204 – Uninteresting Sin

When God thinks about us, He is not mostly interested in how much we need forgiveness from sin. He sees us how an adult sees a child: Filled with potential, mostly adorable, and a future that’s bigger than the past, despite the need for replacing broken things and the occasional spanking.

It is remarkably, boringly normal for new Christians to be over-obsessed with their own sin. This immature obsession centers on the question: To sin or not to sin? When young Christians sin, they feel terrible and wonder whether God will forgive them. Before they sin, they are obsessed with how desirable sin can seem. They’re undone by other people’s sin. It’s embryonic.

We outgrow sin by growing in God. Think about Heaven. This is not thinking about “going to Heaven”, because Heaven is not any destination. Heaven is our spiritual origin, the power in our hearts, and the source of glory that we expand to the world around us. Don’t think about Heaven as some boring, celestial cloud; think about Heaven to understand what God wants you to carry in your heart everywhere you go.

Of course, to understand Heaven you can’t just guess or rely on your own “wicked, little” imagination, and you especially can’t learn about Heaven from sinful pop culture’s fiction about demigods in outer space. You’ll need to read God’s Word to understand Heaven, first through virtue, then through Isaiah’s, Ezekiel’s, Daniel’s, and John’s visions of God—and from the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch).

The more you understand Heaven in your own heart, the more boring sin will seem. Temptation to sin won’t grip you, you’ll just be bored sick thinking about it.

When it comes to other people’s sin, that won’t shock you either. You’ll be sad, but not undone, nor will you have some new, lowly view of people when you learn what they did wrong. In fact, the more you understand God, the more you will understand how incredibly much so many people have been forgiven so immensely. As we mature, God gives us insight about other people’s struggles—sinful or otherwise—as we get bored with any kind of sin and more fascinated with God.