Chapter 2: Me — A Sinner?
CHAPTER 2
ME — A SINNER?
People used to hear about sin a lot more than they do now. In fact, when was the last time you heard the word sin used anywhere besides church?
C. S. Lewis noticed this when he was writing books like the Chronicles of Narnia series and The Screwtape Letters: “The barrier I have met is the total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin.”
Famous psychiatrist Karl Menninger noticed it too back in 1979: “The very word, ‘sin’ … was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word.… [It] has almost disappeared — the word, along with the notion. Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore? Doesn’t anyone believe in sin?”
More recently, in 2001 New Testament scholar D. A. Carson commented that the most frustrating aspect of doing evangelism in universities was the fact that students generally have no idea of sin. “They know how to sin well enough, but they have no idea of what constitutes sin.”
The whole idea of sin has pretty much disappeared from our culture and even from many of our churches. If it’s there, it’s been softened for modern sensibilities. We rarely hear about actions being wrong or immoral. Instead, we hear that someone did something “inappropriate” or “made a mistake.”
You might say, “But I hear about sin all the time at church!” And that may be true, especially if you go to a conservative evangelical church. But take a minute to think about how sin is talked about and how you usually think about it.
A youth leader invited a bunch of kids from his church to join him in prayer for their school and community. And every one of those kids talked about bad things they’d heard about in society or seen other kids do — stuff like drugs, sex, cheating, abortion. No one prayed about their own temptations or the struggles of people they hung out with. Finally the frustrated group leader closed the meeting with the story of the tax collector in one of Jesus’ parables: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).
I’ve seen that happen in a lot of churches and Christian organizations. We see sin so easily in the immoral or unethical conduct of people in society at large. But we often fail to see it in what I call the “acceptable sins of the saints” — those sneaky, respectable sins we talked about at the beginning of this book. So we end up living in denial: “We’re not sinners. They are!”
Not all Christians do this, of course. But a lot of them do. They say snarky things about a brother or sister in Christ and feel just fine about it. They hold grudges over past wrongs without any effort to forgive as God has forgiven us. They look down their religious noses at sinners “out there” in the world without any sense of their own failures.
It’s easy to let ourselves off the hook by saying that our “minor” sins are not as bad as the flagrant ones of society. But sin is sin, and God has not given us the authority to assign values for different sinful actions. In fact, He said through James, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (2:10, italics mine).
Did you get that? If we fail to follow just one little bit of God’s law, we’re accountable for — that is, guilty of breaking — all of it!
If that’s hard for you to wrap your mind around, it’s because most of us tend to think in terms of individual laws and their penalties. But God’s law is seamless. The Bible doesn’t speak about God’s laws, as in many of them; it speaks of God’s law, as a single whole. A person who commits murder breaks God’s law. So does a person who is jealous or anxious.
But aren’t some sins more serious than others? Yes … and no. I would rather be angry at people or insult them than actually commit murder. Yet Jesus said all three actions will be judged (see Matthew 5:21-22). He also said that having sexual thoughts about someone we’re not married to is as bad as having sex with that person (see verses 27-28).
The truth is, all sin is serious because all sin is a breaking of God’s seamless law.
The apostle John put it this way: “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Whenever we sin, we’re rejecting God’s moral standards of right and wrong so that we can have our own way.
In Greek culture, sin originally meant to “miss the mark,” that is, to miss the center of the target. Sin was considered a miscalculation or a failure to achieve. And there is some truth in that idea. Think of a person who feels really bad about some sinful behavior and keeps trying to change, only to fail again and again.
But let’s be honest. Most of our sinful actions are not failed efforts to do the right thing. They’re successful efforts to do exactly what we want. As James wrote, “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (1:14). We sin because the pleasure or satisfaction of our sinful behavior is stronger than our desire to please God.
Sin is sin. Even the sin that doesn’t seem so bad to us is serious in God’s eyes. The apostle Paul quoted the Old Testament to remind us: “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them” (Galatians 3:10, italics mine).
“All things” is a tough standard. In school terms, that means a 99 on a final exam is a failing grade. It means that one misplaced comma in an otherwise fine term paper would get you an F.
Paul did go on to assure us that Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (verse 13). But that doesn’t change the fact that even the “minor” sins we tolerate in our lives are completely “curseworthy.”
The whole idea of sin may have almost disappeared from our culture. It may have been softened in many churches to save people from feeling uncomfortable. It might have been redefined by other Christians to cover only the big sins of society. But sin has not disappeared from the sight of God. All sins, both the respectable sins of the saints we too often tolerate and the flagrant sins of society we are quick to condemn, are terrible in God’s sight. They all deserve His curse.
If this sounds harsh, let me hasten to stress that there are many godly, humble people who don’t deny or excuse their respectable sins. But there are plenty who are quite judgmental toward the grosser sins of society and seem pridefully unaware of their own personal sins. A lot of us live somewhere in between. And all of us are lawless sinners deserving of God’s judgment.
So … are you depressed yet? I promise you — there’s hope!
God is still our heavenly Father, and He is at work among us to call us to repentance and renewal. But part of that work is to show us what we need to repent of — including those sneaky sins we tolerate in our own lives.
And so for one more chapter, we will dig deeper into the sinfulness of our respectable sins.
YOUR TURN
“Sin is lawlessness.” (1 John 3:4)
ENGAGE
1. Do you agree that “the whole idea of sin has pretty much disappeared from our culture and even from many of our churches”? Why or why not? What have you heard about sin as you’ve grown up?
2. Make a list of attitudes and behavior you’ve noticed in yourself and others that might qualify as sneaky or respectable sins. Compare it to the list on pages 52–53. Anything you would change about either list? Any items hit especially close to home?
3. Read Matthew 7:1-5. How do these words of Jesus apply to the idea of respectable sin? Why do you think believers often focus on the sins of unbelievers rather than on their own personal sins?
BRING IT TO GOD
Ask God to forgive you for any times you’ve pointed out someone else’s sin while overlooking your own. Pray for honesty, humility, and courage as you look your sneaky sins in the face and deal with them.