Call It What It IsIf we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, Our society today has become so callous, so blasé, so uncaring about sin that we often don't even realize anymore what sin is- an offence against God, who is righteous and holy. We give sin lots of different names, some of them funny, some even glamourous, but we don't call it what it is: SIN! The Holy Bible tells us that God hates ALL sin. Shakespeare wrote "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...."; the Bible says sin by any other name is still sin! We need to learn to start calling things by what God calls them: sin is sin, period. We need to stop making excuses for it, stop glamourizing it, stop joking and laughing about it, and start seeing it for what it is: an abomination in the eyes of the holy and righteous Almighty God. And He {Jesus} said unto them, "You are they who Take sexual sin, for instance. We say people having sex are "having an affair", or they have an "extramarital relationship". Sometimes we glamourize it, using words like "lovers" or "paramour". Sure sounds better than adulterer or adulteress, doesn't it? No one has used the term "fornication" in years; instead we say unmarried lovers are "significant others" or "life partners". Or if it's just casual, no commitment sex, we say they "hook up". Homosexuals like the term "gay", as if their lifestyle was one of giddy bliss instead of ugly sinfulness. A drunkard is no longer called a drunkard, he is an alcoholic, which somehow negates both the sinfulness and the responsibility, as the term implies an illness, rather than a choice. All of these little euphemisms lessen or decrease the idea of sinfulness. We have a lot of that these days. Everything now is a sickness, something an individual has no possible control over. Drinking, using drugs, sex, gambling, overeating--- you name it, there's a twelve step program out there for it. Everything we indulge in to excess is now called an addiction. It isn't sin, we have an "illness". People used to know the difference between right and wrong, and if something was wrong in God's eyes, they knew it was sin. We've somehow lost this basic concept: there is an absolute right, and an absolute wrong. And we deceive ourselves if we call sin by other other name. Know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? We need to wake up to the fact that we are all sinners, and learn to see our sins as what they are. There is no justification of any sin in the eyes of the Lord. We need to stop making excuses, stop trying to make it sound better, stop trying to justify it, and instead just confess it and ask God's forgiveness for our willful disobedience to His holy word. God WANTS to forgive us. He is not willing for anyone to die in their sin, and perish. There is no sin that God will not forgive, if we truly repent and confess our sin to Him. But in order to do that, we have to first call sin what it is. We must acknowledge that we have sinned: we must humbly admit that we are guilty. Not merely that we made a bad choice, or had a lapse in judgment, but that we chose to do what God calls sin. Not that the devil made me do it, although we know he is the author of all sin. Not that we have a disease or syndrome that has taken away our free choice. We cannot change ourselves. Even all those twelve step programs out there know that. Only God can change a person. And only God can make us see our sin for what it is. But we have to accept what the Bible teaches us about our sin, and we have to humble ourselves before God and repent of it. If we harden our hearts to His word, He will let us go our own way; God never takes away our free will. The Bible says: And even as they did not like to retain God in their No, we must humbly and honestly look at sin through God's eyes. We must call sin by it's real name. We must confess to Him that we have sinned, Then God is ready, willing and able to forgive us of our sin, and cleanse us from our unrighteousness. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
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