I was five years old and I could see it from where I was standing.
It was on top of the kitchen shelf, just above the refrigerator. It was made of ceramic and it had the object of my desire: my mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies. It was the cookie jar and it was calling my name. I knew that she had just baked them only an hour before, since the kitchen still smelled like fresh-baked cookies. I had been told that I could not have any until after supper. Supper was many hours from now, however, after my father got home from work later this evening: a virtual eternity. I was already seeing the cookies in my hands, tasting them in my mind and salivating like Pavlov's dog.
I was figuring on whether of not I could reach the jar if I dragged one of the dining room chairs into the kitchen and propped it up against the refrigerator. I was confident I could, and proceeded to drag the chair into the kitchen. My mother was sewing in the other room, and surely the sound of the sewing machine would cover the noise I was making. Surely. I was rather confident of that too.
It is often a remarkable truism that certain things happen at the most opportune (or inopportune) time. Like the fact that I had dragged the chair all the way into the kitchen, climbed it, stretched until I had hold of the cookie jar, and finagled it into my eager hands to get the cookie right when my mother walked into the kitchen. I had been caught in the act of disobedience, red-handed.
Absolutely amazing.
Amazing how fast a five-year-old can come up with so many excuses, justifications and flat-out denials. Despite the fact that my mother had only wanted what was best for me. She had wanted me to learn patience, she had wanted to me have a healthy, wholesome dinner first, she had wanted me to share and enjoy them with her, my father and my brother around the dinner table while we talked and spent time together. All I could see an arbitrary command, a rule that denied me what I selfishly desired rather than what was best for me, not just at that moment but for years to come. Things that would serve me beyond that moment: like life lessons of sharing, patience and fellowship as well as physical lessons of treating my body like temple and feeding it well, keeping it healthy so I could live a long, more fulfilling life.
Things my mother understood well, but that she could simply not explain to the understanding of a five-year-old. Who wanted a cookie more than anything else.
It works that way with our Heavenly Father. He has rules for us, for our ultimate good because He loves enough to want the very best for us. He wants the best for us: physically, emotionally and spiritually. But like the apostle Paul admonishes, we are like children and often rather have what we want, a brief moment of selfish satisfaction rather something that will fulfill us both now and in our future. Something that accomplishes a deeper need over a shallow want and leads us to disobey our Father God's laws. Laws that we do not always understand because in a very real and spiritual sense, we are children. Laws that we must nonetheless obey for our own good and the good of others.
He has laws for our lives just as surely as He has laws that govern our physical universe. There are spiritual laws that we must adhere to for our health and happiness just as surely as there are laws of physics like gravity that we must adhere to. I could choose to break the law, just as I could choose to ignore the laws that tell me which side of the road I need to drive upon. I could choose to drive in the middle of the road, but a violent and fatal accident would surely occur sooner or later. That law is for my own good as well as those around me.
Sin is often defined as a transgression of the law of God. The result is often a vitiated state of human nature in which we are estranged from God (i.e. living in sin), and as such he sent His son to restore that relationship.
But we of course can come up with so many excuses, justifications and flat-out denials. The world will tell you that there is no such thing as sin and that we can all do as we please as long as we are happy. Some will even go so far to maintain that the consequences of our disobedience is simply a guilty conscience that we must learn to ignore since it is no more than social conditioning. We must seek to find self-actualization, where I am good, you are good, we are all good and everything is pink and rosy. Sin is a myth.
Wouldn't that be convenient?
It would also be irresponsible and fail to acknowledge our divine Creator and our divine purpose that he intended us for. It would be a rollercoaster of thrills, spills and chills that would eventually pull into the waiting station in Hell. Sin is very real, and so is our fallen condition. The story of Adam and Eve is not some fairy tale, and neither is Easter all about a bunny rabbit and some egg hunt. They are life lessons that tell us how we are born into a broken relationship with our Creator, but that the precious blood of His son has mended it.
My brother once told me that he took issue with certain dogma; he shared with me that the mercy and grace of our Lord God are fantastic and beyond measure, but they pale in light of the apparent lack of sin. What need do we have of restoration if we did not suffer from separation? What need do we have of salvation were it not that our sin has condemned us? The Lord's mercy and grace has been poured out upon us, not just to give us a happy and abundant life but rather to also save us from one of misery and isolation.
To save us from the wages of sin: death.
Praise God. I for one needed it rather sorely myself. As a matter of course I need it daily and for the rest of my mortal life, minute-by-minute and choice-by-choice. I am thankful for it, and for anyone who identifies with the infamous lyrics written by John Newton (1725-1807) I imagine you do too: for it "saved a wretch like me."