Will Sin Make You Lose Your Relationship with God?

The answer is yes…and no

Photo by Will O on Unsplash

I was struck by something one of my discipleship students said to me recently in response to a question about sin:

Sin can cause us to lose our relationship with God.

That’s it. That’s all she said, so I’m not at all sure what, exactly, she meant by it. But, the way I see it, this statement is both true and false.

Let’s take a look at some biblical evidence.

Here’s why that statement is true

Sin DID cause us to lose our relationship with God.

Back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God. Then, in Genesis 3, they ate the fruit from that tree they were commanded to not eat from (see God’s command to Adam in Genesis 2:16–17). When they did so, they experienced some deaths, just as God said they would.

They did not die physically right away (they went on to live outside the garden for hundreds of years), but they did die spiritually — they suffered from an immediate break in their relationship with God. He removed Himself from them.

And that broken relationship was passed down from one generation to…