Welcome! I hope you are excited about the fact that we are about to embark on a brand new series, a series on an encouraging, uplifting topic – the topic of … sin. Now, actually I do believe this will be an encouraging and even uplifting series, because, if we are honest, we have to admit that sin is a huge issue in all of our lives. I think sometimes we think that talking about sin is depressing, discouraging; but the reality is that it isn’t the talking that is discouraging, it is the actual sinning and the effects of sin that are so depressing. The name of our series is Understanding and Overcoming Sin because I hope that this series can help us in our daily battle against sin and help us more to do what we want to do. We are all familiar with the Apostle Paul’s cry in Romans:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. – Romans 6:15
None of us what to stay stuck on this verse! And Paul does not stay stuck on this verse either. We need to better understand sin and better understand ourselves so that we can make progress in overcoming sin. How much more encouraging to be able to say that you like what you do than to be stuck saying that you hate what you do!
Before we go any further, we should attempt to define what sin is. There are many definitions, but I really like this definition from John MacArthur:
“Sin is any personal lack of conformity to the moral character of God, or the law of God. Sin is a disposition of the heart. It is a bent. It thinks evil; it speaks evil; it acts evil and it omits good. You sin by thinking evil, speaking evil, acting evil or omitting good. You sin when you do, when you say, when you think, or when you don't do, say, or think what God demands you to.” – John MacArthur
I like this definition for many reasons. First of all, it points out that sin is personal. You can’t sin against the universe; the universe could care less what you do. But you can sin against me; we can sin against each other; and most directly, and most importantly, we can sin against the Person of God.
One of the things we often say when we talk about what it means to become a Christian is to say that one enters into a personal relationship with God. This is not entirely accurate. The reality is that every person on the face of the earth is already in a personal relationship with God. This is not a relationship between two equals; it is a relationship between Creator and His created. This is important. When you disobey an “equal,” say a friend, the worst that happens is that your friend is no longer your friend. But when you disobey your boss, what happens? You may get fired. The boss has every right to fire you, because He hired you. So what happens when you disobey your Creator? Your Creator created you, so He has every right to, well, do whatever He wants, including un-create you.
Now the Bible does not appear to teach that God un-creates us; it says that He made us to be eternal creatures. We are special among His creation in that we were made in His image. Now special doesn’t mean “good,” in a moral sense, but it means special in purpose.
Now the Bible does say that the wages of sin is death. But this is not an eternal death; it is a death from this life. Why do you think this is? There may be many reasons, but one is that death is a punishment of sorts, and our Creator is a God of justice. I would submit to you that another reason is that death limits the damage we can do. Sin not only affects our relationship with God; it affects our relationships with the rest of God’s creation, all of us. Sin has shortened our lives so that we don’t do more damage to each other than we already do. So one of the consequences of sin is that it separates us from each other.
But if we are eternal creatures, this won’t really solve the problem, will it? In the life that is to come we can still sin, and we most certainly would still sin, if it weren’t for a certain Something known as the Gospel. This certain Something has made a way for people to become free from sin in the life that is to come. But this certain Something is not forced on anyone – it is a free gift, available to all who desire it. But what if someone doesn’t desire it? What if they like their sin, and want to keep on sinning forever? Then doesn’t it make sense that God would need to separate those who accept the Something from those who don’t. Otherwise, those who don’t accept the something will make life eternally awful for those who do.
Now I believe that another reason that the wages of sin is death is that continually committing sins (apart from that certain Something) makes people become more and more bent towards evil. In other words, not only does our damage to others grow over time; the rate of growth of that damage accelerates! I don’t have time to really delve into why this is so, but C.S. Lewis talks about this far more eloquently than I can in a number of his books. The reason I bring it up is that it has immense implications for eternal creatures. Not only would keeping these people who reject the Something around those who accept it make life eternally awful, it will make it more and more awful over time.
Of course, the Something is saving faith in Jesus Christ, believing that He has paid the price for your sin and gratefully receiving His offer of forgiveness that was bought with His blood on the cross. At the moment we do willfully accept this Something, many things happen, incredible, eternal things, foremost among these the fact that our relationship with our Creator is restored.
The Bible also teaches that prior to receiving this Something, we were all hopelessly in bondage to sin. We were slaves to it, just as the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians. One of the many things that happened when we received the Something was that we were set free from this bondage. We were liberated, rescued, and truly set free.
But with this freedom we still have the freedom to … sin. As Paul so powerfully writes in Romans, there is a part of us in us that still wants to sin. It prefers the false freedom of the past to the true freedom of the present. You could say that it wants to go back to Egypt. And so this is where we are; freed, but prone to sin.
How can I sin against my Creator? Let me count the ways… Look again at the MacArthur quote:
“Sin is any personal lack of conformity to the moral character of God, or the law of God. Sin is a disposition of the heart. It is a bent. It thinks evil; it speaks evil; it acts evil and it omits good. You sin by thinking evil, speaking evil, acting evil or omitting good. You sin when you do, when you say, when you think, or when you don't do, say, or think what God demands you to.” – John MacArthur
We sin far more often, indeed, far more constantly than we may want to admit. Sin isn’t just what we do. And even just there, we often hide our sins from ourselves and don’t realize what we do. But our Creator realizes. We are not innocent by reason of self deception! One of the purposes of this series is to help us remove our layers of self deception so that we can more clearly see our sin and bring it to Christ so that we can grow in Christlikeness.
But the “doing” sins are just the tip of the iceberg! Speaking sins are there too! Remember that little ditty about “sticks and stones”? It’s false. Our words are sin. “I just said it; I didn’t do it” is a meaningless statement. In God’s eyes they are one and the same.
But even this is just the beginning. “You sin by thinking evil.” Just thinking! You don’t even have to say it. Why? It is because sin is sin against God, and He hears you whether you open your mouth or not. Whether you vibrate your vocal chords or not is completely immaterial. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount bears out the truth of this.
But there is one more type of sin mentioned in this definition. Roman Catholics talk about sins of omission, and in a sense they are on the right track, but they don’t generally understand how far reaching this is. Not only are we responsible for everything we do, say, or think; we are responsible for everything we don’t do, say, or think! We will dig more deeply into this in some of the later teachings in this series, but even a little thought shows that the implications here are staggering. Is laziness sin? Even just a little laziness? You bet!
There is so much more we can say about sin, and that we should say about sin, because our culture has successfully downplayed the reality of sin, the seriousness of sin, and the effects of sin to the point that, to many people, even the concept of sin is a joke. Here are 5 observations of sin, based loosely on a list by John MacArthur:
1. Sin is defiling. This is not a word we use often nowadays. What does it mean? To defile something is to do something horrible and shocking to something, like to stick a cross in urine and call it art, or for the ancient Jewish temple, to smear the blood of pigs in the most holy place. Sin is defiling in God’s eyes. Defiling to what? Us! We defile God’s creation – us – when we sin.
2. Sin is rebellion. It is a direct attack on the God’s throne. It is an attempt to take over that throne and rule ourselves. To use a nautical term, it is mutiny. Just as Satan did, it is an attempt to wage war on heaven.
3. Sin is ingratitude. It is to spit at the face of our Maker. Or worse, it is to pretend to kiss Him while secretly hating Him. Think of Absalom and his rebellion against David. Or think of Judas and his betrayal of Jesus. All the joys, all the good things in our lives are gifts of our Creator. To sin is like receiving a million dollars from a stranger but refusing to get to know or thank or even acknowledge the giver.
4. Sin is exhausting. Jeremiah 9:3 says they go (literally rush) from one sin to another, and verse 5 says they weary themselves with sinning. In sin there is an absence of rest and an absence of peace. Many kinds of sin are hard to stop once you start. And the extension of this is that many kinds of sin are addictive. Not just the usual things you hear about, like alcohol and drug abuse, or pornography. Lying can be addictive. Stealing can be addictive. Unfortunately, even murder can be addictive.
5. Sin is fatal. Sinning damages us. Studies have shown that certain kinds of sin, like drug abuse, literally cause brain damage. All sin causes soul damage. Sin breaks down our bodies, our minds, our hearts, everything. Medical studies show that anger, for example, stimulates the pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, and other glands. Over periods of time, overstimulation of these glands can cause multiple serious medical conditions. Many kinds of sin are physically dangerous as well; your likelihood of dying a violent death is related to sin. But ultimately, all sin is fatal. The wages of sin is death.
Why is it that as believers we still continue to sin? Why do we do the very things we don’t want to do? Perhaps the best way I can explain it is that in many ways we are each like a whole bunch of people more than we are like a single person. You could say that we all have multiple personality disorder! How else can we explain the battles we have inside ourselves over what to do? Who is it exactly that is arguing? Us. And who are we arguing against? Us. We are more like that hideous creature Golem in the Lord of the Rings than we care to admit.
When it comes to this war inside our minds and bodies, here is an analogy that I have been thinking about. When we become saved, it is like winning a war of liberation, a revolutionary war. Think of a country in which the people have been in bondage, but upon victory they are now free from that bondage. Upon salvation, we are set free from bondage to sin, and we are set free from the bondage of sin.
But what happens after many revolutionary wars of liberation is that shortly afterwards there is a civil war. A perfect example is the former nation of Yugoslavia. After being set free from their communist oppression, the region fell into a series of bloody civil wars involving the Serbs, the Croatians, and other groups. Why did this happen? It is in part because freedom means the freedom to do what you want, good or bad. Things that were suppressed in the days of bondage because the bondage was so oppressive now come out once there is freedom.
I believe the United States serves as another example. Although it took 80 or so years (fourscore and seven) to go from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, the issues that led to the Civil War were issues even in the beginning of our nation. Difficult compromises were made for the sake of securing a constitution everyone could sign, for the sake of so-called unity. But issues related to slavery were not solved – they were only deferred. The Civil War was in many ways a conclusion to an 80-year-long argument.
Although it is far from a perfect analogy, I do see similarities with regards to the Christian life. Salvation brings freedom from outside “oppression,” but there is still an internal war to be fought, a civil war. The Apostle Paul in Romans tells us we are dead to sin, but there is a sense in which we have to choose to remain dead. We still have freedom to sin, and there is a part of us, the “old man,” that does not want do the things of God. It wants to be selfish, to have its own way, to sin. There is still a Civil War to be fought. And just as the U.S. Civil War was far bloodier than the Revolutionary War, our Civil War can also get quite ugly.
Our series will focus on sins using a categorical system we call the Seven Deadly Sins.
Before we go further, I would like to point out a few things about this categorization.
First of all, what are the seven deadly sins? They are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy, and pride.
Is this list Biblical? If by Biblical you mean that this particular list of 7 sins is found in a single particular passage of Scripture, the answer is no. But if by Biblical you mean that these 7 sins can be found in Scripture to be sinful, the answer is yes.
Are they more deadly than other sins? No. All sin is deadly. The wages of sin is death.
I think it is a mistake to try to separate sins into “really bad” and “not as bad” categories. Where would you put striking a rock to get water out of it? What about making some minor changes to rules for Old Testament worship? It is dangerous to presume here.
Are they always sin? No. As we go through the series, we will talk through what constitutes sin in these categories. But just to give an example, not all anger is sin – consider the verse “In your anger do not sin.” (Eph. 4:26) And I am pretty sure that not all envy is sin – for example, last year in the Luke series I talked about how Jesus, after the resurrection, while keeping His identity hidden from His disciples, used the Scriptures to show how they pointed to Christ. I remember saying that I wished I could have been there or that it could have been written down. I was (and am) envious of those disciples, but I don’t think this is sin. And not all pride is sin – pride in others is not sin (unless it is tainted by some self-pride over what you have done to make them do what good thing they are doing).
Where does the list come from? In the 5th century, the monk John Cassian made a very similar list of 8 sins. Pope Gregory made the standard list in the 6th century, and they have been written about in a number of classic works including the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. They have been used as “literary devices” in many later classic works, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, and Marlowe’s Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. (A more recent classic that seems to use the seven sins is C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series – literary studies suggest, convincingly, I think, that each of the seven Narnia books focuses on a particular one of the seven deadly sins.)
Now, you might be a bit uncomfortable with the degree of connection between this list and the Roman Catholic Church or perhaps by the way these have been used in works that, although classic, are hardly Biblical in worldview. (One example is the image above; its topic is the 7 deadly sins, but it was produced by a pro-Nazi painter during the height of the Nazi regime; the gluttons in the lower right corner are Chamberlain and Churchill!) But to do so I think is to read too much into the list. For me the bottom line is that the 7 deadly sins are a list, and a pretty good list, of important areas in which we all fall into sin. It is only in this sense that we will use this list.
In contrast to how the wages of sin is death, consider this passage from I John:
This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. – I John 1:5-7
Do you hear the message? We tend to live our lives with dark parts and light parts. There are areas of our lives that we are “light” in, public parts, but there are other parts of our lives that are “dark,” parts that are private, sometimes parts that only go on inside our heads. But God is not like this. There are no dark parts in Him, and He cannot give us the fullness of His fellowship if we continue to keep dark parts away from Him. To keep a “dark part” of our lives, no matter how small, is to push away God. But when we open up every last part to His light, we can experience incredible fellowship with God, and not only that, it can dramatically enhance our fellowship with one another!
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. – I John 1:8-10
The reality is that we all come face to face with new “dark” parts of us we didn’t know we had, or we build new dark parts, all the time. We can choose to be honest about this, or we can choose to deny it. If we are honest about it and tell it to God, God will forgive us our sins and purify us, that is, make us pure, from all unrighteousness. This is how the Christian life is supposed to be: walk in the light, examine ourselves, and then confess our sins. That is our part. God’s part is to forgive us (thanks to Christ) and to make us ever pure, ever more and more free from unrighteousness.
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. – I John 2:1-2
Eventually, we will sin less and less. It may not seem like it, but this is what it says. John writes this, inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you will become less and less sinful, so that you will not continue forever in a state of sin – this is what the Greek tense implies. I remember when we switched to one of the new style high-power vacuums at our house. The amount of dirt it picked up was amazing! Each time we used it, it would pick up amazing amounts of stuff. I began to think it was just a matter of a little time until there would be no carpet at all left. But eventually it began to pick up less and less. The same is true in our lives; learning to walk in the light is a process that can take a lot of time, and it requires a lot of examination and confession. But eventually it will produce the fruit of righteousness.
We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands.
The man who says, "I know Him," but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. – I John 2:3-6
Do you really want to know our Creator? Remember that God is Love. Do you want to know that love? Do you want to be blown away with “surpassing revelations”? There is no detour to this – you must go through the difficult process of becoming able and willing to obey His commands. What does it mean to walk as Jesus did? It doesn’t mean that you hide some stuff from God. It doesn’t mean that you continue to indulge secretly in lust, in gluttony, in greed, in sloth, in anger, in envy, or in pride. It means you are clean – the high-power vacuum cleaner finds nothing to pick up. Only then will you know the completeness, the fullness, of God’s love within you.
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