Of course sin doesn't cut us off from God...
we do that ourselves,
just as Adam and Cain did when they
separated themselves from God after sinning.
From the beginning His response to Adam's sin
was to pursue him
and call him to reconciliation,
calling out,
"Adam, where are you?"
when He knew exactly where he was---
separating himself from his Father
by trying to hide.
He didn't reject Cain, either, but asked,
"What is this you've done?"
and covenanted with Cain the murderer
to protect him, and marked Cain as His own,
so no one would kill him.
Doesn't Romans 3:24 plainly and explicitly say
that the same "all" who've sinned
and fallen short of God's glory
are justified through grace by
the redemption we have in Christ?
While tradition teaches us that God abhors
and rejects both sin and the sinner,
God himself refutes that notion when he speaks
of the One who was himself made to be sin
(see 2 Cor 5:21)
when he became sin on the Cross:
"For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help."
(NIV)
or
"For He has not despised nor abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from him;
But when he cried to Him for help, He heard."
(NASB) Psalm 22:24
(To see the context is speaking of
Christ on the Cross,
begin reading at verse 14).
God does not hate or reject us when we sin
... quite the opposite!
He works and has worked diligently
to reconcile with us:
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us."
He has never separated Himself from us,
but like Adam in the garden,
we avoided him
due to
guilt,
shame,
condemnation,
-- the very weapons Jesus took
from the powers and principalities
that accuse us
and use those weapons against us:
"When you were dead in your transgressions
and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
He made you alive together with Him,
having forgiven us all our transgressions,
having canceled out
the certificate of debt
consisting of decrees against us,
which was hostile to us; and
He has taken it out of the way,
having nailed it to the cross.
When He had disarmed
the rulers and authorities,
He made a public display of them,
having triumphed over them through Him."
- Col 2:13-15 NASB
Don't we know that when we gave Him our life He took it?
And along with it ALL of the sin in it--
yesterday's,
today's,
and even
next year's sin
are all part of that life and go with it.
There are no sins laying around
the foot of the Cross unjudged
-- all of them were judged,
past,
present,
and future!
Regarding the sin we want to avoid,
Romans 7 says:
(TWICE!
both in v 16-17
& in v 20!)
"Now if I do what I do not want to do,
it is no longer I who do it,
but it is sin living in me that does it."
Paul follows those freeing words with
the first verse of the next chapter:
"Therefore,
there is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus,
because through Christ Jesus
the law of the Spirit who gives life
has set you free from the law of sin and death."
- Rom 8:1-2 NIV
The truth is,
God has already done all that can be done
to make us both acceptable and accepted
...and He succeeded!
He'll never reject us after the price He paid for us
-- the price that shows how much
He values and wants us,
even when we sin.
Nope,
He won't ditch us
That's why the last words He says
in the gospel of Matthew are:
"I am with you always,
even to the end of the age."
