Understanding God’s Zero Tolerance For Sin
Should Sin Continue After We Have Been Redeemed?
One battle every true child of God strives to overcome every day is the battle against sin. This is because the moment we tolerate sin, the moment we relegate the Holy Spirit and give precedence to our sinful nature to guide and rule us, a gulf immediately separates us from God, and we lose touch with Him (Isaiah 59:1–2).
We are not supposed to lose touch with God, but sin often hinder us from having a smooth and unbroken relationship with Him. Sin is the only thing that separates us from God. It hiccups our walk with Him.
There is a story that the Christian writer Watchman Nee once used to analyze how every Christian is predated by sin. He said there was a day he wanted to enter a store and he met a brother and nodded to this brother in greeting. Earlier that day, he had met this brother on the street and nodded to him. When he came out of the store he met this brother coming his way again so he nodded to him for the third time. He entered into a second store and bought something else and came out, only to meet his brother coming his way yet again and so he nodded. He turned into a second street and met this brother again and nodded in greeting. Nee wrote: “We encounter sin the same way that I encountered this brother. It seems that sin purposely tries to meet us. We are always running into it; it seems that it is constantly following us.”
Brothers and sisters, sin is always following us and purposely trying to meet with us. As seeking Christians, our present experience might be that we sometimes find ourselves entangled in or challenged by one sin or another. Ours might be often — a sad case of constantly rising and falling. It might be many sins (or only one sin) that floor us again and again. They might have told us that it doesn’t matter that we sin once in a while, or that we sin frequently, that grace covers every frequent and infrequent sins. They might have told us that it’s impossible to live an overcoming life of sinlessness, that it is normal and appropriate to fall once in a while. Dear brothers and sisters, whether we sin sometimes or sin often, whether we commit only one sin or many sins, the brutal fact of our experience is that we are still committing sin, and God frowns at sin. The God we serve does not tolerate many things, and sin is topmost on that list.
Dear brothers and sisters, I would not like us to shrug our shoulders and say that we have no sin. 1 John 1:8 warns us against such deception. Yes, it is true that we might not be committing known/obvious sins such as lying, adultery, fornicating, or watching pornography, but we do commit inward sins such as entertaining impure thoughts, unbelief, pride, jealousy or hatred. This is not to mention so-called “harmless” sins such as talkativeness, overeating and dubiousness. The truth is that God sees our inward parts, where we commit the severest sins and He is not pleased with this. We must therefore turn to Him today with a heart of repentance and sincerely ask for His mercy.
Israelites’ Experience
The story of the trek of the Israelites through the wilderness shows to us God’s attitude towards sin. If there were a people who suffered terribly in the hands of God because of their sins, it was the Israelites.
The Israelites were God’s chosen people. God loved them: He brought them out of Egypt by the hand of Moses. But the Israelites, after gaining total freedom from the bondage of slavery, desired to go back to Egypt. The Bible says that they turned back (backslided) in their hearts. They were quick to forget God’s deeds and promises. They murmured against Moses and Aaron. They murmured for water, for bread, for meat. They worshipped idols. They committed whoredom with pagan nations. They vexed God till the point that God ordered them to kill the sinners among them, and 24,000 people were executed in a single day. God punished them heavily for their disobedience and sins. A journey that could have taken them forty days to complete, costed them forty years of wandering in the wilderness. In the space of those forty years, every single one of them who sinned against God in the wilderness were destroyed. Only two people were excluded: Joshua and Caleb (Numbers 14:20–24).
Dear brothers and sisters, God does not tolerate sin. I repeat: God does not condone sin! God does not smile at sin! God can never be at peace with sin! Every time we live in sin we torment God. And He does not hold back, because at times He strikes back in anger. This is why the Scripture warns: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
The Israelites who trekked the wilderness are a perfect example of a people who fell into God’s hands. 1 Corinthians 10:5 says: “Most of them did not obey God, and he destroyed them” (LB). He destroyed them. The question I have always asked myself is: “Could God destroy a person and that person will still end up in heaven?” No, it is not possible.
Moses’ Experience
Moses was the leader of the Israelites. He was the one appointed to lead God’s people to the Promised Land. Moses brought them God’s laws (the Ten Commandments), he spoke to God on their behalf. And, above all, he was the one who begged God not to destroy them in His anger when they sinned. On one occasion Moses told God: “Remove my name from Your book if what You want to do is destroy these people!” Yes, Moses could talk to God like that. At the end of his life the Bible records: “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10, KJV). The Bible also records that Moses was “very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3, KJV).
But this same Moses sinned against God and was barned from entering the promised land. He dishonoured God at Meribah, and God said to him: “You will never enter the Promised Land, the land of rest that I have prepared for My people” (Numbers 20:12). Moses, the great intercessor of the Israelites, was left with no one to intercede for him. The Rabbinic tradition claims that 515 times Moses begged God to let him enter the Promised Land. If that was true, then you should know that when you sin, and God makes up His mind to punish you, there is no one upon the surface of the earth that can intercede for you and God will hear. God, Himself once said: “Even though Moses and Samuel were to stand before Me [interceding for them], My heart would still not be [turned with favor] toward this people [Judah]” (Jeremiah 15:1, AMP). Dear brothers and sisters, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.
God’s Zero Tolerance for Sin: A Mindset
Every true child of God who seeks to please God and maintain a smooth and unbroken relationship with Him must carry this mindset that God has zero-tolerance for sin. We must constantly remind ourselves that God does not tolerate sin. Whenever sin pops up on our faces, we must be able to say, like Joseph: “How can I do this wickedness and sin against God?” Rather than enjoying the pleasure of sin, and banking on the sure promise of forgiveness by the blood of Jesus. This attitude, this mindset, is the secret of men who walked with God flawlessly. It is my prayer that this will henceforth be our attitude towards sin.
This article is extracted from one of our studies AT HIS FEET, preached by Joseph Ola Okunola. You can download the full message here. Or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates for rich spiritual diet.
