Actions have consequences. That should be obvious to us, but it’s increasingly a struggle for many people living in the western world. And that struggle only increases when it comes to sin. So let’s talk for a minute about what the consequences of sin truly are. 

Sin has many consequences:

Sin damages the relationships between people. It ruins marriages and friendships, splits churches, and separates families. 

Sin negatively affects our relationship with the natural world as well. This is true in a cosmic sense, in the default settings of a universe where sin has corrupted everything, but it is also why work is difficult, and that growing anything takes a tremendous effort. 

Sin also affects our relationship with God, turning the love that belongs to Him alone and pointing it inward toward ourselves. We reject Him in favor of anyone and anything else.

But the ultimate consequence of sin, this rejection of God and rebellion against Him, is death. This death refers to physical death, meaning that the only reason we die at all is a consequence of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God. In other words, death, despite being a part of the natural order as it stands today, is foreign to God’s design for the universe. It is unnatural. 

But physical wasn’t the only kind of death God promised. The death sin brings is also spiritual, in that distortion of our relationship with God.

And that spiritual death continues in a permanent state when someone dies apart from the reconciling work of Christ, who defeated death through His own death on the cross and subsequent resurrection.

These are the consequences of sin, and these are the reasons we want to share the gospel with others. We don’t want anyone to die and face these consequences. Instead, we want everyone to be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus, so that we can all enjoy eternal life with Him together.