So, how does a sin get the title of spectacular? John Piper, in his book, Spectacular Sins: and their global purpose in the glory of Christ, addresses some of the greater sins from the bible (i.e. the sell of Joseph into slavery, the fall of man, the people building the tower of Babel, and the most spectacular of all, the betrayal and murder of God's Son). One thing to always remember when analyzing The Book is that everything will ultimately point to the Cross. All those Old Testament stories point to the Cross. All of these "Spectacular Sins" point to the Cross. It's amazing and mind-boggling to wrap your mind around the idea that Adam's fall finally glorifies God through His Son as well as the other points mentioned in this book.
I got this book about a week and a half ago. It's fairly short, but with lots of depth throughout every page. So, by the end of this post, maybe I can convince you to read it.
First thing to note is that no matter what God is sovereign over everything including your greatest sin. There is nothing that He can't do. He has a plan for everything, nothing surprises Him, and even though things make no sense to us, there is a purpose for them.
One of the biggest things that I got out of reading this book was the fact that everything was created through Christ and for Him. In Colossians 1:16, Paul tells us this. (If you read verses 15-23, you get an even clearer picture of Christ's supremacy and our redemption through His sacrifice.) Even the evils of this world. As we all know, way back when, Satan was condemned into Hell for his ungrateful desire for power. And you may ask, could God not have prevented this from happening? Yes, He could. Why didn't He? It was all in His plan. Satan's fall ultimately glorifies the Son. You may have tons of questions, as do I, but we read in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that we only "know in part; [but] then I shall know fully." So, some questions seem impossible to answer while on Earth, we should not be brought down by the lack of knowledge that we have but wait until it's worthy of knowing. A big question I have is: why did all this have to happen in the first place? In other words, why couldn't God have just created things so that sin was impossible? Here we recall the idea of "free will" and how Adam had the "free will" to choose to sin. This part of spiritual doctrine is very confusing to me anyways, so I cannot attempt to answer. Piper gives a clear explanation in his book concerning this but some things still seem blurry in my comprehension of it all. All I know is that I am not going to worry about it, but just love Jesus until I can "know fully."
The third chapter in the book was my favorite. It was entitled, The Fall of Satan and the Victory of Christ. The Victory of Christ. This is such a wonderful thing to remember as we journey through life. In God's plan, the outcome would be to glorify Him. Never forget that God always rules over Satan. Even though this devil disobeys God's commands, God never loses the ability for Satan to overpower Him. Genesis 3:15 says "...he shall crush your head and you will strike his heel." At the cross, the seed of a woman (a human being) crushed Satan. Even though Satan's strikes at our heels everyday, in the end we know that Christ is victorious. We may not understand why things happened this way, but we know God is the victor and sin has no hold on us. Because of Satan's "Spectacular" sin, Christ was able to crush him with three nails and some splintery wood.
Another question you may ask would be: why didn't God just wipe out Satan when this happened? To answer this we can simply say that He wanted to glorify Himself so he allowed for Satan to be defeated.
The other "Spectacular Sins" are covered in the book. Go read it for yourself. It's deep, but very moving. You will see things like you never thought you would.
I'm not trying to turn this blog into a book review site, but I've read some very good books here lately and I want to encourage you to check them out for yourself. Instead, I'll leave you with some good music to check out. John Mark McMillan, an incredible songwriter from the good ol' North Carolina, has written a song called Death in His Grave. This song is worth listening to for it's accurate description of Christ's victory as well as the creativity of his ability to create art with his music and poetry. Such a great song. The chorus says...laid down in grief but awoke with the keys of hell on that day, the first born of the slain, the man, Jesus Christ, laid death in His grave. And then in the bridge of the song he says....He has cheated hell and seated us above the fall. In desperate places He paid our wages one time once and for all. Man, good stuff.
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