Sins of Omission – What She Said #15 – Week 6, Day 7

TODAY’S TREASURE 

Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 4:17

Transcript

What She Said #15

Sins of Omission

Guest Writer, Pam Clarke

TODAY’S TREASURE 

Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 4:17 

Sins of Omission: We are saved from both the sins of commission and omission through faith in the blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ, His death and His resurrection. That is our hope and our truth. We are justified by faith. Justification is the state of being declared right with God. 

We are then sanctified — cleansed and set apart for sacred use. This sanctification is continually in our day-to-day living. We read truth and grow in faith.  

Finally, we are glorified when we meet Him face to face. Glorification means to be exalted!

This past week, my pastor spoke on the sins of omission. You don’t hear much preached on this topic, but it caused me to begin to examine my life for sins of omission. James 4:17 cut my heart like a knife. I began to look at my time management and how I am spending my time. Am I lazy? Do I tend to spend too much time on things that don’t matter much in light of eternity? These questions concerned me, so I studied people in the Bible who committed sins of omission to learn from their mistakes.

David was the first person I found who did not do the good he should do. He committed the sins of omission when he neglected to lead his army into battle and stayed behind. 

"In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem." 2 Samuel 11:1-2 

The consequences of David not going with his army, the sin of omission, were adultery, murder, and lies. David was not where he should have been, and if he had never stayed in Jerusalem, he would not have seen Bathsheba bathing, gotten her pregnant, and he would not have murdered her husband to cover his lies. Wow!     

Lesson Number One: Where we choose to go and don’t go matters in light of eternity. Sins of omission, not doing the good we should do, sets us up for major attacks from the enemy. According to Mark 16:15, our purpose in life should be to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. Seriously, we live in a culture that spends a lot of time staying home, isolated. We play video games, scroll social media, and watch TV.  

Some consequences for our neglect to obey this command, a sin of omission, are that we become unhealthy, gain weight, feel tired, and do little with an eternal perspective in mind. We think to ourselves, we should be more involved in the Church by feeding the hungry, sharing the Gospel, and serving the Lord. Just like David, we should ask ourselves, “Do I go, or do I stay?”   

The next story I found to learn from was in Matthew 25:31-46. This story tells about the sheep and the goats. Jesus sorts the goats from the sheep, one to eternal life and one to eternal punishment. The goats clearly didn’t care about feeding, clothing, or helping the poor. They chose not to act in love.  

Lesson Number Two: What we do with our 24-hour day matters in light of eternity. Take inventory of your time and see if there are ways you can restructure your day to include more love for the lost. Even as believers, we can get lost in the culture of self and not give our time to the Glory of God.  

The final story I found is in Luke 16:19-31, the story of Lazarus. The rich man who committed sins of omission by being self-centered & greedy. He saw the starving and poor man at the gate, but chose not to share from his abundance with the man.   

Lesson Number Three: What we do with our money matters in light of eternity. Do we see the need, but spend on our own pleasures instead? We are Americans, we are a rich nation, and shopping is easy and fun. Even the poor in our nation are richer than many third-world countries. I have gone on mission trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and nothing shocks you more than seeing someone starving to death with your own eyes. 

LIFE-GIVING ENCOURAGEMENT 

Sin of Omission, neglecting to do the good we should do:

• Lesson One — WHERE WE GO OR DON’T GO
• Lesson Two — HOW WE MANAGE OUR TIME
• Lesson Three — HOW WE SPEND OUR MONEY

PRAYER

Lord, help us to make our lives structured around your Glory for all eternity. My prayer is that we would all choose to be more involved in God’s purpose — sharing the Gospel — that we would examine our time management and remove wasteful things, and that we would store more treasures in Heaven and not here.