The Brutality of Life, the Evil of Sin and the Victory of Christ

LIFE IS BRUTAL!  Look around you and you will see what I mean.  People die everyday.  Inflation is driving up the cost of everything.  Gas is at record prices.  Sickness and disease are rampant.  There is a certain brutality to life that makes us all feel like quitting sometimes.  Many do, and take their own lives as a consequence of the despair that they feel.  I have never understood why a person would committ suicide, but it happens everyday.  Have you been keeping track of the news?  Every time I see George Zimmerman's face and realize that he is still a free man, I get angry all over again.  But in the world that we live in, sometimes the "bad" get the rewards and the "good" get stepped on. 

Have you ever wondered why that is?  Have you ever wondered why the bible says that it rains on the "just and the unjust"?  Why is it that nothing seems in order?  There is a reason for it, and it is very simple if you are ok with simple answers.  The reason that the world is topsy turvy is because of sin.  Sin, originated with Satan.  When he rebelled against God because of his pride, his primary mission became to get as many as possible to rebel against God as well.  In a sense, sin is a rebellion against the perfection that God created.  Sin is evil.  If we define evil as the absence of good, and God is good and the source of all goodness and there is NO sin in God, then sin, because it is apart from God, is evil.  Sin is the reason that things are out of order.  It has ruined the perfection that God initially intended and has thrown the balance of the natural world off.  Look around you and tell me that the world is not out of order.  I saw an advertisement for a divorce ring the other day!  It was a heart, broken in two with diamonds coming down the split...who does that?  Who celebrates divorce?  A fallen world does.  Lust dominates over love.  Every commercial has some scantily clad woman trying to sell me a fantasy and a product at the same time.  Unnatural affections are now becoming the norm because if you're against that kind of thing, you are being intolerant.  Has this not been the decade of homosexual decadence?  Now, people march for "gay" rights as if being "gay" is something that anyone has a "right" to do!  Sure, it is your own life but that does not make it acceptable in the sight of God.  Evil trumps good.  Insider trading makes people at the top rich and the people at the bottom and in the middle suffer for it- and what do they say?  "You all are envious of us because we're rich".  In reality the "rich" whose bank accounts boast of large sums of cash, they are the most bankrupt of all because many of them love money more than they love God and will do anything to acquire more.  Bad things happen to good people and seemingly good things happen to bad people.  We often wonder why this is so.  Why did so-and-so develop cancer when there are scores of others that deserve cancer.  Why did Mrs. So-and-So get all of her retirement stolen by a greedy investor, and why is the investor not in prison for doing it?  This reminds me of the parable of Lazarus the beggar who, when he died went to be in Abraham's bosom while the rich man that scorned him during life went to Hades and was told, "you had your good things while you were living..."  Evil people live for today with no thought for tomorrow and therefore their pleasure is in earthly, worldly things.  Those that are believers in Christ and that have trusted Him with their lives have to understand that the "good" for us may not always come to us on this side of eternity. 


Sin is evil and sin's consequence is death.  Death seems to have the upper hand these days.  1 Cor 15:56 says the sting of death is sin.  Death would not exist if it were not for sin.  Death's sting is in sin's venom.  Death's power rests in this:  If sin kills anyone (Romans 6:23) apart from Christ, they are eternally doomed!  We were all pricked by the stinger of sin (Psalm 51:5) and had it's venom coursing through our veins, until Calvary!  Calvary is the only solution, the only way to remove sins venom from our bloodstream and replace it with the life-giving blood of Christ.

Jesus tells the believer on many occasions that life will not be a cake-walk.   In John 16:33 he says quite matter-of-factly, "in this world you will have tribulation...but be of good courage..."  How can Jesus tell me to be of good courage living in a brutal world marred by the effects of sin?  How can I be of good courage living in a world that is overwhelmingly evil?  Maybe I should finish this passage to answer that question.  "for I have overcome the world".  Jesus says here that he has deprived the world of its power...and this is prior to the cross.  How can that be?  Well, the cross of Calvary was Christ's atoning sacrifice for sin.  His blood is necessary for the remission of sin and for the Father's forgiveness of man.  His blood is necessary to make any sinful man that trusts Jesus with his life and surrenders to Him, righteous in the sight of God.   Sin was taken care of at Calvary, but the overcoming power of Jesus existed just as He did, from eternity.  Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world, before time began and therefore the verb overcome in John 16:33 (Gk νενίκηκα) has even more significance.  It is written in the perfect tense (completed action whose consequences continue) and therefore we can say that not only did Jesus overcome the world from eternity, His overcoming still continues!  Now for the believer, since Christ overcame the world and He abides in us as we abide in Him, we can make the statement with confidence that the One that is within me is greater than the one that is within the world! 

Calvary took the sting out of death because at Calvary, death was put on notice that its days were numbered.  Calvary also gave the one that would believe and trust Jesus with their life, the ability to escape the power of sin and the penalty of sin, which is death.  On the third day after Christ's death at Calvary, that notice was comlpeted and the victory over death was won.  Christ's resurrection tells us that death could not hold Him and because we are in Him it cannot hold us  (see Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 15).  We are no longer slaves to the uncertainty of what happens after death (Hebrews 2:14) but we are now overcomers through the One that overcame!  Yes, life is brutal and sin is evil but through Jesus Christ, I no longer reside in the realm of sin and this life is merely a transition for the life to come.  The one that endures until death will receive the crown of life.  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ for giving all believers this victory.  Reflect on this as you ponder what the resurrection really means.  The Resurrection is the central tenet of Christianity and without it, everything else is in vain.  I thank God that Jesus did not stay dead but was obedient to the command that he received from the Father to get up (John 10:18).  Thank you Jesus for victory over sin and death, thank you for OVERCOMING!