Stop Taking Sin So Lightly

Faced with Sin

There are some people who take sin lightly—it's kind of a trendy thing today. There are lots of churches and lots of churchgoers who are never really confronted by the wretchedness of their own hearts and the sinfulness of their own sin.

You cannot take sin lightly if you read Isaiah 53, because it was your sin and my sin that put Christ on the cross. How can you treat lightly what he suffered?

If you look at the cross, you understand the sinfulness of sin.

He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised or crushed for our iniquities. The divine chastening, the wrath of God was put on him for our well-being. All we, like sheep, have gone astray, but God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. How can that be a light thing?

Your Sin in Fullness

All your sins—if you put your trust in Christ—were laid on Jesus Christ. In those hours of darkness on the cross, after which he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” he absorbed all the divine wrath, all the sins of all the people who would ever believe through all of human history.

You might say, “How could he have possibly have absorbed all the wrath for all the sins of all those people?” It’s because he was an infinite person. He could absorb an infinite amount of divine fury. That’s why everything went black and dark for those hours.

If you look at the cross, you understand the sinfulness of sin. You can’t make light of it when you see it in that fashion.

John MacArthur is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where he has served since 1969. He is known around the world for his verse-by-verse expository preaching and his pulpit ministry via his daily radio program, Grace to You. He has also written or edited nearly four hundred books and study guides. MacArthur is chancellor emeritus of the Master’s Seminary and Master’s University. He and his wife, Patricia, live in Southern California and have four grown children.