Sin

Last Friday marked the due date of my mammoth research paper on sin...and I am SO glad to be done. The basis of the paper was supposed to be about why it is important to talk about sin and why Christians seem to always focus on the "negative". I chose that prompt out of probably 15 others because it was the one that most appealed to me, and even though I procrastinated till the last second (like always), it was still a really fun* paper to write. One of my sources came from one of John Piper sermon's, called The Greatest Thing in the World: An Overview of Romans 1-7. You should check the whole thing out, but what really caught my eye was this description of sin...

The glory of God is not honored.
The holiness of God is not reverenced.
The greatness of God is not admired.
The power of God is not praised.
The truth of God is not sought.
The wisdom of God is not esteemed.
The beauty of God is not treasured.
The goodness of God is not savored.
The faithfulness of God is not trusted.
The promises of God are not relied upon.
The commandments of God are not obeyed.
The justice of God is not respected.
The wrath of God is not feared.
The grace of God is not cherished.
The presence of God is not prized.
The person of God is not loved.

The infinite, all-glorious Creator of the universe, by whom and for whom all things exist (Rom. 11:36) - who holds every person's life in being at every moment (Acts 17:25) - is disregarded, disbelieved, disobeyed, and dishonored by everybody in the world. That is the ultimate outrage of the universe.

*By "fun" I mean the kind of fun where, after hours and hours of research, you can still be completely floored by how awesome and full of mercy God is and how wicked and depraved we are.