So Much Sin, So Much Grace
Have you contemplated how much God is sinned against? This question has been swimming around my head over the past several months. My contemplation has had less to do with a morbid fascination over how sinful I am and more to do with God’s forbearance related to his creation and his children.
According to an article I read recently on the UN’s website, the world’s population is more than three times larger than in the mid-twentieth century. The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, adding 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998. And they project that another 2 billion people will be added in the next 30 years.
Stop and consider for a moment what that means in relation to mankind and sin. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume each person in the current world population sins 5 times a day. I think it is probably much higher than that, but to do some math (and who doesn’t love a good math problem), we must start somewhere.
Unless I made a calculation error, humans collectively sin 40 billion times a day and that number will only grow larger as the population grows. That volume of sin is difficult to conceptualize, isn’t it? So let me try to help you. If you as an individual sinned every second of every day for 1268 years straight, you would have sinned a little less than 40 billion times. Ok, that really didn’t help did it 😊. That’s what has been boggling my mind.
Now think about what this means when you try to quantify all the sinful acts committed in the world during Jesus’s time on the earth, or worse, since the fall of man. Meditate on it a bit.
Your head hurts. Your heart hurts more.
Now read Ephesians 2:4-8. Does it read a bit differently? Perhaps more humbling and awe-inspiring?
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our [billions upon billions of] trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
If you are in Christ, you have every reason for your heart to turn from hurting to rejoicing and your humble disposition over sin to one of exalting and worshiping Jesus. Why? Because the immeasurable body of sin we have already committed and will commit has been overwhelmed by the flood of God’s immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus! What a glorious and encouraging thought!
Now imagine 8 billion people praising God 5 times a day. That math makes my head hurt too, but not my heart. It sounds heavenly.
Pastor Brad
