Delivered March 20, 2011
The title of my sermon today comes from the title of a well-known book published back in 1973. It was written by American psychiatrist Karl Menninger and explored the changing attitudes toward the concept of sin in Western culture at that time. That change has continued and has accelerated in the 38 years since that book was written. I recently read an interesting article about The Oxford English Dictionary, which is the acknowledged standard for the English language. It is a huge multivolume work, so they publish smaller editions, one of which is a Children’s Dictionary. The most recent edition of this children’s version eliminates the word “sin.” In fact in the six editions of this dictionary published since the 1970’s, a whole range of words relating to Christianity have been eliminated. The official explanation by Oxford University Press is this: “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it…. We are also much more multicultural. People don’t go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words … would have been in 20 years ago but not now.” Sin is one of those words.
So now we know what has become of sin. It is slowly disappearing from our English language. It is also disappearing from church vocabulary. Many people now consider the use of the word sin to be judgmental. Apparently being judgmental is one of the last behaviors considered to be sin these days. But the Apostles’ Creed uses the word “sin” and lists “the forgiveness of sins” as one of the basics tenets of the Christian faith. What is sin? Why is it a spiritual problem? What does it mean to have forgiveness of sin?
I. What is sin? The concept of sin is badly misunderstood these days, and that is why so many people reject the word. In preparation for this message I studied the Greek words used in the NT for sin. I am not going to try to impress you by spouting the Greek terms, but I want to show there is a range of understanding of sin in the Bible. The dominant concepts of sin in Scripture are not what you might think.
The most common word for sin in the NT means “to fall short” or “to miss the mark.” Like so many Greek words, it is a picture word. It comes from archery. It describes an arrow that misses the target. Specifically it describes an arrow that falls short of the target. This word in different forms is used over 250 times in the NT. The second most common word occurs only 23 times. So you see how dominant this idea is when it comes to understanding sin.
The idea is that we fall short of what God intends for our lives. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) It means that we do not live up to God’s plan for our lives. It is sin of omission rather than sin of commission. The prayer of confession in the Book of Common prayer phrases it this way: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.”
There are other words for sin in the New Testament. The second most common word used means "Diminishing what should have been given full measure.” It is a very similar concept to the first. In simple language it mean incomplete, immature, not full. In Ephesians 4 the apostle Paul describes the goal of the Christian life as growing spiritually “till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—.” Ephesians 4:13-15) We are meant to grow to be like Christ, and until we do we are incomplete; we are not fully formed, not who we are meant to be.
The third most common word for sin in the NT means to fall down. In fact this is the word used in one of the only two places in the NT where the phrase “forgiveness of sins” is actually used. (Ephesians 1:7) The word picture is that we are walking along the path, and we stumble and fall. This is clearly not an intentional act. You do not purposely fall; it happens accidentally. The fourth most common word for sin means ignorance. People do things because they do not know any better. It is often translated error in the Bible. That is the literal meaning of the word “mistake” – to misunderstand. These the top four words for sin.
The concept of sin most often used often by Jesus is debt. Many of Jesus’ parables dealt with people owing money to someone. This was one of the dominant models that Jesus used to communicate the concept of sin. Forgiveness of sin was seen as forgiveness of a debt, a phrase that we still use today in financial transactions. One of the forms of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught his disciples includes the words “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Ironically the least used words in the NT for sin are what most people normally think of as sin – the idea of disobedience, trespassing (literally crossing over a line) or transgression. This is definitely part of what it means to sin in the Bible. We cannot omit this aspect of sin from any discussion of sin. In fact it is the most common concept in the OT, which is dominated by the idea of God’s will as Law. The apostle Paul, a former Pharisee, uses this concept of sin. But it is just one of the many understandings of sin in the NT. And it needs to be put in the context of all the other ways of understanding sin.
So what is sin? How do we wrap our minds around these various understandings of sin and come up with a whole picture? Sin is a mosaic of ideas. It is a word that describes the problem that we humans find ourselves in. Every religion in the world sees human beings as in a predicament. Every religion says that something is out of kilter with the way we related to each other, our environment and to God. Something is wrong with the way things are. Each religion sees that predicament differently and has different solutions. But all agree that things are not the way they ought to be.
Some of the words used by other religions resonate with our biblical concepts. Buddhism, for example says the problems is suffering. What is meant by suffering is not just physical pain but something much deeper. The word they use is dukkha which means a wheel that is off center, so the cart does not ride smoothly. The idea is that something is out of joint, ashew. Taoism says that something is out of balance. Hindus say the problem is ignorance; we don’t know what we really are and were meant to be. This is just like one of the Biblical words of sin. Muslims see the problem as disobedience and rebellion, also like some biblical words. Mankind at different times and in different places has seen the problem from different angles, but all see a problem.
Christians call that problem by the name sin. The apostle Paul makes it clear that sin is not primarily things we do or fail to do. Sin is a spiritual condition. There are sins – which are acts, and there is sin, which the power that is at work in our lives and in the world that produces sins. The word that Jesus uses often to describe the human condition is lost. That is a word picture from the life of a shepherd to describe sheep who have strayed. Jesus describes our condition as like lost sheep or lost coins or a lost sons. The Book of Common Prayer says, “we have erred and strayed from Your ways like lost sheep.”
Sin is a very complex concept with many dimensions. Please don’t get hung up on one aspect of the word. Don’t get hung up on the word itself. Don’t take “sin” out of your dictionary or throw it out of your theology. It’s a good word when we understand the whole concept. In short, sin is that state of “not-rightness” (unrighteousness) that we find ourselves in. It is that condition of wrongness that many people feel. It is that deep sense that something is not the way it ought to be in our lives and in the world. We might not be able to put our finger on it exactly, but we know that it is real. That is sin.
II. How is this problem of sin resolved? The Christian solution is forgiveness. I preached on forgiveness in the summer when I was a guest preacher, but the concept is worth repeating often. The Greek word for forgiveness means literally “to let go.” The picture is that of a clenched fist which is then loosened. Forgiveness is the letting go of sin. It is being loosed from the grip of sin in our lives. The human problem is that we are in the grip of sin. Picture sin as a hand that has hold of us. Forgiveness breaks the grip of sin and sets us free.
The Christian gospel proclaims that humans cannot break the grip of sin by ourselves. This is where Christianity differs from other religions’ understanding of the solution. Christianity says that sin is so powerful that only the all-powerful God can break its grip. We can’t do it. We can’t do it by rituals or good deeds or prayer or meditation or physical discipline or spiritual disciplines. We cannot set ourselves free even if we had a million lives of reincarnation to accomplish it. The Christian gospel is unique in understanding that it is purely the grace of God that accomplishes spiritual liberation.
The NT proclaims that this liberation was accomplished through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Theologians have developed elaborate theories as to how the death and resurrection of Jesus accomplished that task. How they understand the death and resurrection of Jesus depends on how they understand sin. Some see the Cross as the payment of debt. Jesus saw it that way. He shouted from the Cross, “It is finished” which was a financial term which means “Paid in full.” Others see the Cross in terms of Jesus bearing the punishment for our sin, because sin is seen as breaking the law of God. There are many possible understandings of how the Cross addressed sin. It is not so important which model we adopt. What matters is that we understand that the Cross and the empty tomb solved the sin problem.
One of the best understandings of the death and resurrection of Christ is based on the dominant concept of sin, which I described earlier as falling short or missing the mark. If sin is falling short, then the Cross is the bull’s-eye, and Christ did not miss the mark. He did not fall short. He perfectly fulfilled the will of his Heavenly Father, even to the point of being willing to die. As Philippians 2 says, “He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name.” Jesus did it right. He was perfectly at one with God. His death was the perfect at-one-ment: atonement.
When we identify ourselves with Christ by faith, then we become spiritually one with him. Being united with Christ, we are one with God. Our disjointedness, our alienation, our disfellowship, our disconnectedness – our sinfulness – is healed by his suffering. Christ is the solution to the human condition. Our lives are healed by his death. Our sinfulness – by that I mean our human condition of wrongness – is made right through Jesus death.
People ask: Why does it have to be through Jesus death? Why was it necessary for Christ to suffer and die to accomplish this reconnection with God? Why couldn’t God just snap his fingers and set things right automatically. He could have, of course. He could do it any way he wanted to. After all, he is God. But only the Cross dealt with the seriousness of sin.
This is the genius of the gospel. All other solutions to the sin problem do not take sin seriously enough. That is the deceitfulness of sin. We want to downplay sin and say it is no big deal. It is our way of justifying ourselves and getting ourselves off the hook without really solving the problem. It is like putting a Band-Aid on skin cancer and saying that it is cured. A more invasive and stronger remedy is needed to cure man’s sin. It is not like we made some minor mistakes and God can pat us on the head like a kindly grandfather and say, “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.” Some people assume that forgiveness should be easy – as if the problem of the human sin disease is no big deal and therefore the cure is no big deal. That misunderstands the seriousness of our human condition.
Sin is deadly serious. God had to address it in a way that communicated just how serious it is. The only way to do that is through the suffering and death of his only Son. Only that could communicate the gravity of the human problem and the high price that must be paid to solve that problem. Likewise the resurrection of Jesus communicates the absolute certainty and finality of God’s solution to man’s sin problem. In Christ our sin has been dealt with and our sins forgiven completely. We have been set free from the destructive power of sin through Christ.
We experience this spiritual liberation through faith. I am not talking theoretical theology here. I am not just talking ideas and doctrine. This is an experiential spiritual process that we undergo. Being a Christian is about experiencing the power of God’s forgiveness. It does something inside of us. It gives inner healing and wholeness. It connects us intimately with God in our deepest self - our souls, our inner spiritual essence. Though faith in Christ we have reconciliation with God – union with God. The rest of our lives are spent in embodying that wholeness in all aspects of our lives and in all our relationships.
Whatever became of sin? It has been dealt with by Jesus Christ on the cross and in his resurrection!
No comments:
Post a Comment