1. God Loves You More than He Hates Sin
This might sound like an odd statement if you’ve been told time and time again that God is laser focused on sin and, therefore, your performance.
Meaning, God’s not focused on loving you but catching you out.
You might even have formed an image of God in your head where He’s looming over you from heaven, waiting to catch you the moment you sin.
Friend, I’m here to tell you that that picture of God isn’t biblically accurate.
I’m not shaming or blaming you – simply stating the truth so you can begin to shed the heavy burden you’ve been carrying.
It’s a burden that God has never wanted you to carry.
In Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG) Jesus says, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
God is holy. This means He is 100% set apart from evil (which includes sin and all wrongdoing).
1 John 1:5 (NLT): “This is the message we heard from and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.”
1 Samuel 2:2 (NLT): “No one is holy like the Lord! There is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.”
Because God is holy, He naturally hates evil.
Think about it this way:
Picture a male hero from a movie or book series. For example, Legolas from the Lord of the Rings.
As a hero and defender of good, we would expect Legolas to refrain from any type of wrongdoing or evil, right? We would also expect that he would naturally detest wrongdoing when it happens. Those two things go hand-in-hand.
The same is true of God. Because God is 100% without evil all of the time, He naturally hates it – partly because He knows the severe damage that it causes:
Psalm 5:5 (NLT): “Therefore, the proud may not stand in your presence, for you hate all who do evil.”
Psalm 11:5 (NLT): “The Lord examines both the righteous and the wicked. He hates those who love violence.”
However, God’s hatred of evil doesn’t mean that:
God hates you
He doesn’t want anything to do with you
He doesn’t love you
He takes pleasure in watching you suffer
You can sin too greatly (or too much) and lose God’s love, favor, or forgiveness
After the Fall in the Garden of Eden, when sin entered the world, God could have left us to our own devices.
After all, Adam and Eve had basically thumbed their noses at God, and everything He had given them, because they decided that they wanted to be like God rather than be content and trust Him.
God could have chosen to leave us with the mess we’d made – including the fractured relationship we now had with God because He is holy and we are not.
But - God is love (1 John 4:16). And in addition to being love, He loves us more than we can fathom.
So much so, that (as 1 John 4:9-10 NLT says): “God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”
There’s also Romans 5:6-8 (MSG): “Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.”
Yes, God hates sin. But He also loves us. So He sent Jesus to die in our place, for our sins, so that we could be freed from the power of sin in this life and step into a full and eternal relationship with Him.
2. Jesus’ Sacrifice on the Cross Covers ALL Sin
Jesus died on the cross, in our place, for our sins. ALL of our sins.
Ephesians 1: 7 (NLT): “He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.”
Notice that it simply says “our sins.” There are zero stipulations as to what kind of sin; severity of sin; or how many sins.
Friend, please hear me when I say that no sin is “too big” for God to forgive.
God actually longs for us to be free from our sin.
As long as we genuinely confess our sins to God and seek repentance (which just means we desire to turn away from our sin and towards God and His holiness), God completely and utterly forgives our sin.
Psalm 103:12 (NLT): “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.”
Psalm 32:5 (MSG): Then I let it all out; I said, “I’ll come clean about my failures to God.” Suddenly the pressure was gone—my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared.
Not only does God forgive ALL sin, He forgives it completely.
Through the shed blood of Jesus on the cross, we are made righteous in God’s eyes. (Righteous simply means being in right standing with God.)
This means our sin is nowhere in sight; no longer an impediment to our relationship with God; and no longer a weight that we’re carrying.
And that brings God a lot of joy because He loves us.