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of the person of Satan and his demons seeking to steal, kill and destroy God’s world and humanity.33 However, it would be wrong to blame Satan entirely. We humans are responsible for our own actions. Sin is seen in an individual way with each person doing wrong. It is reflected corporately in structures and institutions which are corrupted. One example is the Nazi movement in the mid-20th century. Sin here is structural and its influence is horrendous. Sin in all its individual and corporate forms is a microcosm of the macro problem of evil. It is evil expressed through fallen humanity.

      Some people tend to use the word sin in a light and fluffy way. They can see the problem with extreme examples of evil such as the Holocaust, genocide or infanticide. But, they might ask, what is wrong with a few personal ‘mistakes’? What’s the big deal? But what is at stake here cannot be trivialised. When we understand the cosmic dimensions of good and evil, sin can no longer be seen in a frivolous way – sin is evil, evil is disgusting; it stands against God, humanity, love, creation and all that is good. It is a violation of the cosmic goals of God in his world, his dream and project. So while God loves us infinitely and wants us to live forever in a loving relationship with him, the cosmic problem of evil stands in the way.

      We are all capable of good, but we are also all more than capable of evil – we are a mixture of good and evil and our motives are never fully pure. We are all sinners before a pure and holy God. We are all guilty of failing to keep the standards of God.

      We have all at some time or other failed to worship God as we should. We have all disobeyed him. We have all blasphemed his name. We have all disobeyed our parents. We have all lied, twisting and distorting the truth for personal gain. We have all stolen something in our life whether actively or passively. Actively, all of us have at some point in our lives taken something that did not belong to us. Passively, we have also participated in evil by failing to share what we have, denying others their inheritance as God’s children, they being poor and we being rich. According to Jesus we have all committed adultery. Jesus said to look with lust at another person is adultery.34 All of us have dehumanised and objectified someone else in this way at some time or another. We have all been guilty of putting others down, of saying something judgemental, of failing to give God the glory he deserves, of failing to honour others as we should. We have all judged others on some basis, whether it is by their looks, race, power, weakness or whatever. We are all, to some degree or another, participants in evil.

      At this point you may feel that I am being a bit harsh. One thing you might think is that many of the horrible things humans do is due to the people involved being sinned against. We see this for example when a desperate person, who is a victim of injustice, commits a robbery to feed his or her family. Often violent crime is understandable to a degree if the offender is a victim of crime. This is profoundly true. Not only are we participants in wrongdoing, we are also victims of wrongdoing. In fact, the more we are sinned against, the more we are broken and marred and fall into sin.35 Those that sinned against us are culpable before God. Yet, we too remain responsible for our sinful responses. That this is true actually reinforces the essential point: the world is broken, we are all sinners and not only are we committing sin, we are often sinned against. All this amplifies the problem of evil.

      If you are not sure whether you are in fact guilty of sin in this sense you might like to turn now to appendix one (at the back of this book) which asks us to check whether we are in fact guilty of sin against the Old Testament standard of the Ten Commandments or the New Testament standard of the two Great Commandments.

      We could continue this discussion looking at a host of ideals that Jesus and other Bible writers have passed on to us and we will see that again and again we are all guilty before God.36 We are all, as the Bible puts it, sinners. We are all participants in and victims of evil, and we are all in need of being saved from this predicament.

      We are a product of our sinful world, so much so that, in a sense, we can’t help but sin. Even one of the founding fathers of Christianity, the Apostle Paul, laments his inability to do the good he knows he ought to do.37 This is the universal human experience. We are sinners before a righteous, holy God. We are subject to the power of sin, enslaved under sin’s power,38 the power of evil. There seems to be no way out! ‘For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God!’39

      Separation

      This being the case, unless the relationship is restored, we are all separated from God. You might be asking at this point why sin separates someone from God. The key concept here is the purity of God. Because he is perfect in purity, he will only dwell with us in purity. As such, he will not dwell with us unless we are sinless or until the sin within us is dealt with. There are only two ways out. One is for humans to rise above sin and evil and live pure and flawless lives, maintaining a perfect evil-free relationship with God. However, due to the power of sin that has infected the very fabric of the world, along with humanity’s universal choice and penchant for doing wrong, this is not something that has been or can be achieved by anyone except Jesus (more on that later).40 The other way out is for God to rescue us.

      That being the case, apart from God reaching out to us, we are all destined to die and spend an eternity separated from him. Unless a way is found to deal with the evil that has infected us, there is no hope. We are all separated from a perfect relationship with God.

      While we live on earth, this separation means that God does not dwell with us as he originally intended. We will live, but we will not be truly alive. We will face this world captive to corrupt motives and our lives will not be directed by God. We will be subject to the powers of darkness, sin in the world – all infected. There is no way out. We are all, as Paul puts it, ‘prisoners of sin’.41 We are all destined for eternal death. Paul says elsewhere, ‘for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’42 Our state of separation is ultimately eternal if it is not remedied. The New Testament makes clear from the mouths of Jesus, Paul, Peter, Jude and John that all evil will ultimately be dealt with when Jesus returns (more about that later).43 The problem is that in the meantime we are destined for destruction, because evil is fused into the core of our being.

      Is It Hopeless?

      All this can seem terribly depressing. It seems on the surface that God’s intention has failed. He wants an eternal relationship with each of us and he wants the world to be a glorious place of human creativity and harmony, yet not one of us can live with God forever because of his purity and our sin. Were he to let us live eternally in our flawed state, we would continue to corrupt the world we live in. If we, as impure people, were allowed into eternity then heavenly existence would be worse than earth. Imagine our human corruption combined with eternal life and eternal resources. Eternity would quickly become a scene of unimaginable eternal conflict and devastation!

      In a sense then, it is hopeless. We are not capable of saving ourselves. Evil has taken hold of humanity, the world and relationships and there is no way out. The outlook is bleak unless God moves to save us.

      In the Meantime

      Perhaps you are a bit offended by this description of the state of the world and humanity. Perhaps you consider yourself a good person. In many ways I’m sure you are. Certainly, when we compare ourselves with a despotic megalomaniac like Adolf Hitler we can all appear very good. However, when we line ourselves up beside the standards of God and are truly honest about ourselves, we find that we are all flawed. Christians are no different here. If you have heard Christians claim moral superiority for themselves, I believe they are misguided. They too, like you and me, struggle with their brokenness and wrongdoing. We are not totally evil but we are marred. We are still capable of making good choices, but not with complete consistency. We are people of mixed motives, mixed intentions, and a mixture of good and bad. Hence, even though on the surface many of us are ‘good people’, in fact we all need salvation. Remember, God is totally pure and no evil can stand in his presence. Thus, we all stand outside this ideal relationship with him.

      That being the case, I am sorry to say that it is inevitable that the world will continue to be a place in which we see terrible atrocities, natural disasters, war, poverty, oppression, sexism, racism,

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