November 16
November 16
At the heart of sin is a great exchange of love for the Creator for love of created things.
Every human being worships. The deepest motivational force in all humans is not experience or emotion; it is worship. Some think of worship as cold, formal ritualism. But the inclination to worship lies at the heart of every human being. It is placed in our hearts by God to drive us into loving and worshipful surrender to him. More than just an activity that we give ourselves to, worship is part of our identity as humans that none of us can escape. This also means that even the life of the most irreligious person is shaped by worship. So, at the center of sin is misplaced, misdirected worship. Sin originates from and is driven by the worship of something in creation rather than of God. Sin is not just wrong behavior. Sin is the idolatry of the heart that expresses itself by pursuing things that God forbids.
Paul writes in Romans 1 that God designed his world in a way that makes his existence obvious to everyone. He then says:
Although [the ungodly] knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Rom. 1:21–25)
At the center of every sin is foolishness and futility. What is this foolishness? It’s the exchanging of the heart-satisfying glory of God for some created God-replacement. What is the big lie of sin? It is that we can find human fulfillment by serving the creature rather than the Creator. Behind every evil desire, every evil choice, and every evil word or action is this great moral exchange. Sin is God-denying and creation-deifying.
Paul describes the result of this great exchange:
Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Rom. 1:28–32)
May God rescue us from us, and by grace enable us to offer the allegiance and worship of our hearts to him alone. Heart-ruling and life-shaping worship of him happens only by the power of his grace. That grace is ours in Jesus.