When is it sin?

After one of our recent teachings on 1 John, Lisa felt it might have been profitable to be clear, to elaborate, on those kinds of things that are sin. Where are the boundaries?

Of course, the Bible is a good place to look to find God's guidelines - particularly Matthew 5-7 (also known as The Sermon on The Mount). We could make a list.

But I find the graphic above to be most helpful. (Click on it to get a larger version.) Why? Because it reminds us that the MOST IMPORTANT thing is NOT having some mental list of rights and wrongs in our heads, no! The MOST IMPORTANT thing is our relationship with God. Are we close to Him? If we are, we will do those things He values and not want to damage our relationship by going outside of his good boundaries for our lives.

Also, this graphic shows us that essentially - as humans - God created us GOOD. These tendencies are good.

But we always take things beyond what we should - don't we?

This graphic was done by an Alliance pastor of many years - David Mitchell.