One of the issues that should never have cropped up in the Holy Scriptures, or in christian life, is sin. Why?

Because God cannot tolerate sin. Which is why He is angry with the wicked everyday, Ps. 7:11. As far as God is concerned disobedience is not just sin, it amounts to rebellion against Him. Which is why the thoughts and actions of Lucifer, the privileged and influential archangel, the author of the first coup, was driven out of heaven, Lk. 10:18.

Here on earth Adam and Eve made the wrong choice, acting out satan’s script rather than God’s. They became overnight refugees, a consequence of their expulsion from their comfortable palace – the Garden of Eden.

For satan, the grandmaster of sin, in both heaven and earth, and Adam and Eve, his earthly victims, there was no room for repentance. God simply turned His back against these rebels as He did to Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5:1-10.

Yet there are many circumstances when the love and compassion in the heart of God prevails against the harsh judgement which should fall on the sinner, if he genuinely repents, Jeremiah 9:23-24.  Were human judges to preside over the case of the robber on the cross he would never have benefitted from the amnesty which Jesus granted him, so generously, especially as many, if not all his victims on earth were still counting their losses, Lk. 23:39-43. To the world of his time he had been tried and justly convicted for his crimes. But to heaven he has received forgiveness on account of his repentance, at the very last minute, while his fellow-traveller in crime remained adamant. His own words of condemnation and mockery, directed at Jesus the innocent, destined him for eternal damnation. For a person like this there is no reprieve.

It must be made clear, at this point, that sin is not limited to rebellion or robbery. There are other dimensions. The great man of God, David, the youth who saved Israel from a shameful defeat in the hands of their enemies, the Philistines, led by the formidable Goliath, was a rising star in God’s kingdom, I Sam. 17:21-26, 45-47. 

God honoured him by appointing him the second king of Israel even while Saul, the reigning monarch, was still on the throne. While Saul attempted to kill him twice, even when David was on the run, he resisted the temptation to take a revenge, twice, while the life of Saul was in his hands. He would not touch God’s anointed, I Sam. 24:3-6, I Sam. 26:5-9.

But his walk with God suffered a severe setback when he committed adultery and murder. He broke the Law, not a law made by man, but the law made by God Himself for the nation of Israel and all believing Israelites by faith, Ex. 20:13-14.

When the punishment came it was in the form of a rain of curses, very severe although, in His mercy, God set a boundary – David would be preserved even though death was his portion, 2 Sam. 12:9-14.

The curses took full effect and David the beloved of God and his family suffered. By the time he composed Psalm 51 he had become an orphan as God, His Father, Friend and Protector from his youth, had abandoned him. He knew that he had to confess his sins fully, ask for forgiveness, and reunion with his Lord and Saviour. He did in a way that moved the hearty of God. His repentance was genuine. 

Indeed David’s “Song of Deliverance”, recorded in 2 Sam. 22, is a clear indication that his relationship with God had been restored. His wilderness experience was over, verses 7, 36, 47-51.

Sometimes it is not an individual but a whole community, or a nation, that lives in sin. Nineveh was a gentile city, full of wickedness.  God had had enough. He sent Jonah to inform its king and subjects that destruction awaited them, a message Jonah delivered with finality, Jonah 3:4. Contrary to Jonah’s expectation the people repented. God, the Merciful, seeing the genuineness of their hearts and actions decided to forgive them, Jonah 3:6-10.

Jonah was upset but that did not change anything. The people of Nineveh had repented and God, the God that Jonah had acknowledged as “a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness …” had forgiven them, Jonah 4:2

So God forgives a repentant sinner. And when He does He blots out the memory of the sin, Isaiah 43:25. If the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had repented, grievous as their sins were, God the merciful would, most probably, have forgiven them. But they had put themselves beyond redemption. Not even Lot’s valiant efforts could persuade their agents to change their mind, Gen. 19:1-9.

Certainly there is a profitable road, leading from sin to repentance and from repentance to forgiveness.

The alternative, a progression from sin to greater sin. And from sin, to damnation, Rom. 6:16.