Hear God Out

        Probably no other words in the English language can raise your hackles (and mine) faster than the words, “You’re a sinner!” If our anger starts to smoulder and our blood starts to boil, we should calm down and hear God out.

        Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a whole book about the mind of the maker (small m’s) and some of the thoughts her work provoked are these: The potter expects the clay to obey him so, by his choice, he can make Denby or Royal Doulton; the painter expects the canvas and the paint to obey him—Picasso or Rembrandt; God is our Maker and has the right to our obedience. If we disobey (that is, “sin”), God has the right to scrap us and start over. But He tries to save everything He has made.

        The question then becomes, what is the cost to reverse or cancel or “justify” one sin? God’s gauge of the value is “the soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezekiel 18:20) The statement is absolute—whether it is one sin or a million. Only our eternal death or the death of Jesus meets that requirement.

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