To understand sin in its magnitude the infinity of God is a necessary teaching. The human mind is always looking for excuses and reasons in its attempt to justify itself for its mistakes and moral failures. Even referring to sin as a mistake or as a moral failure undermines the very concept of sin. The languages of our mouths, pens, and keyboards have expressed the language of our hearts. There is always an effort to water down or minimize our own sin and guilt. However, the truth of the matter is that sin is against God. To the degree that God is glorious and majestic in His Being and character is the degree that sin is against Him.
Psalm 51:4: “Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.” From a humanistic perspective David’s sin were horrible in what happened to other people. He, more or less, as king took a woman forcibly and she became pregnant. David arranged for her husband to die in battle. The child that the woman (Bathsheba) had died as a result of David’s sin. In one sense among the leaders of the world taking a woman is no big deal. Having a man killed in order to protect the king is no big deal. Among the liberals of the day it is an awful thing to be guilty of sexual harassment much less taking Bathsheba. Among the moralists of the day the sins of David were awful in that he violated God’s moral law. However, to a God-centered Christian the real crime that surpasses everything else is that David sinned against God. It is not as many think that we must be nice to others because God says so, but we only love others to the degree that we love God and our sins that we commit against others are really sins against God. The great wrong done in the Bathsheba incident was the David sinned against God.
Jonathan Edwards (paraphrased) puts the awfulness of sin against God like this: a sin against an infinite being is an infinite wrong and deserves and infinite punishment. Since human beings are finite, they cannot suffer an infinite punishment so they must suffer for an infinite period of time and that is why hell is for eternity. Genesis 9:6 puts it like this: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.” An attack on a human being is an attack on the infinite God. We can illustrate the issue like this. Let us suppose that a despot in the world put pictures of himself all around the country. Any disrespect demonstrated toward his picture was a sign of disrespect toward him. So God has put out His image in human beings and any disrespect or attack toward another human being is really an attack on Him. As the crime in the illustration of the despot was not against the picture but against the despot, so a crime against the human being is really against God. The punishment for the crime is not punishment because of what happened to the picture, but because of what the picture represented. The punishment, not surprisingly, is far more severe than if a person just damaged any picture. The punishment leveled against the crime is in proportion to how the despot views his own value.
The level of a crime is measured by the greatness of the damage done, of the majesty of the One offended, or the greatness of the office of the one the crime was against. The glory of God is far greater and more valuable than anything or all things together in the universe. A sin is a crime against God and therefore the greatness of the crime is that it is an attempt to steal the glory from God. The majesty of God as the One offended cannot be measured since He is infinite. The crime is against the Sovereign of the universe and so who can measure how awful a crime is against the infinite and sovereign Lord of all things. When infinity is ascribed to God it should be ascribed to all of His Being and character. It is not just that God is infinite in one way and not in others, but He is infinite in all of His Being and Character. When one sins against God, it is a sin against an infinite holiness, an infinite mercy, and infinite grace, and infinite love, and an infinite justice. There is no possible way for a finite being to measure the degree of guilt that is accumulated by a sin against God.
One reason that people have such a slight view of sin in our day is because they do not understand the infinity of God. When people have no understanding of the infinity of God they necessarily have a small view of God. A small view of God leads to a small view of sin and the cross. We cannot begin to understand the cross until we have some concept of the evil of sin as against an infinite God. It should be no surprise that the Church has lost the true view of how amazing grace is because it no longer sees who God is and the nature of sin against Him.
God Loves... Himself 
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