Video Transcript: How Serious is Sin?

How Serious is Sin?
By David Feddes

How serious is sin? Well, I suppose I could keep this lecture very short by saying, VERY! How serious is sin? Sin is very, very, very, very serious. But I'm going to go beyond just saying that, and I'm going to point out twelve things the Bible says about sin.To make it easier to remember, each begins with the letter D. 

How serious is sin?

1.  Disobedience
2.  Disease
3.  Depravity
4.  Division
5.  Disaster
6.  Devilry
7.  Darkness
8.  Damnation
9.  Despair
10.  Debt   
11.  Distance
12.  Deadness

There's a lot more that could be said about sin--and it's all bad too. But let's focus on these twelve clear things that the Bible teaches about the condition of humanity fallen into sin, apart from God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. 

1. Disobedience

To begin with sin is disobedience. Sin is a failure to obey God's law in our actions, or in our attitude, or in our nature. That's kind of the essence of sin. It is failure to match up with God's law, failure to obey it not only in what we do, but also in our attitudes and our heart desires, and even more than that, sinful in our very nature and character. We are sinners by nature as well as by choice. It's not just something we wake up and decide to do. Our decisions flow from the kind of persons we are. We are persons who are out of joint and out of line with God's law. 

In the Bible God often says, "You have not obeyed my voice." Or as Daniel's confession puts it, "We have not obeyed his voice" (Daniel 9:14). This comes up again and again in the Bible in various forms: not obeying God's voice. 

Humanity's head, Adam, got that all rolling when he didn't obey God's voice. God spoke to him and said not to eat from the forbidden tree. But Adam, prompted by his wife, Eve, ate from it anyway and disobeyed God. And when humanity's head disobeyed God, all those who were involved in Adam and were represented by him, became disobedient as well. "Sin came into the world through one man, and by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners" (Romans 5:12-19). Original sin, also called inherited sin, is the doctrine that describes this. In Adam we all have sinned. We all inherit Adam’s guilty status and corrupt character.

God sees Adam and all who come from Adam as guilty. But it's not just that God sees us as guilty because of what Adam did, but also because we are corrupt, as Adam became corrupt through sinning. Scripture uses the phrase "sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2, 5:6). Sometimes "sons of" refers to what characterizes you: you're characterized by disobedience. However, we're also very literally "sons of disobedience" because we're sons of Adam, the disobeyer who started sin among humanity in the world, and whom we have followed in character, in attitude, and in action. 

2. Disease

A second picture of what sin is like and what it does to us, according to the Scriptures, is found in the disease factor. God says through the prophet Isaiah of people, "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers… The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. (Isaiah 1:4-5). This terrible sickness of sin that grips us and eats us up. "How sick is your heart!" (Ezekiel 16:30). Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:12). Sick! That's the Son of God's diagnosis of fallen humanity: we are sick sinners. 

When it comes to detecting disease, we need to take Jesus' word for it. We need to listen to what the law of God says to us. Think of how we detect bodily disease. One way we sometimes know there's a problem is how we feel about it. If our body is sick, we may feel bad. Likewise, if our overall spiritual condition is sick, our conscience may trouble us about something we've done wrong, or we may have all kinds of trouble in our life. Another way of detecting disease is simply the doctor's diagnosis regardless of how you feel. And God gives us that diagnosis in the Bible, through his law in Scripture and through the statements about human sin. We may get some sense of our condition through the inner law of our conscience. But God's written law found in the Bible is the clearest and most reliable test, especially as we find it in the Ten Commandments. 

Now think again of bodily sickness. How can you tell when you have a bad illness? One way is how you feel. If you feel fine, you usually assume you're healthy., but if you feel pain you figure something's wrong. That sort of how the conscience works. When you feel stabs of guilt and shame, your painful conscience may be telling you that something is wrong with your spiritual health. But what if your conscience doesn't bother you? Does that mean you're okay? No, conscience isn't 100% reliable.  You may do something without even a twinge of conscience, without the least bit of moral uneasiness, and you can still be wrong. 

Going back again to how your body works: sometimes when something's wrong, you feel pain. But it's possible to feel no pain at all, and yet have a deadly condition. A routine checkup at the doctor may reveal cancer or heart trouble or a virus like HIV, even if you don't feel anything wrong. In the latter stages of the illness, pain may kick in. But meanwhile, the fact that you're feeling healthy is no guarantee that you are healthy. Sometimes sin can be painless for a while. In some cases, stabs of conscience may tell you something's wrong, or you may have huge problems like an arrest or a prison sentence or a divorce or a sexually transmitted disease. And such problems may show you that something's amiss, that sin is a problem for you. But even if your conscience doesn't bother you, even if you're not facing a painful crisis because of bad behavior, you may still have a deadly problem. 

Pain can be a warning sign, but it's not as reliable as a more objective test. The objective test of your spiritual health is the written law of God found in the Bible. Just as an objective medical test can diagnose a deadly illness you didn't know you had, so the objective standards of God's law can show sins you didn't know you had. As one biblical writer puts it, "I would not have known what sin was except through the law" (Romans 7:7). The objective test of God's law shows that all of us are sick with sin, and sin left to run its course results in death--not just physical death, but what the Bible calls the second death, eternal suffering in hell.

It's tempting to say, "No way! I can't be that bad. I'm basically a good person. Sure, nobody's perfect. But I'm better than most people. I know what really rotten sinners are like, and I'm not one of them."Well, suppose you're tested and confirmed to have cancer and you say, "No way! I feel fine. I've seen cancer victims. I've seen how sick they get and how miserable they feel. And I'm not that way at all. I can't have cancer." But all of that doesn't change the result of the objective test. If you have cancer, you have cancer. Focusing on how well you feel won't help. Comparisons to others won't help. There's no such thing as a mild case of cancer. If you have it, and nothing's done about it, it will kill you.

Sin is like cancer. You may think your sins are small. But if God's law turns up even the slightest trace of sin in your life, you have a huge problem. "For whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles at just one point  is guilty of breaking all of it" (James 2:10). If God's law diagnoses you as a sinner in any respect, the size of the sin or the number of sins is almost beside the point. If you've got sin anywhere in your system, it means you're doomed if nothing is done about it, just as a person who's got cancer anywhere in his system is doomed if nothing's done about it.

What is the doctor's diagnosis? You're sick! That's the diagnosis apart from God's saving grace. We're all sick with a deadly terminal illness. Sometimes our conscience reminds us of it, and sometimes trouble in our life shows us the impact of sin. But even if our conscience is clear and life seems to mostly problem-free, we have the doctor's diagnosis: we have the disease, and it's terrible.

A number of years ago, my father went to the doctor. He felt fine. It was just time for his annual checkup. A routine test found cancer in an early stage. The doctor recommended surgery. Now, would it be foolish for somebody who feels perfectly well to go through the pain and bother of surgery? My dad had the surgery. He believed his doctor. He accepted the test results, even though he felt okay. And after the surgery, he was cancer-free.

If a doctor says you're sick, and the test shows it, then regardless of how you feel, you'd better believe it and have something done about it. Likewise, if the Lord says you're sinful, and his law shows it, then regardless of how you feel, you better believe it and have him do something about it.

3. Depravity

A third thing about sin that the Bible describes is depravity. "The intention of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). God said this when there were only eight people on the earth after the flood. They had been the best of all people in the world. They were the only people rescued by God's grace from the flood. These grim words described humanity even when it was just Noah and his family, if they were left to follow their own heart. They were evil from their youth. 

Scripture says, "We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another" (Titus 3:3). That's just one of the many terrible pictures of the depravity, the nastiness, of human sin. 

Theologians have come up with the phrase "total depravity." This doesn't mean that everybody is as nasty as they could possibly be, and that everybody turns into an Axe Murderer, and that everybody does all the hideous things that could possibly be done. Total depravity means that apart from God's restraint, that is what would happen. And it also means that every part of me is tainted and twisted by sin.

It's a very serious error to say, "My body has sin problems and sinful tendencies that I've got to deal with, but my mind and my spirit are pure. I just need to deal with sinful bodily urges." Total depravity means that every part of us is tainted and twisted: body, mind, and spirit. There's not one part of ourself that is good and free from sin. Depravity affects every part of me and every aspect of human life.

4. Division

A fourth aspect of sin is division. Sometimes it's division within a person. Scripture says, "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (James 4:8). Sin divides you and makes you double-minded. You can't be of one consistent mind. You want to serve God, maybe. But you definitely want to serve mammon. And you're torn in different directions, or your whole personality fragments.

I've known many an adulterer who says, "I don't know what to do. I love this other woman. But I still love my wife too." When in doubt, why not stick with the one you made your lifelong promises to? But sin divides you and pulls you in different directions. You don't even know what you want. You can't be one, whole, united, singleminded person.

Another aspect of sin's division is the division that it brings among different people. We see that from the very beginning of humanity. After the first sin, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent for tempting her (Genesis 3:12-13). Nobody wanted to say, "I'm responsible for what I did." Instead, Adam and Eve were playing the blame game. And it's been that way ever since. When something goes wrong in my life, I blame somebody else, even when it's often my own fault.

Not only is there division in marriage and personal relationships, but also division among different peoples and races and nationalities. Scripture speaks of a "wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14) that comes up between different people groups, a wall that is wiped out only by Jesus Christ and by His sacrifice. Racism and race-based division is a result of sin. This division, this hatred, exists between different groups and is fueled by the sinful pride of one group over against another.

5. Disaster

Another aspect of sin is disaster. It's a disaster for us but also a disaster for the world around us. Just as Adam's sin affected the whole human race, the sin of Adam and of humanity also affected all the rest of God's earth. God told Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you" (Genesis 3:17). What happened to humans by falling into sin brought calamity on the rest of creation because we were supposed to be the head of creation and to govern it well.

Scripture says, "The creation was subjected to futility and bondage to corruption" (Romans 8:21). And only at the restoration of humanity, will creation itself be set free from this disaster. Ezekiel the prophet put it well, "Disaster comes upon disaster (Ezekiel 7:26).

When disaster strikes, we often ask, "How could God let this happen?" The world is vulnerable to disaster because of human sin. That's a big part of the answer to the question. Not every disaster that comes upon an individual is directly the result of their own personal sin, but the sin of humanity and the sin of Adam and the sin of us all has made all of humanity vulnerable to disaster and has messed up the world and brought disaster on God's creation. How serious is sin? Sin is a disaster!

6. Devilry

Here's another terrible thing about sin: it involves us in devilry. It puts us in league with the devil. It puts us under the bondage of the devil. It makes us children of the devil. 

What a terrible thing to say! But I'm not the one who said it. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the one who said it. Right from the beginning, when Eve was deceived by the serpent, the Bible tells us that it was the devil speaking through the serpent. So the original sin put us in league with the devil. Jesus said to some people, "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires" (John 8:44). 

Elsewhere the Bible says, "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Such people are "children of the devil" (1 John 3:10). "The whole world lies in the power of the evil one. (1 John 5:19). Scripture speaks of "following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons
of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2). The devil is also called Satan. He is the chief enemy of God. Satan is the leader of all the rebel angels and wicked spirits. The most horrifying thing about the devil is that we have gone along with him in our sin. We are in bondage to him.

Jesus compares Satan to a bully, a strong man who holds his castle and keeps everything locked in his castle until someone stronger can come along and bind him and take what he's been holding (Matthew 12:29). Sin is so terrible because it puts us under the dominion and bondage of Satan himself. And only a power even greater than Satan can set us free from him. That is not a power you or I have. Only the power of God himself can free us from Satan. How bad is sin? It puts us in league with the devil and under the dominion of the devil. 

7. Darkness

Closely connected to devilry is darkness. "The god of this world [the devil] has blinded the minds of
the unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (2 Corinthains 4:4) Scripture speaks of sin as darkness countless times. Here are just a few examples. The Bible talks about "the domain of darkness" (Colossians 1:13). That is Satan's domain, the domain of being blind to all that is good and of God.

God's Word tells Christians, "At one time you were darkness" (Ephesians 5:8). It doesn't just say you were in darkness but that you were darkness. Jesus says that people "loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3:19). Sin not only puts you in darkness, it turns you into darkness and puts you in love with darkness. Can anything be worse than to love sin's darkness?

Scripture says, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them" (1 Corinthians 2:14). When you are in sin and unredeemed, without the Spirit of God in you, you can't see the truth. You can't believe in God as he really is.

The Bible says of people who are great thinkers and scholars, "Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools... They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised" (Romans 1:21-25). God gave them over to a dark mind. 

Darkness is one of the terrible things about sin: the inability to see God, to see his hand at work, to listen to His word and have it make sense to us. When we are trapped in sin's darkness, the Bible will seem like stupidity, and God will seem unreal or like an offense to us. We can only fumble around in darkness and confusion. As the prophet Isaiah put it, "We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes. (Isaiah 59:10)

8. Damnation

Sin's horror leads to damnation. On the last day, Jesus will say to the unsaved, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41). Those are the words of Jesus Christ himself. Do not be deceived by the liars among us who say that everybody will be saved. They are liars. Nobody in the Scripture speaks of hell more than the Son of God, the Son of love. Jesus warns that a day is coming when he will say, "Depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire. It was prepared for the devil and his angels, but you'll be going there too." That's how terrible sin is. If you're in league with the devil, you end up in hell with the devil.

"They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Sin separates us from God, and damnation makes that separation permanent and infinite. Those in hell will never again taste the good things of God. In our lives on earth, even though we're sinners, the Lord still sends many good things into our lives, and he even preserves some good things in our character. But when damnation comes, all good around us is withdrawn, and all that remained in us that was somewhat good will be completely gone and rotted away. 

The book of Revelation warns, "If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:15). This is the final doom, the destiny, the damnation, of those who remain in their sin, apart from God's salvation. 

9. Despair

When that is our condition, what else is there but despair? "When the wicked dies, his hope will
perish" (Proverbs 11:7).  Scripture describes our condition as weak, ungodly, sinners, under God's wrath, enemies of God (Romans 5:6-10). When you are an enemy of God, when God says, "I am against you," how can there be any hope? 

Without Christ, says the Bible, we were "without hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:11). What a terrible phrase! Trapped in sin, headed for hell, apart from God's grace, sinners can only be described as people of despair, "who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

10. Debt

Another picture of sin is debt: something we owe and are unable to pay. When somebody sins, somebody pays. Even some of the Eastern religions have some idea of this in the concept of karma: if you have done wrong, then you're going to pay for it, either in this life or in some other life or in a whole bunch of different lives. The Bible doesn't teach karma or reincarnation into many lives, but it does teach that when somebody sins, somebody is going to pay.

"Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit" (Psalm 49:7-9). You cannot be saved from the pit because you cannot pay the price. It is too costly. It is never enough. The debt is too big. "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22). That's what God's Word says. 

In one of Jesus' stories, he compared sin to a debt of 10,000 talents (Matthew 18:24). 10,000 talents was equal to 100 million days' wages, which adds up to about 3,500 lifetimes--and that's assuming that no interest would be charged, or that he wouldn't incur any additional debt. But the fact of the matter is, we're adding more debt every day by our sins. Even the damned in hell will be raging against God and adding to their debt constantly.

So you can see why people who believe in karma and reincarnation and all those lifetimes are thinking, "It's going to take a long time to pay off this terrible debt." But even 3,500 lifetimes wouldn't be enough. Scripture teaches that you can never pay that debt off, and you don't get all kinds of lifetimes. Hell is the place where people with the unpayable debt of sin go. Even if the debtor had enough lifetimes to cover the original debt, the interest would be so big that the debt would get larger, and additional sins would increase the debt even more. No matter how much you work, you'll never pay the debt. 

Jesus says our sin is like that debt. The price of what we owe God is beyond calculation. If there's any hope at all of paying the debt, it won't be in our trying harder or working harder or doing a few more good deeds. Our only hope is if the king would somehow absorb the loss himself and cancel the debt.

11. Distance

Another picture of sin in the Bible is distance, a terrible distance that opens up between us and God. "Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God" (Isaiah 59:2). "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Falling short: that's what sin is. We fall short of the glory of God, not by a couple of inches, not by a couple of feet, but by an infinite distance. 

Sin puts an uncrossable distance between us and God. It separates us from God by a distance far greater than any ocean. If we know our distance from God, then we can't find comfort in thinking that we can save ourselves. 

We also can't find comfort in comparing ourselves to others. When we compare ourselves to others, we'll see some differences in our ability to do good, or differences in how many sins we've committed. Those differences may be real, but from the perspective that matters, God's perspective, those differences make no difference. "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Your efforts may take you just a little bit further than the next person. But you still fall far short of the glory of God.

Think of being stranded out in the middle of the ocean. One person can't swim at all. If he's stranded in the middle of the ocean, he'll go down like a rock and drown. Another person knows how to dog paddle a little bit. He's a better swimmer than the person who can't swim at all. But if he's stranded in the middle of the ocean, he's eventually going to sink and drown. The third person is a superb swimmer, a certified lifeguard. But if he's stranded in the middle of the ocean, he's going to drown. When you're stranded in the middle of the ocean, you don't need swimming lessons. You need a ship!

When we consider the terrible distance between sinners and God's glory, we sinners don't need  swimming lessons. We need a ship to rescue us. We need God to provide a way. There's no use comparing ourselves to others or trying to save ourselves . It doesn't matter how well we can swim. We cannot swim the ocean. We cannot cover the distance by which we fall short of the glory of God. 

12. Deadness

The final biblical picture of sin that we're going to look at is this: sin is deadness. "You were dead in your transgressions and sins… we were dead in our trespasses” (Ephesians 2:1, 5). Dead! Dead! If you didn't heart it the first time or the second time, here's a third: "A person who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6). Sin as deadness--what an awful picture of our condition in sin!

Not everybody is equally decayed, but all are equally dead in sin, apart from rebirth. We see again why it makes no difference to compare ourselves to other sinners. Without Christ, all are dead in sin, and one dead person is no less dead than another. One corpse may be in a little better condition than another, but so what? Dead is dead!

A person who dies of a sudden heart attack and whose body still looks okay is no less dead than a person whose body is mangled in a car crash. A person whose dead body has barely begun to rot is no less dead than someone whose body has rotted away leaving only a skeleton. One dead body may look better than another, but dead is dead. There are degrees of decay, but not degrees of deadness. People in sin are dead.

You might protest that lots of people without Christ still have a lot of good in them. And you might wonder how anybody can say such people are spiritually dead. But we've just seen the answer to that. The degree of decay and corruption may differ from person to person. Some are utterly rotten and do all sorts of horrible things. Others look okay and don't seem all that bad. But all are equally dead in sin, equally unable to live forever in God's presence, equally helpless to make themselves alive and healthy again. If we're ever to have life, it will have to be a life that comes from outside us. 

Facing facts

So how serious is sin? VERY! Disobedience, disease, depravity, division, disaster, devilry, darkness, damnation, despair, debt, distance, deadness. We need to face these facts about sin because without knowing this bad news, we'll never understand the good news. This 12-D picture of sin is horrifying and none of us likes to hear it. But it's the truth. It comes straight from the pages of the Bible, straight from the mouth of God himself.

There is no other view of life, no other religion, that takes such a grim view of human potential and possibilities. Christianity is the most pessimistic of all religions. However, Christianity is also the most optimistic of all religions because it bases everything, not on our potential and possibilities, but on the power of God to save us. Sin is a 100% disaster, but Jesus is a 100% Savior.

There was a bumper sticker awhile back that said: "Jesus is the answer." Then another bumper sticker came along: "If Jesus is the answer, what's the question?" We need to know what the question is before we can see how Jesus is the answer. To know what the question is, we need to know how serious sin is. Once we've grasped the dreadful seriousness of sin, we may then see the wonder and glory of the Savior.

One of the great challenges to evangelism today is that people do not understand the nature and depth of their sin--and many pastors and evangelists aren't willing to tell them. People will never truly embrace the Savior and his wondrous salvation if they do not know they need him in the first place. When people know the seriousness of sin in its many dimensions, then things may begin to click as they hear the gospel of salvation in Christ.

Undoing the damage

Learning in detail about sin can help us grasp in greater detail the many aspects of what Jesus has done to undo the damage of of sin. This is a matter for ongoing studying of the good news and the doctrines of salvation, and I don't have time here to go into much detail. But I'll quickly race through key points.

1. Disobedience     Justification
2. Disease               Healing
3. Depravity            Sanctification
4. Division               Unity
5. Disaster               Re-creation
6. Devilry                 Deliverance
7. Darkness             Illumination
8. Damnation          Salvation
9. Despair                Hope
10. Debt                  Redemption
11. Distance            Reconciliation
12. Deadness          Regeneration

1. Disobedience is one dreadful thing about sin. But justification, or being declared right or obedient in God's sight, is one of the benefits of salvation. Jesus obeyed perfectly. "Just as [Adam's] one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [of Jesus] resulted in justification and life for all people." Jesus' perfect obedience undoes our disobedience and brings justification for every believer. 

2. Sin is a disease. But Jesus Christ is the great physician who brings healing to our souls, and resurrection in life and eternally healing to our bodies. 

3. Sin is depravity, pollution, filth. Salvation brings sanctification, renewal and cleansing and purification of our lives gradually, until finally we stand without spot in the assembly of God's elect.

4. Sin brings division. Jesus Christ brings unity: unity within ourselves as he unites our heart to focus on God; unity in our relationships so that we don't blame others but take responsibility for ourselves; and racial unity unity among different groups of people.

5. The disaster of sin is counteracted by God's re-creation not only of humanity but of the whole world. The whole creation is groaning in its bondage to decay, but it's looking forward to the glorious redemption of the children of God. That's what Romans 8 teaches. That's another reason why salvation is such good news: Christ un-does the disaster and will bring the created world to its glorious destiny.

6. The terrible devilry of being in league with Satan, being ruled and dominated by him, is counteracted by deliverance. Jesus Christ has bound the strong man, the bully, the devil. He has cast Satan down. He has set free all who trust in Him for their salvation. He triumphed over the rulers and authorities on the cross and in the resurrection. That's might not come as very good news unless you knew that you were a slave and under the bondage of the devil in the first place. And so Jesus just un-does the damage of sin that what shows him to be such a tremendous savior. 

7. The darkness is counteracted by the light. Jesus says, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). The Holy Spirit brings illumination to the heart and to the Scriptures, so that what seemed dim and unbelievable suddenly makes perfect sense as God illuminates us.

8. Instead of damnation, Christ brings salvation. "God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish [shall not be damned], but shall have eternal life" (John 3:16).

9. Instead of despair, Christ brings hope. Hope is not just wishful thinking or thinking something good might possibly happen. Hope is a certain confidence. It is eager anticipation of what we know is coming. It is assurance that we are headed for glory with Jesus Christ. 

10. Sin brings debt that we could never pay in a million years, or in a million lifetimes, but the debt that cannot be paid by us has been paid by Jesus. That's what the word redemption is all about. To redeem is to pay the price. When Jesus had completed his suffering on the cross, he said, "It is finished" (John 19:30). "Finished" is the English for the Greek word tetelestai. This word was often written on the backside of a bill after a debt was paid in full. Redemption--what great good news!

11. The distance, the infinite gap between us and God, has been removed. We're brought close to God  through reconciliation. Sin, that terrible thing that separates us and distances us from God, is removed by Jesus Christ, and we can come near into the Father's presence.

12. As for our deadness, we cannot respond to God, we cannot make ourselves alive on our own, but regeneration, rebirth, makes us spiritually alive. "To as many as believed on him, he gave the power to become children of God" (John 1:12). Jesus says, "You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you are born again. You cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you're born of water and the Spirit. You must be born again" (John 3:3-9). The Holy Spirit makes dead people alive through faith in Jesus, giving us the life of Jesus through regeneration, rebirth, being born again.

All of these statements of the gospel make no sense unless we know how serious sin is.