5.7

The dynamics of sin

Sin is a dense word, packed tight with negative and alienating associations. Most prefer to assume what it means and avoid the unpleasant process of opening up so offensive a word package. The word sin is rarely used in secular society. It is most often replaced with other words that refer to breaking the law or social norms. Even the word evil is more often used than the s word. Sin’s meaning and dynamics are different from these other words because of how it specifically relates to God

Sin’s true meaning is very difficult to accept because it threatens the core of human life. It also offends by its common misuse to condemn others, which distract from its actual offense. Tampering with its meaning, however, cannot rob its truth. Unless sin is understood for what it means in relation to God, the Scripture as a whole will make no sense. The Law would have no authority and grace would lose its value. Before sin’s truth can be accepted or rejected, it must first be understood as the Bible means it. What we learn in Scripture is that sin possesses two important qualities, both helping to explain its importance in knowing God. The first is that sin exists in every one (e.g. Psalm 51:5-7; Ecclesiastes 7:20, 9:3; Jeremiah 17:9) and the second is that sin is in relation to God (e.g. Genesis 39:9; Psalm 51:4; Acts 9:4). The reality of sin can only be understood in each person’s unique relation to God

When sin as a word is misused to judge others, it provokes defenses. Who dares to call someone else a sinner? Who dares decide what is and isn’t sin? Who has the right to define another with such a word that should only be associated with a Hitler or Mussolini? Such a simplistic, narrow, judgmental and rejecting word should never be spoken in our day! Sin has been judged so obsolete a concept and so politically incorrect, there is rarely a chance to consider what it does mean and barely a hope to understand the truth it reveals. If we don’t understand what sin is, we can never know God’s good and holiness. Without recognizing our own personal sin and its effects, we can never personally know God who wants to free each of us from it

God as Judge is personal and gracious in His judgments. He does not require from any one what He does not first give. It is God’s grace that distinguishes His perspective of human sin from ours. Possibly the best example of God’s unique understanding of sin is in the concept of original sin, the belief that we are all born sinners. How can a baby be a sinner? It does not compute in our experience that adorable and helpless babies could be sinful and guilty of anything. They are all vulnerable, dependent and incapable of harming others. How can sin be associated with these little lives that elicit in us the desire to nurture and care and protect and love?

The human desire to protect and provide for babies and not judge them as sinners reflects something of God’s grace in His justice. God never demands what He doesn’t first give, including with babies. Associating sin to infants and children is offensive to us because we clearly see in them God’s grace that beautifies and provides in their helplessness. God births babies as precious in their needs, freely dependent and freely receiving all they need for their life that He freely gives them. A baby’s innocence is covered and protected from sin by God’s grace in ways we can’t humanly fathom. We do not see what God sees and covers with His grace. What God wants all to see, even us grown ups, is that His grace is able to cover and protect everyone from sin, just as He does with babies. He wants us to turn to Him, see and openly depend on His grace that continually gives us all we have and are, even as adults. We never outgrow our need for God’s grace. We always are His children. Babies and children demonstrate the beauty of God’s grace and explain why Jesus said that only those who become like little children can enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3-4)

The following is a brief overview of sin’s history in Scripture. In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve all the delights of His creation, and He walked with them in His world of wonder. Adam and Eve, however, were tempted by the serpent Satan to believe that their Father God was holding out on them in a big way. The very first accusation Satan made -- his name means adversary or accuser in Hebrew -- was against God. God is lying, Satan accused. He is trying to deprive you, Eve, of His most precious tree because He fears that from it, you would destroy His sole reign as God. Such an accusation suggests that God is really small, insecure, and threatened by His creation. It insinuates He is playing games with His creatures and considers them too stupid to figure out how He’s manipulating them so He can feel better about Himself! It is hard to understand how Adam and Eve could have believed Satan’s ridiculous slander. All they needed to do was look around them at all He gave them authority over and at themselves who He raised from nothing, out of dust. It’s hard to understand their credulity until we look to our own selves who daily judge and challenge God in our word, deed, thought and will. In us we find a nature that is prone to distrust and dismiss God. Adam and Eve trusted their sense perceptions of the tree of knowledge as truly good, delightful and desirable. They trusted their own judgment of God. Our first ancestors turned from their Creator to His creation -- the world, themselves, and the accuser -- and they died, just as God told them they would

But they didn’t die, did they? Both of them lived to leave the Garden, have children and establish the human race on earth. Yet they did most truly die, for their betrayal of God who made and loves them was fatal to their living knowledge of Him. From the moment of their betrayal, they died to their intimate life with God and the inspiration of His ways. They entrusted themselves to His creation, which decays and dies. God never meant to be replaced by His creation. He wanted and intended to be with Adam and Eve. When they turned from God and replaced Him with a most inferior substitute, He opened their eyes to the inadequacy of their choice and they became horribly ashamed. They saw they were trusting a paltry substitute that could never keep its promises. By entrusting themselves to the creation and not the Creator, they became blind to the One who alone is worth trusting and in whom they would never be ashamed (Psalm 22:5; Isaiah 28:16)

The fundamental meaning and nature of sin has not changed since its coming out with Adam and Eve. In the Bible, sin originates in relation to God. The main distinction between social wrongs and sin is the identity of the one who is violated. In society, crimes are against life or property. The criminal intends to violate or damage some one or thing of value. All aspects of sin in the Bible center on God. Sinner, victim and property are accountable to God, for all belongs to Him. When I, who belong to God, intentionally hurt another who also belongs to God, I am messing with God’s property. We are all God’s and so all our intentions and actions are accountable to Him. There are echoes of this truth in human experience. If I assault a child, I must ultimately answer to that child’s caretakers. A child cannot defend himself or know how to requite the wrong I did to him. His caretakers are responsible for protecting and valuing his being and I must answer to those who are responsible, whether for a life or property

Comparing human responses to God’s response to violations and sins is a very big subject. The main distinction being made here is of accountability. Our justice system is set up to make reparations to the one who owns or is responsible for the victim or property. Sin always refers to God and must answer to Him. Whoever sins against another hurts the victim but much more surely attacks God because the victim belongs to God and He best knows the value of that victim. The core of sin’s evil, then, is against God and in inexplicable ways inflicts a wound on Him (Matthew 25:45)

The reality of sin is brought out in different ways throughout Scripture, most clearly in the law of Moses. God gave Moses a complex body of laws for Israel to obey. God’s laws can be seen as boundaries that He establishes to maintain His good order and purposes. The primary words in Hebrew for sin are chata which means to miss, and avar meaning to pass over, through or by. Sin violates the boundaries of God’s laws by missing or transgressing them. These words suggest that sin is all about location, location, location. If I miss the place God intends for me, I’ve sinned by missing His mark. If I go where He forbids me, I’ve sinned by transgressing. But sin is far more than getting lost and bad directions. Sin is personally directed against God. Our dislocated movements are inspired by the dislocation of our heart’s trust

In the law of Moses, the source of overt sin was the heart’s disobedience to God’s word, not believing that God speaks truth and leads His own in paths of righteousness. Israel did not enter God’s promised rest not because she was disobedient to His overt laws but because her heart disobeyed. She did not trust Him. It was the work of her heart that condemned her, her heart’s betrayal of God. Speaking of His time with Israel in the wilderness, God said, “For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall not enter into My rest” (Psalm 95:10-1)

Jesus’ fulfillment of the law originated in His heart. The human heart works both good and evil, some that is externally expressed for others to see and much more that remains internal and hidden from view. The works of the heart Jesus referred to in His Sermon on the Mount — such as anger and lust and pride — are the seeds that flower into murders, adulteries and abuses of power. Jesus judged that both the seed and the fruit equally break the law of Moses. It is not only our visible works but the hidden works of our heart that condemn us because our heart reflects our nature. Jesus judges as God judges, not merely appearances but what hides in the deepest recesses of the heart. “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1Samuel 16:7)

At the level of our heart, we all stand as equals before God. No one is superior or inferior to another. The nature of our heart with its potential for good and evil and sin, is the great equalizer. It is to this level of our being that Jesus speaks. He wants to meet each one of us at the foundation of our heart’s nature where we are equal before God. The truth of sin was never meant to condemn one person by another. No one can judge another (Matthew 7:1-2), but that is what we naturally do. We judge one another and we judge God, which blinds us to Him. When we start to see and accept the sin in us and in human nature, we begin to see how it blinds us (John 9:41; Jeremiah 2:35) and we are less likely to confuse our nature with His. We all are in desperate need of a revelation of God beyond our sin, to see Him whose good is wholly unlike ours. To accept our sin enables us to start despairing in ourselves and set free our hope so that it can return to its place of rest that has been from the beginning, in God. This is the One who can satisfy our hope, in whom we are never ashamed

Those in the Bible who accepted and repented of their sin would cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes, as if they were grieving a death. They knew their sin inflicted a mortal blow to their living trust in God. Sin is painful and difficult to accept until the forgiveness, the cleansing, the deliverance from God answers (Psalm 30:11). In these ways He comforts us and we are blessed. Whether death is in body or spirit, “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, “for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4)