ALPHA MAAMA (A.M.)

 Tusite Fepueli 3, 2026

LEVITIKO 8-10; LOMA 3:9-20

It is essential for us to take sin seriously, because Scripture makes it clear that God does.

‘Oku fu’u mahu’inga ‘aupito ke tau tokanga ki he mamafa ‘o e angahala, koe’uhi, ‘oku ha mahino ‘i he Folofola ‘a e mamafa ‘a e angahala ki he ‘Otua.

He was an angry, emotionally abusive, demanding, controlling, and physically intimidating husband. I have to admit that, when I sat with him in my counseling office, he intimidated me. He had destroyed all the sweetness, unity, peace, and joy in his marriage. His wife was emotionally broken. She had lived too long in fear of when she would anger him next. When she voiced her hurt, he mocked her for being weak and needy. The thing that struck me the first time I met with them was the smile on his face. His wife tearfully told me why she had begged him to come with her for counseling as he sat there with his arms folded and a grin of mockery on his face. He wasn't ashamed. He didn't feel guilty. He didn't think his behavior was that big of a deal. He surely wasn't in my office that morning because he thought he needed help. He was there to placate his wife, to get her off his back so that they could "move on." I wanted to think that he and I had nothing in common, but we did.

There are times when I too don't take my sin seriously. There are times when my pride and impatience don't seem such a big deal to me. There are times when I am defensive when approached about a wrong I have done. There are times when I work to make my sin look less than sinful to me. And I am sure there are times when you do the same. For most of us our problem is not that we take sin too seriously, feel its weight too much, or confess our wrongs too quickly and too often. No, for most of us our problem is that we often fail to see the seriousness of our sin and the gravity of its vertical and horizontal consequences. It is scary that we are able to call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ, and yet we minimize the very thing that led him to the cross. The whole content and motion of the grand redemptive narrative is a result of God's unwillingness to close his eyes to the pervasiveness and gravity of sin, which has infected every one of us. To God, no disease that has befallen humanity is more significant and destructive than sin.

That's why, immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, our God promised that this dark thing would be once and for all defeated and eradicated (Gen. 3:15). Sin is so serious that it gets that kind of attention from the Creator Sovereign King.

This is why the story of Nadab and Abihu, who made an unauthorized incense offering, should get our attention (Lev. 10:1-3). A fire from the Lord consumed them, and they died. That's how serious sin is: "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). Because God saw sin as serious, he set in motion a process to give us a Savior. The grace of new life is needed only if sin is as deadly as God says it is. Do you take sin seriously?