HOW UGLY IS UGLY?

You have to love automatic reflexes. I have discovered a way to make people roll their eyes. No, really. Just mention the word "sin". Talk about an old-fashioned word. If used in modern day conversation, at least 50% of your audience will tune you out. Of course it is not surprising that in a world of moral relevance, a word like sin, which is pretty absolute, has to be classified as a relic. (Absolutes can be so inconvenient!!)But whatever name you put on it, we see the results all around us. Murder, hatred, infidelity, greed, lust, and we all know that the list is endless. So for the sake of discussion let's just call it what God calls it...sin. If we admit that there is such a thing as sin, it requires us to take a look at our own soul, give up living any way we want, and even thinking about the possibility that there may be a God who requires something of us in response to that admission.

J.C. Ryle begins his book on holiness with a chapter on sin. If sin and holiness are opposite bookends, one makes no sense without the other. If we deny what he calls the "sinfulness of sin", we do two things. We minimize the destructive, horrifying impact it has on both our soul and our physical lives. And we dilute what holiness means, because we're really "not that bad". Lower the bar, and we don't miss it so badly. We don't want to admit how bad sin really is, largely because our hearts are "deceitful above all things". (Jer. 17:9) So we make excuses, justify our behavior, compare our actions and our lives with those who are "much worse" than we are. Sin isn't really all that ugly, is it? 

Ryle also says that "Sin will rarely present itself in it's true colors, saying I am your deadly enemy, and I want to ruin you forever in hell". Our society goes one step further, denying the existence of sin and of hell. How convenient! If we saw even a fragment of the horror of sin, we would see both why God calls us to holiness, and why he sent His son to make that possible. I continue to be astounded at my own behavior, not only in not pursuing holiness, but indeed turning my face away from God and towards those actions and attitudes that promise nothing but destruction and pain. The apostle Paul had it exactly right when he said in Romans 7 that "What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do." (In fact the entire book of Romans contains many descriptions of both the nature and the results of sin. Phrases like: Their foolish hearts were darkened...They exchanged the truth of God for a lie...They invented ways of doing evil...the wages of sin is death...) 

Our pursuit of holiness should be in recognition that what God says about sin is true. That it will cause unimaginable harm to us, both spiritually and physically. That it is uglier, more grim, more horrific and more deadly than we can begin to imagine. Only then will the pursuit of holiness even begin to seem important to us.