When out walking by the lake I was talking to my Chinese friend trying to explain to him the concept of sin, but he did not quite understand the concept as it related to God. So I explained that sin is rebellion, an affront and desecration of the majesty and holiness of God ... a flagrant disrespect and disregard toward the One who made you. The truth that we have woefully fallen short of God's standard, which ought to be the norm for our lives. Sin being the cause of all problems in the world and in ourselves. Then I challenged my friend to read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5-7. After a couple of days I met him again and asked about what he thought of the Sermon. I will never forget his response: "impossible", he said. And I said "YES, that is right ... flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but the Father in heaven."
Fact is, even if you made some major sin mistakes in life, like me, most of us still try to convince ourselves that we are pretty good people. But when, by grace, we compare ourselves to the majesty of God, reality dawns upon us. If a movie were made of our lives, there would defintely be many scenes we'd want cut. We could recount exactly which scenes we wouldn't want anyone to see. In my own case, there are too many to recount. Even more, we would not only cut the scenes of the times we did things we knew we shouldn’t do, but also the ones where we didn’t do things we knew we ought to. To most of us our sins of ommission are staggaring - our lack of love and the times when we should have helped others and didn't, at least in my case, are pitiful -- Its all sin -- and we'd want it cut and dropped on the editing floor.