Highway 9 church of Christ   

Presents: Internet Bible Study Courses   

Man has a sin problem. Our sins separate us from God. Isaiah 59:2, "But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that he will not hear". It is our sins that have caused the separation. In Romans 3:23, we are told, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". There is not an accountable person living or who has ever lived (except our Lord), who can say that he has never sinned. We are all in need of salvation. I John 1:8 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us". The easiest person to deceive is ourselves. When we rationalize away what God says, this is what we are doing. God says that man has a sin problem, but man says that he does not. Who is right and what are we doing to God when we say that we have no sin? Continuing our reading in I John 1:10, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." God is always right when he tells us that we have all sinned.

In Romans 6:23 we read, "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord". Death is a separation. When we die physically, our body is placed into the grave, but our spirit is separated from our dead body and goes back to God, who gave it. We are told in Ecclesiastes 12:7, "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it". In physical death, there is a separation between our body and our soul.

In Romans 6:23, we saw that, "For the wages of sin is death". This is a spiritual death, which is a separation from God in eternity for those who are lost. Since God is in heaven, and those who experience this spiritual death are separated from God, they cannot go to heaven. This leaves only one place for them to go, hell. We see hell spoken of as the second death in Revelation 21:8, "the lake which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second death".