The Direness of Every Action
Written By Rev. Philip Stonhouse
An Essay - Written to help myself and others explore why even the smallest sin has such dire consequences and why repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is our singular hope
God's goodness holds together as a unified whole, each part reinforcing and pointing to the other aspects. This means two major things. First, when we pursue His goodness we end up pursuing it in entirety, so that understanding His mercy will also point us to His justice and His love, and His beauty. (This must be pursuing Him though and not just our own interpretation because our love will always fall short and pursuit of Him reaches beyond us). On the opposite side we can see how grievous sin is, because when we sin we rend the fabric of God's goodness in creation, which permeates and infects created goodness in its entirety. When God first created everything it was good. In Eden it was good, but when first humanity turned away from God and His goodness that single sin affected all of creation so that the work of our hands (and the creation of the earth) would become laborious and the reproduction of the flesh would become painful. In this, all of creation was corrupted so that the fullness of God's goodness was inconceivable as we ourselves were corrupted.
Luckily, God will never change and the reality of His goodness is unaffected, though this created goodness that we live in is. When we turn against Him even in a little thing, it affects the other things small and large alike. For what does it do to our understanding of love if we forgo commitment or sacrifice or sympathy. Even a simple act of pride removes us from the other person and so distorts love. So we are lost in the sin that has corrupted us; we can no longer see what goodness was meant to be. We are utterly lost in our own devices, except that God Himself who will never change has come to save us. He has entered into His creation to redeem it at its very root. Through Him and His gift, this corrupted flesh can dissolve and become spiritual, born anew in God's goodness. Death, the very punishment of sin, and the definition of our end has become a symbol of renewal. Our creation is recreated in Christ so that we can once again truly pursue God's created goodness from its source, as the source itself lives in us. He has given us the potential to live uncorrupted in His goodness, but we must persist in everything for good because again a single act can corrupt.
This is why Paul continually pushes us to do everything for mutual edification, it seems that if something is not done for building up, it is for tearing down. So we seek to be perfect and though we may never be perfect in this life, Christ has given us hope of that potential as He says we will do even greater things than Him. This is also why it is important to continually repent and turn back to the way of God, because sin corrupts and only God can redeem it. So in repentance we turn back towards perfection even in the moment of sin. We do this unless we want to sow more seeds of corruption. Instead when we walk in the one way of Christ everything we do points to God and leads them to the entirety of His goodness. This has all been written to show you the dire nature of our every action, that it must be rooted in God and His goodness. We must be children of God and thus show who our father is by living out His image with our lives. What a gift it would be to hear someone say you have God's eyes (Everything must be done for mutual edification. Seeking perfection is important, because otherwise we seek the thing that corrupts it.)
