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What is your typical response to the consequences that come with wrong actions? Do you “buck” against consequences, either by ignoring or rejecting them? Or perhaps you fall into demoralizing despair, feeling that all hope is lost?  

When it comes to consequences that are a direct result of my sin, I find that I gravitate towards the latter of the two polarities (despair). My mind quickly rushes to thoughts like, “I’ve messed up so horribly,” and, “there’s no way I can recover from this.” If left unchecked, these thoughts can spiral into more despair and even deeper sin: “What’s the point? If everything is as hopeless as I think it to be, what do I have to lose if I continue to sin?”  

As we saw this past Sunday, believers must embrace the grace of God’s consequences, and a part of that is accepting the grace of God’s promise. For Adam and Eve, this meant trusting in God’s promise that one would come through their offspring who would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Even though Adam and Eve did not yet have children, the comment made by the author that Eve “was the mother of all living” (3:20) and the rest of Genesis indicates that they trusted in God’s future promise, rather than fighting against it or giving into despair.  

Today, the promise which Adam and Eve trusted in is now revealed as Jesus Christ, the God-man (that is, being fully God and fully man, Philippians 2:5-11) who came to reconcile man’s broken relationship with God that began in Genesis 3. It is both the present hope that Christ died to pay for our sin (Romans 5:8-9), and the future promise that Christ will one day return to earth to right all wrongs (Revelation 19-22), that we must accept.  

If you, like me, too easily give in to despair, the answer is clear: while there are natural consequences for sin, if you are truly a believer, there is still hope! Romans 8:1 promises that, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” The consequences of sin are a means of grace because they point us back to the promise of the Gospel. These are truths which I must rehearse daily; lately I have been meditating on the great theological truths found in the second stanza of Before the Throne of God Above, with which I will conclude:  

When Satan tempts me to despair, And tells me of the guilt within,                               

Upward I look and see Him there, Who made an end to all my sin.                               

Because the sinless Savior died, My sinful soul is counted free.                                             

For God the Just is satisfied, To look on Him and pardon me,                                                 

To look on Him and pardon me.