Dead to Sin. Fully Alive to Love.

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Man, a week like this—Christmas and Easter—as someone who preaches, there’s always a little extra pressure. But there really shouldn’t be, right? Because there’s nothing I can do to underscore what God has already done. I pray that the Holy Spirit lands the significance and the depth of the reality of what God has done, that we live life because He is alive, and this is the hope of the world.

So I want to pray and just ask the Spirit: wake us up to the reality of resurrection, what Jesus has done. And God, we pray just that. Lord, would You wake us up? Would You lead us into deeper reflection and understanding, and even feeling, of who You are, of what You’ve done, of Your love for us, and our invitation to live in love? Thank You, God. Amen, amen.

All right—Jesus Christ is alive. And because He is, we are dead to sin and fully alive to love. This is what Romans 6:1 says: we are dead to sin and fully alive to love.

I don’t know if you’ve met someone who’s fully alive—someone who loves their life, who is in the flow of what they were made for. When I think of this, I think of someone like my dad, who loves what he does. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s created businesses, and he just loves doing it. He told me—I remember when I was in high school—he said, “Jesse, do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” And I don’t think my dad has ever worked a day in his life. He loves what he does. He loves Monday morning because he gets to go to work. He loves what he does. He’s fully alive in that purpose.

I think of Eric Liddell, that Scottish runner—back in, what was it, the 60s, 50s, 40s, maybe earlier. I can’t even remember what decade it was. But he was a runner. He was a missionary, a Scottish missionary, and he was fast enough to run in the Olympics. And he loved running. And he said this: “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” And so he ran fast, and he ran with a smile. You just think that—sprinting with a smile. He loved it. He felt God’s delight. He felt God’s pleasure. He felt like he was living into his purpose when he ran.

So there’s nothing like living fully—a life full of purpose, living into what you were made for. So the question is: what are we made for? What is the one pursuit that will make us come fully alive?

It’s got four letters. We’ve made about three—it’s true—God. But love. Love. Love is life’s pursuit. Love is life’s aim. Love is what God has made us for. In 1 John 4:8, it says, “God is love.” God is love.

The one thing that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals more clearly than any event in history is that God is love, and that we were made to be loved and to love. This is what Jesus reveals about God. This is what Scripture has been saying from the beginning.

Exodus 34:6, which is a theme and a phrase that is repeated over and over—God is revealing Himself to Moses: “Yahweh, the Lord, the God of compassion and mercy. I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.” That Hebrew word, hesed—I like saying that—hesed. This is a loyal love, a covenant love, an unbreaking love, an unconditional love.

And this is how God reveals Himself throughout Scripture. And this is what Israel got glimpses of, of understanding. And this is what Jesus reveals ultimately and most clearly about God and His character: that God is love. He is hesed. He is covenant, faithful, loyal, unconditional, unbreaking love.

In 1 John 4:16, just a few verses after “God is love,” it says, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

God is love. God made you in love, for love—to be loved and to love.

And so, what prevents us from living into this life? What prevents us from the world experiencing life in the fullness of God’s love? What prevents us from experiencing and feeling and knowing that we are loved? What breaks down our ability to love? Why do we fail to love?

The Bible calls it this one word: sin. Sin.

Now, sin might be different than you think. Many of us think about sin as breaking rules, as breaking some kind of arbitrary law—just set arbitrarily—and because it’s law, because God said it, we ought not do it. And if we break it, we are out of favor. We have broken the law.

But sin, while it does include breaking rules, that’s not its essence. It’s much more serious. It’s more profound. It’s much more destructive than that.

The Bible speaks of sin as not rule-breaking—not some arbitrary list of rules and behaviors that we have to ascribe to to make God happy. Sin is, at its core, a failure to love. Sin is, at its core, a failure to live into the purpose for which we were created.

It is a failure to experience love and to extend love and to live in love. We were made for love by a God of love, and sin breaks it. It clogs it. It prevents it.

If you don’t believe me, let’s go to Jesus. I’ll quote Him—He’s pretty authoritative. How did He sum up all the law and the prophets? How did He sum it up?

“All the law and the prophets are summed up in this: the two greatest commandments—love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

It all comes down to that. Sin is ultimately a failure of love.

And why do we hurt so much? Why do we experience so much pain? Why is there so much destruction? Why are there bombs dropping in Iran? Why are people suffering in North Korean prisons? Why all that we experience? Why are our families broken apart in division and divorce, and all of the death and betrayal and division in our midst?

Why?

Because we have forgotten how to love. We have failed to love. And people have failed to love us.

Let me just go a little bit—actually, man, I met a kid yesterday. He was being fed from our church building, and someone introduced me to him. This kid—a kid living on the street. The sweetest kid. He’s probably, I don’t know, 19, 20. I’m old enough to say that’s a kid now.

And he went to a local high school here. I don’t know his story at all. I just saw his eyes—scared, super sweet, had kind of a stutter. And it’s just him and his cat. I’ve never seen someone with a cat—usually a dog. He and his cat.

And we’re hoping he comes to church today. He was invited. But what causes—what allows—what are the conditions in our world that would allow for a child to be on the streets with no one but a cat to keep him warm?

It’s a failure of love.

I just want to break down, real quick, the Hebrew understanding of sin. There are three kind of main words—word groups—that describe sin as a failure to love.

So the first is khata. You should have a sign for this—khata. Can you say khata? khata. It’s fun to say, the first word. It means “to miss the mark.” You’ve heard this before, I’m sure, if you’ve been in church much. This was a term not just used for moral failings, but it was primarily used for archers taking aim at a target and shooting for the bullseye. And when they would miss, it was khata. Dude, you khata—you shot it, you missed it.

Another way is if you were given directions to go to a certain destination. You would follow those directions, but then maybe you took a wrong turn and you went slowly out in the opposite direction of where you were supposed to go. This is missing the goal or missing the destination—taking a wrong turn and not getting to where you were meant to get. It’s missing the mark. It’s missing the goal. It’s missing the destination.

And so we have to ask ourselves: what is the target? What is the aim of our life? If we khata—we’ve missed the mark—we are missing the mark of love, for which we were created: to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And so we have missed the mark. It’s not just doing something wrong—it’s failing to love. When love is possible, it’s withholding kindness. It’s choosing indifference. It’s failing to see the person in front of you as another human being.

A second Hebrew word is avon. And this talks about distortion or crookedness. It was used in Lamentations—this word is used of someone with a crooked, bent-over back. Their spine ought to be straight, but this is avon—it’s crooked, it’s malformed.

This word is used in moral senses, often translated “iniquity.” You see that in the Hebrew Scriptures. A lot of times, “iniquity”—this word is not just missing the mark of love, it’s distorting love. It’s twisting it. It’s turning it and using it for purposes for which it is not intended. It ceases to be love. It’s bending love into something it was never meant to be.

We see this in relationships. We see love used as a weapon—weaponized—and it ceases to be love. It’s distorted. Love becomes control. Love becomes manipulation. Love becomes self-serving. It’s saying, “I love you,” but what we mean is, “I need you to make me okay. I love you, but I need you to do this for me.” And we use it—we distort it.

And over time, as we distort love—and remember, we are both the perpetrators and the victims of distorted love—this is why we suffer. And so when we experience the distortion of love, when we distort love toward others, it begins to shape us—not only as individuals but as societies. It bends our hearts. It bends our relationships. It bends entire systems—systems that harm people, that oppress people, that trap all of us in an entangled web of violence and pain and dysfunction.

And so this is sin: a distortion of love.

And then pesha. This brings it so hyper-focused into relationship. This word is often translated “transgression,” and this has to do with breaking trust.

There is a word—I don’t know it—but there is a word, I can’t remember it. There is a word if you rob just a stranger—if you just go to a random house and rob someone—in the Old Testament, it’s called something. I don’t know what it is. It’s bad—it’s called something.

But if you rob a friend, if you rob a neighbor, if you rob someone you’re in relationship with—there’s trust there—it’s called pesha. It’s called transgression. It is a violation of trust, of neighbor love, that was violated.

And we see this, and this wreaks such havoc and pain in our world—the breaking of marriage covenants, the breaking of parents caring for their children, when that abuse happens, or when we cheat someone that we work with, or we talk behind their backs. This is all transgression. It’s pesha. It’s breaking the trust that we need to have between people.

It’s also breaking the trust that God extends to us—this loving relationship.

And so each of these—missing the mark: we were created for love. That’s the destination of our life. That’s the coordinates, right? You put in, “Where is my life supposed to go?” And Siri, if she’s biblical, she’ll go, “It’s love—that’s where you’re going,” right?

But we turn the wrong way, and it’s like, “Hey, make a U-turn now. Rerouting, rerouting, rerouting,” right? This is khata—it’s missing the mark.

We distort love. We break love’s trust. And all of these things are not only harm and an offense against brother and sister—our fellow human beings—it’s an offense to God. It breaks trust with God and misses the mark for which we were to be in relationship with God.

It breaks God’s heart. His covenant faithfulness—His hesed—never stops, but we break it. We resist it. We turn our back on Him. And this breaks the heart of God. It breaks our relationships. It breaks our world.

And this is what Romans 6 calls slavery. This is what Romans 6 calls death.

Romans 6:23—a little later—“the wages of sin is death.” The consequences of sin is death. The failure to love leads only to death. Love leads to life. To not love—to fail to love, to distort love—it leads to death. And ultimately, all is death.

So sin is missing love, distorting love, betraying love. And when love breaks down, we become enslaved. And it becomes a power that entraps us. We get into cycles of un-love.

And we right now—the kid that showed up to our church yesterday—each of us, we’re trying to survive a world where love has been lost. We’re in bondage to sin and sinful systems—a world in which love has been lost.

And so today—I’ve spent so much time talking about that—because today we celebrate that the death and resurrection of Jesus brings us hope. It leads us out of death into life. It makes us dead to sin and fully alive to love—to God, to our purpose—and reroutes us to the way we were meant to live.

And so, into a world that is distorted, broken, and constantly missing the mark of love, Jesus steps in. And we see in Jesus a life that never misses the mark, that is always pointed toward the direction and goal and destination of love.

He sees people others ignore. He touches those others avoid. He speaks truth without abandoning compassion and mercy. Where we fail to love, Jesus fulfills love perfectly. He lives the life we were meant to live.

But more than that, when He enters this world distorted by love—crooked and bent over—He straightens it. His entrance into life, if you kind of imagine it, He puts Himself into this crooked, broken, malformed, distorted world. And as He comes into it, He bends it back to rights. He straightens it into the shape of love.

He reveals what God is really like. He reveals what humanity’s life is truly intended to look like. Power becomes service. Leadership becomes washing feet. Greatness becomes laying down your life.

He shows us what love looks like. Then, He becomes this victim of love—this victim of distorted love—enters a world where love is betrayed. And what does He do?

When He’s betrayed, when He’s denied, when He’s abandoned, when He’s executed—He doesn’t betray in return. He doesn’t retaliate. He does not withdraw. He does not stop loving.

As Greg Boyd says, on the cross we see a God who would rather die for His enemies than destroy them. This is love—unbroken, unbent, unfailing.

So Jesus reveals what true love looks like—lives like.

Now, that’s all Good Friday, right? It’s Palm Sunday—we’re on Resurrection Sunday. This is resurrection. What does the resurrection do? Well, here it is:

The resurrection vindicates that kind of love. The resurrection shows and validates that that kind of life—lived in self-sacrificial love, not controlling, coercive, and manipulating love—actually wins the day, even though it looks like it loses.

So the question always comes: can that kind of love actually save the world? We mistrust it. Does this kind of love actually work? Because it looks like it loses. It looks like it gets rejected. It looks like it gets exploited. It looks like it gets crucified if we live that kind of love.

And yes, it’s true—but Easter is God’s answer to that question.

The resurrection is God’s declaration that this is the kind of life that is truly human. This is the kind of love that truly wins. This is the purpose for which we were created. And if we would step into love, if we would trust love, if we would go and follow Jesus in this life of love, the world would be saved—if we follow Jesus.

And He says the resurrection is the beginning of new creation. It’s the beginning of this reversal—this bending back the world into what it’s meant to be.

It is God saying—the resurrection is God saying—love, self-giving, enemy-embracing love is not weak. It’s the most powerful force in the universe. Do you believe that? I hope you do.

James Cone, an African American theologian, says, “The resurrection is God’s refusal to let the forces that destroy love have the final word.”

Jesus was killed. He was tortured. Perfect love revealed was destroyed. But the resurrection says that’s not the end of the story. It’s not the final word.

All oppression will cease, as we sing at Christmas.

Third point here: union with Christ liberates us from un-love.

Paul says something radical—Romans 6:8–9: “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him.”

When we are united with Christ—I’ve done this before in here—if you clasp your hands together, one represents Jesus, His life, and our life. When we unite ourselves with Christ, we share in His death and His resurrection. We share in His death and His victory over death.

And we are raised to new life—a life we were meant to live, a life that hits the mark, a life that is not a slave to sin, not dead in sin, but fully alive to love.

Your old life—the life trapped in cycles of violence and mis-love and broken love and distorted love—has died. It’s not improved. It is not managed. It is dead.

Your old life is dead, and a new life has begun.

Jesus’ death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead, liberates us—frees us—from that trap of death. You are free to love. That’s good news.

Verse 4—resurrection creates people of restored love. We’re not talking about just individuals here. We gather together as a community. We gather all across the world today, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

We celebrate together as a community, and now this story becomes communal. This story becomes community. This story becomes family. This story becomes about a restoration of relationships—a people as God always intended it to be, living in love toward God, toward one another, toward creation.

This is the beginning of the revolution of love, of healing. William James Jennings says, “The Spirit is renewing humanity into a new kind of life.”

Together, we remember: we are dead to sin and fully alive to love.

And where—how can you love? Love can’t exist in a vacuum. Love can’t exist apart from relationship. Love needs an object. It needs relationship to be lived out.

And so we are brought into a people, a community that lives in love toward one another, toward God, toward creation.

And so that young man living on the streets with his cat—you know what he needs. He needs God, right? He needs Jesus. But what he needs that Jesus provides is a people filled with the Spirit—a resurrected people, a people dead to sin and alive to God and to love.

Where love is no longer missed. Where love is no longer distorted because we are attentive to one another. He needs a community where love is no longer distorted and we are being healed. He needs a community where love is no longer broken and trust is no longer broken, and he begins to learn to trust again, and he can lean on people.

So this is resurrection life. It is not just life after death—it’s life that begins now and extends beyond death. It is a resurrected life, alive—fully alive—to love, to God, to what He has made us for.

You were made for love. Have I said this enough? You were made for love.

So maybe in your relationships, in your past, in your patterns, you felt trapped. But I want to declare that you do not have to be a victim to a life of broken love, because God has made it possible for us to be dead to sin and alive to Christ.

You’re not trapped. You’re not enslaved. You are not defined by your failure to love, because Jesus’ love has come for you.

We just sang it: love is running. His goodness is running after me. I love that image. Jesus is always—always loving you, always pursuing you, always ready with arms open to have you join your life to His.

He’s come for you. He’s died for you. He’s been raised for you.

Romans 6:3–4: “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too may live a new life.”

Irenaeus, a second-century church father, said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

The glory of God is a human being fully alive.

I was just listening to a podcast this morning—Matt Lee, who runs the Center of Human Flourishing at some university somewhere, a believer. But he shared a story of a man named Orland Bishop, who did a lot of humanitarian work and reconciliation work.

But Orland was in medical school early in his life, and he ended up dropping out to care for a friend dying of AIDS. And this person he was caring for—right before he died—he said to Orland, “If you go back to medical school, you won’t become what you were meant to be.”

And Orland didn’t go back.

And so when this person died, Orland had this realization. He realized that—he says, “I don’t want more. I don’t want more.” So much of us—we want more, we want more, we want more. But I don’t want more. I don’t want more of anything but what is fully alive in me, and to share that with others who want to live.

I think that’s the invitation of Jesus.

The glory of God is a human being fully alive—who makes us fully alive to live the life we were meant to live, to reach the destination we were intended to reach.

To live a life fully alive—to love, to experience God’s love for us, to experience the love of other human beings for us, to experience the care of creation that God has set up, and to return that love. That’s what becomes fully alive in us. That’s where we find it.

And so I love Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11: “Come to Me”—this is the invitation—“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

You know this imagery. This yoke is a kind of wooden apparatus that joins two oxen together. Jesus is saying, “Hey, look—I’ve got half of it on My neck. Join yourself to Me. Yoke up with Me. Follow Me. Live life with Me. I have blazed the trail that leads to life’s true destination. I have lived the life fully alive, fully awake. I will lead you out of death into life.”

Dead to sin, fully alive to love.

And that’s the only way we experience it—by joining ourselves, yoking ourselves, to Jesus, responding to His invitation. The One who went into death, out the other side, and leads us into a resurrected life—a freedom liberated from a life of un-love.

So I want to invite you, as we sing this last song and as we come up to communion, that this is an opportunity for you to yoke yourself to Jesus.

And whether you’ve never done that before—you’ve never said, “Hey, I want to join my life to the life that Jesus made possible. I want to accept and receive His death, His resurrection, and I want to be unified with Christ”—if you’ve never done that before, this is a beautiful day to do it.

But this is also the invitation that’s always for us—for every person. We’re always repenting and believing. The Christian life is always about coming back underneath the yoke of Jesus. It’s constantly about rerouting—we’ve missed the goal—and we are free and empowered to come back.

The beautiful thing is, there is nothing—because we are dead to sin, we’re dead to the power of sin, we’re dead to this—the influence of Satan—we don’t have to obey a life of un-love.

But we do.

And so every day is an opportunity to turn back, to listen to the invitation of Jesus, to yoke ourselves to the life of love, to remember that we are dead to sin and fully alive to the life of love.

We were created for love—love God, love others, love creation.