The Stench of Sin
Sin stinks.
We don’t like foul odors, and one reason that is true is because they often just seem to hang in the air. It’s like you can’t get rid of them fast enough.
I had the idea for this article for some time and then, just recently, the US Open tennis tournament gave me the opening I was looking for to illustrate it. As that huge tournament got underway, one of the things that began to make news was that some of the players were complaining about a smell. It was lasting throughout entire matches and, some players said, it was distracting and even gross.
It was marijuana. There was enough that either had been smoked by those in the tennis complex before coming or enough being smoked at a nearby park that it was hanging in the air of some of the courts and distracting the players.
It is because sin just stinks. Once we have committed sin, the effects of it just seem to hang in the air.
- The person who chooses to vent on social media about how awful a church is? Instead of following Matthew 18, what they are doing stinks because it causes suspicion about that local congregation and, for others, it “confirms” what they already thought about Christianity in general.
- The wife who chooses to commit adultery? Even if she is never caught by her husband, there will always be something between them that is not right. Every type of intimacy is hampered because sin is just hanging in the air.
- The man who cooks the books at work just to make ends meet at home a time or two? He will work in a stench, always looking over his shoulder to see if anyone has figured him out.
The examples are endless, but the point is clear.
When you go shopping these days, you may notice a certain odor that is fairly new. It is awful and it is everywhere. It’s the same thing those tennis players complained about in New York recently. The marijuana being smoked so openly these days is far more potent (and smelly) than what “hippies” smoked 50 and 60 years ago.
And it stinks.
And it reminds us that, when we have sinned, there will always be something “in the air” around us, just hanging around and making things unpleasant.
Because sin stinks.
AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
