Study Questions
Chapter 5
The fact and nature
of sin
We have looked in some detail at the evidence for the unique deity of Jesus of Nazareth. As a result, we may well have become convinced that, yes, he is indeed the Lord, the Son of God. Yet the focus of the New Testament is not just on who he was, but on what he came to do. He is presented not simply as the Lord from heaven, but also as the Saviour of sinners. Indeed, the two cannot be separated, for the effectiveness of what he did depends absolutely on the truth of who he was.
But in order to appreciate what exactly it was that Jesus achieved, we need to understand who we are as well as who he was. His work was done for us. It was the work of a person for persons, a mission undertaken for needy people by the only one who was able to meet their need. His ability lies in his deity; our need lies in our sin. We have investigated his claim to be able to help us; we must now look at the nature of the help we need.
So we turn from Christ in particular to humanity in general, from what the Bible reveals about the sinlessness and glory that are in him to what it has to say about the sin and shame that are in us. Only then, after we have clearly grasped what we are, shall we be in a position to perceive the wonder of what he has done for us and offers to us. We need to be convinced about the accuracy of the diagnosis before we will be ready to take the medicine God prescribes.
Sin is an unpopular subject, and Christians are often criticized for going on about it too much. But they only do so because they are realists. Sin is not a convenient invention of church ministers to keep them in their job; it is a fact of human experience.
The history of the last hundred years or so has convinced many people that the problem of evil is located in human beings themselves, not merely in human society. The nineteenth century saw a flourishing of liberal optimism. It was widely believed that human nature was fundamentally good, that evil was largely caused by ignorance and bad housing, and that education and social reform would enable people to live together in happiness and goodwill. But this illusion has been shattered by the hard facts of history. Educational opportunities have spread rapidly throughout the world, and many welfare states have been created. But our human capacity to get it wrong seems undaunted. The persistence of conflict on the world stage and the widespread denial of human rights, together with the general increase of violence and crime, have forced thoughtful people to acknowledge that a hard core of selfishness exists in each and every one of us.
Much that we take for granted in a ‘civilized’ society is actually based upon the assumption of human sin. Nearly all legislation has grown up because we simply cannot be trusted to settle our disputes with justice and without self-interest. A promise is not enough; we need a contract. Doors are not enough; we have to lock and bolt them. The payment of fares is not enough; tickets have to be issued, inspected and collected. Law and order are not enough; we need the police to enforce them. All this is due to our sin. We cannot trust one another. We need protection against one another. It is a terrible indication of what human nature is really like.
The universality of sin
The Bible writers are quite clear that sin is universal. ‘There is no-one who does not sin,’ says King Solomon in an aside during his great prayer at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. ‘Indeed, there is no-one on earth who is righteous, no-one who does what is right and never sins,’ adds the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes (TNIV). Several of the psalms comment sadly on the universality of human sin. Psalm 14, which describes the godless ‘fool’, gives a very pessimistic description of human wickedness:
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no-one who does good.The LORD looks down from heaven
on the human raceto see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.All have turned away,
all have become corrupt;there is no-one who does good,
not even one.
The psalmists’ conscience tells them that if God were to rise up in judgment against humanity, none could escape his condemnation. ‘If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?’ (TNIV) Hence the prayer, ‘Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no-one living is righteous before you.’
The prophets are as insistent as the psalmists on the fact that all people are sinners, and no statements are more definite than the two which are to be found in the second half of the book of Isaiah. ‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way’ (TNIV), and ‘All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.’
It isn’t only the Old Testament writers who share this view. Paul opens his letter to the Romans with a closely reasoned argument, which extends over the first three chapters, that everyone, no matter who they are, is a sinner in God’s sight. He writes about the corrupt behaviour of the pagan world and then adds that his own people, the people of Israel, are no better. They have been entrusted with God’s holy law – and even teach it to others. Yet they break it just as much as anyone else. Paul goes on to quote from the psalms and the prophet Isaiah to illustrate his theme, and concludes, ‘There is no difference [between Jew and Gentile], for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ John, another New Testament writer, is, if anything, even more explicit when he declares, ‘If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves,’ and ‘If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar.’
But what is sin? Yes, it affects everyone – but what exactly is it? Several words are used in the Bible to describe its nature. They can be put into two groups, according to whether wrongdoing is seen negatively or positively. Negatively, it is shortcoming. One word represents it as a lapse, a slip, a blunder. Another pictures it as the failure to hit a target. Yet another shows it to be an inner badness, having a character which falls short of what is good.
Positively, sin is wrongdoing. One word describes sin as trespassing over a boundary. Another reveals it as failing to keep the law, and another as an act which contravenes justice.
Both these groups of words imply the existence of a clear standard of behaviour. It is either an ideal which we fail to reach, or a law which we break. ‘Anyone...who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins,’ says James. That is the negative aspect. ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness,’ says John. That is the positive aspect.
The Bible accepts the fact that people have different standards. The people of Israel have the law of Moses. Everyone else has the law of conscience. But everyone has broken the law they know. Everyone has fallen short of their own standard. What is our ethical code? It may be the law of Moses or the teaching of Jesus. It may be the decent thing, or the done thing, or the conventions of society. It may be Buddhism’s eightfold path or Islam’s five pillars of conduct. But whatever it is, we have not succeeded in observing it. We all stand self-condemned.
This comes as a genuine surprise to many people. They have their ideals and think they achieve them, more or less. They do not go in for introspection. They are not unduly self-critical. They know they have had occasional lapses. They are aware of certain character defects. But they are not particularly worried by them, and think of themselves as no worse than anyone else. All this is understandable enough, until we remember two things. First, our sense of success or failure depends on how high our standards are. We’d find it quite easy to consider ourselves good at high-jumping if the bar were never raised more than a few inches! Secondly, God is interested in the thought behind the deed and the motive behind the action. Jesus clearly taught this in the Sermon on the Mount, set out for us in chapters 5 to 7 of Matthew’s Gospel. With these two principles in mind, a healthy exercise would be to take the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 as our standard and see how very far short of it we all fall.
The Ten Commandments
1. You shall have no other gods before me
This is God’s demand for our exclusive worship. We don’t have to worship the sun, the moon and the stars to break this law. We break it whenever we give to something or someone other than God himself the first place in our thoughts or our affections. It may be some engrossing sport, an absorbing hobby, or selfish ambition. Or it may be someone whom we idolize. We may worship a god of gold and silver in the form of safe investments and a healthy bank balance, or a god of wood and stone in the form of property and possessions. None of these things is necessarily wrong in itself. It becomes wrong only when we give to it the place in our lives which belongs only to God. Sin is basically the placing of self where God should be. The way a wit once described the typical Victorian Englishman is true of us all: ‘a self-made man who worships his creator’.
For us to keep this first commandment would be, as Jesus said, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind; to make his will our guide and his glory our goal; to put him first in thought, word and deed; in work and leisure; in friendships and career; in the use of our money, time and talents; at work and at home. No-one has ever kept this commandment except Jesus of Nazareth.
2. You shall not make for yourself an image
If the first commandment is about what we worship, the second is about how we worship. In the first God demands our exclusive worship, and in the second our sincere and spiritual worship. For ‘God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’
We may never have manufactured some statue or figurine and bowed down to worship it, but what distorted mental images of God do we hold in our minds? And although this commandment does not forbid the use of all external forms in worship, it does imply that they are useless unless there is inward reality as well. We may have attended church – but have we ever really worshipped God? We may have said prayers – but have we ever really prayed? We may have read the Bible – but have we ever let God speak to us through it and have we done what he said? It is no good approaching God with our lips if our hearts are far from him. To do so is sheer hypocrisy.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God
The name of God represents the nature of God. This is why there is so much in the Bible which tells us to respect his name, and why in the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to pray that his name may be ‘hallowed’ or kept special. His holy name can be dragged in the mud by our careless use of language, and most of us would do well to revise our vocabulary from time to time. But to take God’s name in vain is not just a matter of words – it’s also about thoughts and deeds. Whenever our behaviour is inconsistent with our belief, when what we do contradicts what we say, we take God’s name in vain. To call God ‘Lord’ and disobey him is to take his name in vain. To call God ‘Father’ and be filled with anxiety and doubts is to deny his name. To take God’s name in vain is to talk one way and act another. This too is hypocrisy.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy
The Jews’ Sabbath and the Christians’ Sunday are part of what God has put in place for us. To set apart one day in seven is not just a human arrangement or a social convenience. It is God’s plan. He made the Sabbath for people, Jesus emphasized, and since he also made the people for whom he made the Sabbath, he adapted it to people’s needs. Our bodies and minds need rest, and our spirits need the opportunity for worship. This is why the Sabbath is set aside as a day of rest and a day of worship.
Not only are we to keep it like this ourselves, for our own good, but we are to do all we can for the common good to ensure that others do not have to work unnecessarily on this day.
So Sunday is a ‘holy’ day, set apart for God. It is the Lord’s day, not our day. It should therefore be spent in his way, not in ours, to worship and serve him – and not just for our self-centred pleasure.
5. Honour your father and your mother
This fifth commandment still comes in the first half of the law which is all about our duty to God. For our parents, at least while we are children, represent God’s authority to us. Yet often it is in their own homes that people, young people especially, can be at their most selfish and inconsiderate. It is all too easy to be ungrateful and negligent, and to fail to show our parents due respect and affection. How often do we contact them or visit them? Or do they need support of one kind or another which we could give, but fail to make available to them?
6. You shall not murder
This is not just about the crime of murder. After all, if looks could kill, many would kill with a look. And if murder can be committed by cutting words, many are clearly guilty. Indeed Jesus said that to be angry with someone without good reason, or to be insulting, are as serious as actually killing someone. John draws the right conclusion when he writes, ‘Anyone who hates a fellow believer is a murderer’ (1 John 3:15 TNIV). Every loss of temper, every outburst of uncontrolled passion, every stirring of sullen rage, every bitter resentment and thirsting for revenge – all these things are murder. We can kill by malicious gossip. We can kill by studied neglect and cruelty. We can kill by spite and jealousy. We have probably all done so.
7. You shall not commit adultery
Again, this commandment has a far wider application than being unfaithful in marriage. It includes any sort of sex outside the marriage relationship for which it was designed. It also includes all sexual perversions, for although men and women are not necessarily responsible for the urges they have, they are responsible for what they do about them. It includes selfish demands within marriage, and any behaviour which drives a partner to want to end the relationship. It includes the use of pornography, and giving in to impure fantasies. Jesus made this clear when he said, ‘Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’
Just as to think murderous thoughts is to commit murder, so to think adulterous thoughts is to commit adultery. This commandment embraces every abuse of a sacred and beautiful gift of God.
8. You shall not steal
To steal is to rob a person of anything which belongs to him or is due to him. Taking money or property is not the only way in which this commandment can be broken. Tax evasion is robbery. So is dodging the customs. So is working short hours. What people call ‘scrounging’, God calls stealing. To overwork and underpay your staff is to break this commandment. There can be few of us, if any, who have been thoroughly honest in personal and business affairs.
These negative commandments also imply a positive counterpart. In order truly to avoid murder, we must do all we can to promote the health and support the life of others. It isn’t enough to refrain from the act of adultery. The commandment requires the right, healthy and honourable attitude of each sex towards the other. Similarly, not stealing is no particular virtue if we are miserly or mean. In his New Testament letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the point that it isn’t enough for thieves to stop stealing; they must also start working. And he says this not just so that they can provide for their own needs, but also so that they may have something to share with those in need.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour
The last five commandments express a respect for the rights of others which is implied in true love. To break these commandments is to rob people of the things most precious to them – life (‘you shall not murder’), their home or honour (‘you shall not commit adultery’), their property (‘you shall not steal’), and now their reputation (‘you shall not give false testimony against your neighbour’).
This commandment doesn’t only apply in a court of law. It does include perjury. But it also refers to all forms of scandal, slander, idle talk and gossip, all lies and deliberate exaggerations or distortions of the truth. We can give false testimony by listening to unkind rumours as well as by passing them on, by making cruel jokes at somebody else’s expense, by creating false impressions, by failing to correct statements which we know to be untrue, and by what we do not say as well as by what we do say.
10. You shall not covet
The tenth commandment is in some ways the most revealing of all. It turns the Ten Commandments from an external legal code into an internal moral standard. We can be brought to book by the law of the land for theft – but not for covetousness. For covetousness belongs to the inner life. It lurks in the heart and the mind. What lust is to adultery and temper is to murder, covetousness is to theft.
The particular things which we are not to covet and which are mentioned in the commandment are surprisingly modern. In the housing shortage there is much coveting of our neighbour’s house, and divorce would not be so common if people did not covet their neighbour’s wife or husband. ‘Greed...is idolatry,’ wrote Paul, and by contrast, ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’.
Listing these commandments brings to light an ugly catalogue of sins. So much takes place beneath the surface of our lives, in the secret places of our minds, which other people do not see and which we manage to conceal even from ourselves. But God sees these things. His eye penetrates into every corner of our hearts: ‘Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.’ He sees us as we really are, and his law shows up our sins for what they really are. Indeed, the purpose of the law was to expose sin, for ‘through the law we become conscious of sin’.
So much takes place beneath the surface of our lives... But God sees these things. His eye penetrates into every corner of our hearts
When C. H. Spurgeon, a famous nineteenth-century preacher, was only fourteen years old, he experienced a tremendous sense of his own sinfulness. Two truths came home to him as never before: ‘God’s majesty and my sinfulness’. He had a crushing sense of how unworthy he was.
I do not hesitate to say that those who examined my life would not have seen any extraordinary sin, yet as I looked upon myself I saw outrageous sin against God. I was not like other boys, untruthful, dishonest, swearing and so on. But of a sudden, I met Moses carrying the law...God’s Ten Words...and as I read them, they all seemed to join in condemning me in the sight of the thrice holy Jehovah.
In our case, too, there is nothing like the law of God for convincing us of our sinfulness.