views our disobedience.

God did not excuse Abraham's sin, but He did not let that stop Him from intervening in Abimelech's mind to prevent the serious consequences of the sin.

But where sin abounded, grace superabounded.

His moral purity serves to magnify our impurity.

Many people erroneously think that God can just forgive our sins because He is a loving God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cross speaks to us not only about our sin but about God's holiness.

Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it's offensive to God.

Not only has the debt (of our sins) been fully paid, there is no possibility of ever going into debt again.

The Scriptures never indicate that God is frustrated to any degree by our failure to act as we should.

But be it ever so small in our own eyes, when we sin we also break God's law. And Scripture says, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (James 2:10). God's law is seamless, one complete whole. So when we break any of it, we break the whole law.

We cannot deal with the power of sin unless we have first dealt with its guilt. And we deal with it at the cross.

We cannot receive half of God's grace. If we have experienced it at all, we will experience not only forgiveness of our sins but also freedom from sin's dominion.

To mortify sin we must focus on its true nature. So often we are troubled with a persistent sin only because it disturbs our peace and makes us feel guilty. We need to focus on it as an act of rebellion against God.