, He is the opposite of death -which He can and did overcome.  

Sometimes I really need this kind of reminder to run away from sin that so easily entangles and it's something that will be on my mind as Easter time approaches.