Did you see it? Each of the passages you just read show us a different way that sin (missing the mark) affects us.

Go ahead and write the consequences for sin that you saw in each of these passages in your Field Guide before we break these down.

In Romans 3:23, we see that “all have sinned.” This is a universal problem. There comes a moment in each person’s life where they choose to sin instead of being righteous. The consequence of that choice is that they are no longer like God. When we’ve sinned we’ve fallen short of God’s glory and accepted a lesser glory. It only takes one sin to make us different from our holy and perfect creator.

In Romans 6:23, we see that there is a difference between earning something and receiving a free gift. When we sin we are actually earning death; working for death. Sin kills relationships: our relationship with God, our relationships with others and even our relationship with ourselves get broken when we sin. 

Instead of earning death (who wants to be paid in death!?!?), God’s salvation can’t be earned. It’s a free gift. Not because it’s cheap like a door prize but because it’s so priceless that we could never earn it. So he has decided to give it away for free to us, but at the greatest cost to him, as we’ll soon see!

Isaiah 59:1-2 talks about our sin and our iniquities (sin-sickness) building a wall between us and God. God’s arms are long enough, his ears can hear our cries but WE put up a wall between ourselves and God and each sin is like another brick added to the separation we’ve made.

This is important to note because God wants us to be saved and as soon as that wall is removed (the sin is gone) we’re united with him and saved.

So as we search the scriptures for biblical salvation, what we’re really looking for is what the scriptures say about how sin gets removed. But before we can talk about removing sin, we need to spend a little more time identifying it.

Reflect on the following in your Field Guide: Has your sin been removed or is there still a wall between you and God? Where do you stand? How can you know for sure?