When we harbor sin (convicted but unconfessed or unrepentant), we have chosen to ‘disconnect’ from intimacy with God. I can live amongst my neighbors, but still be seperated from them because there is no intentional human intimacy toward relationship. “God is everywhere” – but our responses to His ever pursuing love will determine whether we live in intimacy with Him or choose to be seperated from Him.
Jesus finally took care of the ‘sin problem’ when He became sin for us. Intimacy is immediately and finally available through Him. I believe the only sin that separates us from intimacy with God is to reject Jesus. That appears to be the only sin that is unforgivable. “In regard to sin, because men do not believe in(to) me” -John 16:9
If it’s true, then we are earning the right to have a relationship with Him.
Where is Jesus in that?
Most of Jesus’ relating was with sinners, not those who were earning it. (“If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father” or something like that). Jesus is the best picture of God we have. Alpha and Omega.
PS. That YLT translation brings to light an interesting perspective.
I believe Rom 8:35-39 may apply… nothing can separate me from the love of God.
When I rule my life by going my selfish way (sin… like the prodigal son) I can separate myself from the kingdom of God… but if God is all powerful He has the ability to reach out to us even when we are sinners…. while we were sinners, Christ took our sins to the cross.
It’s not like sin creates a Gulf that God himself can not cross to reach out to sinners… but when we sin we move in a different direction than where God wants us.
Sin separates us from God?
True – when I sin I separate myself from God’s ways.
False – God can always reach out to me.
… I gotta look into this more… Now I may have to change my blog’s ‘what I believe’ page.
God is always at work in humanity to bring them back into relationship through the work of Jesus Christ.
Read 1 Corinthians 13 as from God to his Eikons and you get a better picture of the heart of God … love always believes, always hopes, always endures … it never fails.
Even those who have ignored or turned away cannot escape the Hound of Heaven, as C.S. Lewis experienced.
Sin has upset the relationship always will … but has not seperated me from God.
My last name is Randall – my son is Brad Randall, his behaviour (and quite often mine) sometimes upsets the relationship of father and son BUT he will always be a Randall.
Food for thought: How does one explain Paul’s writings in Romans 5:12, 14, 17 & 21?
“Death’ literally means ‘separation’. One never ceases to exist. Thus, I conclude; Life is conscious existance in intimate communion with God. Death is conscious existance separated from intimacy with God.
What is the cause of that separation? “Sin”.
It is a basic and fundamental doctrine of Christian orthodoxy according to scripture from Genesis (2:17) to Revelation (20:14).
I think sin separates us from God – but it doesn’t separate Him from us.
If I make my bed in hell – He is there (Psalm 139:8)
I probably won’t sense Him there however. In fact – I’ll probably think He’s a million miles away from me – but He’s not – He’s right there next to us all the time.
That’s what faith is all about – I’m pretty far from perfect – and I do some pretty stupid things – and most of the time – I can’t see Him very well – and yet I believe that He’s bigger than all my sin – and that He is right there – even in the middle of all of my humanness and insanity. It’s Him who bridged (bridges) the sin gap between us – It’s Him who enables and empowers me to stand before Him – blameless. (Jude 1:24)
So does sin really separate us? B.C. YES Thru faith in Jesus Christ? NO.
Good answers here. I guess the answer depends on what you mean by “separates”. As believers we are never separated at a heart level but we are often disconnected at a head level.. if that makes sense.
Yes. He lived in the far country away from his father.
and
No. The father wanted the relationship that the son initially did not and was always welcoming his return.
I think the issue with this is we generally put the burden of the separating on God. We understand ‘holiness’ as God’s rigid standards not to associate with the riffraff. We contrast holiness with his love–putting these two in opposition.
God’s holiness is God’s love. God sent his son into this world, and sent the Spirit into this world. The Holy Spirit. God seeks after us, runs after us. Going to us where we are at.
Sin separates us only as much as we are seeking an identity apart from God. Sin is an attempt to falsely satisfy or define our identity. We are the ones doing the separating. We take God’s gift of life–our inheritance–and run off to the far country, spoiling our inheritance. Even if we think we have lost all, we are welcomed back.
But, we have to be at the point where we no longer insist on the separation. We have to accept God’s gracious gift of presence and life. He is welcoming. We are refusing.
So we are separate. It is a judgment we foolishly apply to ourselves, and so suffer the consequences of separateness in our dogged insistence to continue to attempt to define ourselves apart from God. If we do not participate with he who is life, we encounter death. Judgment comes, though not because God wanted it this way, he was always running after us–we looked away.
If we are participants with God sin still has this effect–grieving the Spirit who is the presence of God’s life with us. We feel the weight of our attempts to define ourselves apart from God, and we feel the taste, again, of the separateness that we are pursuing. God lets us turn away, though he is always seeking and pursuing our return.
Sin has a dis-integrative impact on all relationships. It is not a stark and absolute break, but the impact is there. The story of sin entering our world demonstrates that sin dis-integrates on many levels, namely: relationship with God, relationship with each other, relationship to ourselves and even relationship to Creation. However, the whole work of God has been moving each of these towards reconciliation and renewal.
My first thoughts stray to John 3. I like the way John sees things.
Joh 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
Joh 3:21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
The temptation of sin leads us in to darkness. God is light and if we choose the darkness over the light we will flee from God. So our sin does lead towards separation, but not in the sense that God is leaving us.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 8). Jesus has taken up residence in our life. Sin does not separate us from God.
This whole separation theory also figures predominantly in the crucifixion when supposedly God turns his face away from Jesus. I think that that nothing could be further from the truth. God (Father, Son, & Spirit) bore the full brunt of our sin, in the face. He faced the sin of the world at the cross and is totally with us in our present sin. If we take the time to read the whole Psalm that Jesus references on the cross, we see that the first line is a statement of feeling separation but that the reality is the continuing presence of God in the midst of our pain.
God deals with our sin, not by separating himself from us, but by loving us through the process of sin, despair, and reconciliation. When my dog was bad we used to open the door and express our displeasure by commanding “OUT!”. God however, welcomes us into his lap in the midst of our sin. There is no shame, just love and gentle transformation.
Love is able to transform us but shame and separation keeps us enslaved to performance standards where we fear being sent out to the dog house. Does God send us to the dog house when we sin? I don’t think so.
As I read all these responses I am reminded of one of my favorite verses, 2 Cor. 5:21 – He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
How can sin be the reason for the separation now that God Himself (through Christ) has taken on sin?
I was taught the whole “we are separated from God by our sin” theology, but the more I experience God’s grace in my life, the more I wonder if we’ve misinterpreted some of what we read in the Bible.
False- If it were true, no one would come to know Jesus. He draws us to Himself while in the thick of it:)
Even in the OT, God is constantly inviting people to come to him. A king who burns his own children in sacrifice to other gods is invited by God through the prophet, to turn back to God, with the promise that if he does, He will be with him.
His mercy is so ‘wreckless’ it’s almost offensive isn’t it? :)
ps…
If we are separated from God when we sin, how is it that His kindness leads us to repentance? How would we be able to respond to His kindness? and what could we do to restore our relationship with Him without an open door/invitaion.
If sin separates us from God, then ‘not sinning’ would keep us near Him. But it’s pretty clear than no one can say they have no sin, so if the sin=separation thing is true, then we’re all separated, and always will be. That’s not good news.
I think there seems to be a misunderstanding of what is “separated” here.
Sin separates us from God, meaning that we can no longer bridge the gap. That does not mean that God cannot. That is the whole point of the Incarnation. God does we cannot do. Though made in His image, we attempted to “return the favor” as someone once put it. We have “left the Garden” (or run away as fast we could) to go do our own thing, and as finite creatures, we are no longer capable of finding our way back. Baxter has an interesting post on this right now as well.
Though man cannot make himself god (“For though you are as gods, you will die as mortals”), God can make Himself Man. And He has.
“How then can anyone be saved?”
“What is impossible with man, is possible with God.”
(John)
False – St Augustine brought in the whole original sin thing with its chasm between us and the Divine – basically because he had been such a playboy pre conversion.Meister Eckhart the 12th century Catholic mysic believed the Divine spark is within us all awaiting the ‘birth’ of the Word within in.In Aramaic sin and evil mean brokenness, something thats non functional and happening out of its season.Wakening up to the Presence within seems to be what conversion is – at least in my experience .
Holy Spirit is Holy Breath.He fans the spark into a flame – an awakening from a life of delusional sleep.Think of a pilot light and a turned on gas supply to a gas heater. The Spirit’s work is the inbraking to our consciousness. I have recently come across the work of Italian Psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli.He was a disciple of Jung but allowed for a Transpersonal Self breaking into our consciousness.I believe this Transpersonal Self is indeed the Spirit who brings illumination,awareness and a sense of unity with the Divine.Get his book Transpersonal Development – it makes for very interesting reading for charismatic Christians.
hmmmm. I don’t actually walk around answering “Charismatic” to people who ask me what I believe, do you?
“I’m a follower of Jesus” – if more is asked, “The Messiah of God, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world and works in INTERSESSION for those who believe.”
Are Christians gnostics? Far from it! “My words are spirit” but only to “those who DO the will of My Father in heaven” does Jesus call friend – what is the work of God? “To believe in the One Whom He has sent”
Abbe Faria says, “To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned.” The difference is in depth, in application, in LIFE itself – and seeing as Jesus is true Life, it is His bread I choose to eat, not Assagioli’s.
James any mystical experience is ‘gnostic’ by its very nature.
Of course such an experience will influence one’s behaviour towards others – doing the will of Yeshua’s Father is to love people unconditionally as He loves them.Assagioli as far as I know wasn’t a baker that made bread or asked people to put his thoughts on the same basis as Christ’s.He has just provided a psychological model that helps experience of the Spirit more uynderstandable to the ordinary guy in the street who is versed in our religious buzz words.I too am a follower of Jesus but not of what is passed as his religion.We can have a chat about it if we both make it to the next Aeon!!!
fair ’nuff.
not too interested in “gnostism” but I am interested in knowing Him. what passes as His religion may be useful to His kingdom, or it may not. We are told to pray, by the Lord of the Harvest, for workers of the harvest. Just because we may not all agree doesn’t actually mean we are all wrong (or right) God loves variety. If we wish to see His works or experience His wonder, “mysticism” or whatever, we may be given that blessing or not – but that is not the goal. It is to do His works rather than see them. to know Christ, to believe on Him, “[we] must risk in faith before [we] know by experience.”
kingdom grace 
Isaiah 59:2
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” – Isaiah 59:2 NIV
Sin separates us from God. True?
God will not hear us. True?
“But your iniquities have been separating Between you and your God, And your sins have hidden The Presence from you — from hearing.” Isaiah 59:2 YLT
,i.Young’s Literal possesses a wonderful power to pry us out of our conventions.
Tom
When we harbor sin (convicted but unconfessed or unrepentant), we have chosen to ‘disconnect’ from intimacy with God. I can live amongst my neighbors, but still be seperated from them because there is no intentional human intimacy toward relationship. “God is everywhere” – but our responses to His ever pursuing love will determine whether we live in intimacy with Him or choose to be seperated from Him.
Jesus finally took care of the ‘sin problem’ when He became sin for us. Intimacy is immediately and finally available through Him. I believe the only sin that separates us from intimacy with God is to reject Jesus. That appears to be the only sin that is unforgivable. “In regard to sin, because men do not believe in(to) me” -John 16:9
If it’s true, then we are earning the right to have a relationship with Him.
Where is Jesus in that?
Most of Jesus’ relating was with sinners, not those who were earning it. (“If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father” or something like that). Jesus is the best picture of God we have. Alpha and Omega.
PS. That YLT translation brings to light an interesting perspective.
Hmmm… your making me think on this one…
I believe Rom 8:35-39 may apply… nothing can separate me from the love of God.
When I rule my life by going my selfish way (sin… like the prodigal son) I can separate myself from the kingdom of God… but if God is all powerful He has the ability to reach out to us even when we are sinners…. while we were sinners, Christ took our sins to the cross.
It’s not like sin creates a Gulf that God himself can not cross to reach out to sinners… but when we sin we move in a different direction than where God wants us.
Sin separates us from God?
True – when I sin I separate myself from God’s ways.
False – God can always reach out to me.
… I gotta look into this more… Now I may have to change my blog’s ‘what I believe’ page.
wasn´t jesus the friend of sinners etc? (lk 15:1-)
You go, girl!
Gotta stick to the NT context with this question.
God is always at work in humanity to bring them back into relationship through the work of Jesus Christ.
Read 1 Corinthians 13 as from God to his Eikons and you get a better picture of the heart of God … love always believes, always hopes, always endures … it never fails.
Even those who have ignored or turned away cannot escape the Hound of Heaven, as C.S. Lewis experienced.
Sin has upset the relationship always will … but has not seperated me from God.
My last name is Randall – my son is Brad Randall, his behaviour (and quite often mine) sometimes upsets the relationship of father and son BUT he will always be a Randall.
I vote false… Sin didn’t even separate Adam & Eve from God.
Food for thought: How does one explain Paul’s writings in Romans 5:12, 14, 17 & 21?
“Death’ literally means ‘separation’. One never ceases to exist. Thus, I conclude; Life is conscious existance in intimate communion with God. Death is conscious existance separated from intimacy with God.
What is the cause of that separation? “Sin”.
It is a basic and fundamental doctrine of Christian orthodoxy according to scripture from Genesis (2:17) to Revelation (20:14).
Ken,
I hope to get a chance to write more about Romans 5 in a future post.
I think sin separates us from God – but it doesn’t separate Him from us.
If I make my bed in hell – He is there (Psalm 139:8)
I probably won’t sense Him there however. In fact – I’ll probably think He’s a million miles away from me – but He’s not – He’s right there next to us all the time.
That’s what faith is all about – I’m pretty far from perfect – and I do some pretty stupid things – and most of the time – I can’t see Him very well – and yet I believe that He’s bigger than all my sin – and that He is right there – even in the middle of all of my humanness and insanity. It’s Him who bridged (bridges) the sin gap between us – It’s Him who enables and empowers me to stand before Him – blameless. (Jude 1:24)
So does sin really separate us? B.C. YES Thru faith in Jesus Christ? NO.
Good answers here. I guess the answer depends on what you mean by “separates”. As believers we are never separated at a heart level but we are often disconnected at a head level.. if that makes sense.
Was the prodigal son separated from his father?
Yes. He lived in the far country away from his father.
and
No. The father wanted the relationship that the son initially did not and was always welcoming his return.
I think the issue with this is we generally put the burden of the separating on God. We understand ‘holiness’ as God’s rigid standards not to associate with the riffraff. We contrast holiness with his love–putting these two in opposition.
God’s holiness is God’s love. God sent his son into this world, and sent the Spirit into this world. The Holy Spirit. God seeks after us, runs after us. Going to us where we are at.
Sin separates us only as much as we are seeking an identity apart from God. Sin is an attempt to falsely satisfy or define our identity. We are the ones doing the separating. We take God’s gift of life–our inheritance–and run off to the far country, spoiling our inheritance. Even if we think we have lost all, we are welcomed back.
But, we have to be at the point where we no longer insist on the separation. We have to accept God’s gracious gift of presence and life. He is welcoming. We are refusing.
So we are separate. It is a judgment we foolishly apply to ourselves, and so suffer the consequences of separateness in our dogged insistence to continue to attempt to define ourselves apart from God. If we do not participate with he who is life, we encounter death. Judgment comes, though not because God wanted it this way, he was always running after us–we looked away.
If we are participants with God sin still has this effect–grieving the Spirit who is the presence of God’s life with us. We feel the weight of our attempts to define ourselves apart from God, and we feel the taste, again, of the separateness that we are pursuing. God lets us turn away, though he is always seeking and pursuing our return.
Sin has a dis-integrative impact on all relationships. It is not a stark and absolute break, but the impact is there. The story of sin entering our world demonstrates that sin dis-integrates on many levels, namely: relationship with God, relationship with each other, relationship to ourselves and even relationship to Creation. However, the whole work of God has been moving each of these towards reconciliation and renewal.
Great questions.
Peace,
Jamie
My first thoughts stray to John 3. I like the way John sees things.
Joh 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
Joh 3:21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
The temptation of sin leads us in to darkness. God is light and if we choose the darkness over the light we will flee from God. So our sin does lead towards separation, but not in the sense that God is leaving us.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 8). Jesus has taken up residence in our life. Sin does not separate us from God.
This whole separation theory also figures predominantly in the crucifixion when supposedly God turns his face away from Jesus. I think that that nothing could be further from the truth. God (Father, Son, & Spirit) bore the full brunt of our sin, in the face. He faced the sin of the world at the cross and is totally with us in our present sin. If we take the time to read the whole Psalm that Jesus references on the cross, we see that the first line is a statement of feeling separation but that the reality is the continuing presence of God in the midst of our pain.
God deals with our sin, not by separating himself from us, but by loving us through the process of sin, despair, and reconciliation. When my dog was bad we used to open the door and express our displeasure by commanding “OUT!”. God however, welcomes us into his lap in the midst of our sin. There is no shame, just love and gentle transformation.
Love is able to transform us but shame and separation keeps us enslaved to performance standards where we fear being sent out to the dog house. Does God send us to the dog house when we sin? I don’t think so.
I think one has to define sin first…..not as easy as it might seem at first.
Oh Grace. I love it. This is the question. But the trick is in the question.
As I read all these responses I am reminded of one of my favorite verses, 2 Cor. 5:21 – He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
How can sin be the reason for the separation now that God Himself (through Christ) has taken on sin?
I was taught the whole “we are separated from God by our sin” theology, but the more I experience God’s grace in my life, the more I wonder if we’ve misinterpreted some of what we read in the Bible.
True. But He comes looking for us, thankfully. The Finder of lost sheep.
False- If it were true, no one would come to know Jesus. He draws us to Himself while in the thick of it:)
Even in the OT, God is constantly inviting people to come to him. A king who burns his own children in sacrifice to other gods is invited by God through the prophet, to turn back to God, with the promise that if he does, He will be with him.
His mercy is so ‘wreckless’ it’s almost offensive isn’t it? :)
So, if we aren’t (weren’t) separated from God, then why does He have to draw us to Him?
‘zactly.
we wouldn’t even be able to hear the call if we were separated:) If by separation we mean, cut off.
ps…
If we are separated from God when we sin, how is it that His kindness leads us to repentance? How would we be able to respond to His kindness? and what could we do to restore our relationship with Him without an open door/invitaion.
If sin separates us from God, then ‘not sinning’ would keep us near Him. But it’s pretty clear than no one can say they have no sin, so if the sin=separation thing is true, then we’re all separated, and always will be. That’s not good news.
I think there seems to be a misunderstanding of what is “separated” here.
Sin separates us from God, meaning that we can no longer bridge the gap. That does not mean that God cannot. That is the whole point of the Incarnation. God does we cannot do. Though made in His image, we attempted to “return the favor” as someone once put it. We have “left the Garden” (or run away as fast we could) to go do our own thing, and as finite creatures, we are no longer capable of finding our way back. Baxter has an interesting post on this right now as well.
Though man cannot make himself god (“For though you are as gods, you will die as mortals”), God can make Himself Man. And He has.
“How then can anyone be saved?”
“What is impossible with man, is possible with God.”
(John)
False – St Augustine brought in the whole original sin thing with its chasm between us and the Divine – basically because he had been such a playboy pre conversion.Meister Eckhart the 12th century Catholic mysic believed the Divine spark is within us all awaiting the ‘birth’ of the Word within in.In Aramaic sin and evil mean brokenness, something thats non functional and happening out of its season.Wakening up to the Presence within seems to be what conversion is – at least in my experience .
Interesting. Where do you see the work of the Holy Spirit in this?
Ken
Holy Spirit is Holy Breath.He fans the spark into a flame – an awakening from a life of delusional sleep.Think of a pilot light and a turned on gas supply to a gas heater. The Spirit’s work is the inbraking to our consciousness. I have recently come across the work of Italian Psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli.He was a disciple of Jung but allowed for a Transpersonal Self breaking into our consciousness.I believe this Transpersonal Self is indeed the Spirit who brings illumination,awareness and a sense of unity with the Divine.Get his book Transpersonal Development – it makes for very interesting reading for charismatic Christians.
@ Charlie, sounds interesting. But, not very Christian. Rather Gnostic in fact.
Awesome conversation! Feel free to continue it either here or in the next post.
Are not all Charismatics gnostics at heart?
hmmmm. I don’t actually walk around answering “Charismatic” to people who ask me what I believe, do you?
“I’m a follower of Jesus” – if more is asked, “The Messiah of God, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world and works in INTERSESSION for those who believe.”
Are Christians gnostics? Far from it! “My words are spirit” but only to “those who DO the will of My Father in heaven” does Jesus call friend – what is the work of God? “To believe in the One Whom He has sent”
Abbe Faria says, “To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned.” The difference is in depth, in application, in LIFE itself – and seeing as Jesus is true Life, it is His bread I choose to eat, not Assagioli’s.
James any mystical experience is ‘gnostic’ by its very nature.
Of course such an experience will influence one’s behaviour towards others – doing the will of Yeshua’s Father is to love people unconditionally as He loves them.Assagioli as far as I know wasn’t a baker that made bread or asked people to put his thoughts on the same basis as Christ’s.He has just provided a psychological model that helps experience of the Spirit more uynderstandable to the ordinary guy in the street who is versed in our religious buzz words.I too am a follower of Jesus but not of what is passed as his religion.We can have a chat about it if we both make it to the next Aeon!!!
fair ’nuff.
not too interested in “gnostism” but I am interested in knowing Him. what passes as His religion may be useful to His kingdom, or it may not. We are told to pray, by the Lord of the Harvest, for workers of the harvest. Just because we may not all agree doesn’t actually mean we are all wrong (or right) God loves variety. If we wish to see His works or experience His wonder, “mysticism” or whatever, we may be given that blessing or not – but that is not the goal. It is to do His works rather than see them. to know Christ, to believe on Him, “[we] must risk in faith before [we] know by experience.”
I look forward to that chat ^_~