Step up to Speak up 2- What Is Sin?
by Scott Hamilton on Tuesday, 20th March 2012
We are spending a few Tuesdays at the blog mapping out some places in the Bible that we could take the people around us who don't know Jesus to explain the Gospel better. We want to help you to make use of God's Word in speaking to the people God has placed in your life, after all Romans 10: 17 says that, 'faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.' Here are the links to the series so far.
What is sin and how does it affect us?
If there is an area that needs particular care as we share the Gospel with the people around us it is here. But not in the way we often think. Our tendency may be to shy away from speaking about sin maybe because we have difficulty defining it or more likely, because we fear a negative reaction. So we need first of all clarity, let me encourage you to spend some time thinking about how you would define sin to someone who would be may be familiar with the word but unfamiliar with how it relates to them in regard to God.
Oswald Chambers defines it as follows: 'Sin is not weakness, it is a disease; it is red-handed rebellion against God and the magnitude of that rebellion is expressed by Calvary’s cross.'
Charles Spurgeon: 'Sin is a deliberate treason against the majesty of God, an assault upon His crown, an insult offered to His throne.'
H. Wayne House: 'The Bible uses many terms to describe the nature of sin: ignorance (Eph. 4:18), error (Mk. 12:24-27), impurity, idolatry (Gal. 5:19-20), trespass (Rom. 5:15), etc. Sin's essence is placing something else in God's place. It is anything that falls short of His glory and perfection. Sin is disobedience.'
Second of all we need humility, essential to this whole deal is that we avoid the sense that in some ways sin is something removed from our experience, even though Jesus has removed it from our record.
The Ultimate Bad Deal
Every day we make decisions and choices that reflect our values and priorities. Sin is demonstrated most when God features least in our every day life. It demonstrates a life removed from God, heading further away from God with no regard for God. It demonstrates choosing other things (often everything else) above God and paints a life parable of separation from God. Romans 1: 24-25 describes the foolishness of this decision and how devastating it is. 'Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!' It is a picture that points to the saddest of satisfactions - with the lesser, with the fading, with the thing that promises much but has the capacity to deliver something at best fleeting but ultimately failing.
The Ultimate Assessment
We mentioned humility earlier, well here's a little help from Romans 3: 23 'For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…' No distinction and all give a plain indication of the absolute impossibility of our situation. People may be able to kid themselves on that God is a non-issue for them but it is a sad sort of confidence trick that leaves them devoid of the one true source of peace and hope. Jeremiah 17: 9 warns of this grand deception to beware, that 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?' Sin persuades us that everything is rosy while satisfying us with rubbish and leaves us without a relationship with God.
The Ultimate Picture
Do you want the best possible picture of how sin affects us? It's fairly straightforward actually. The picture is death. Ephesians 2: 1-3 says that 'you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.' Romans 6: 23 warns us that 'the wages [payment, reward, outcome] of sin is death.' Our commitment to the world with the choices that we make which pledge allegiance every day demonstrates a greater contempt for God. Michael Keeley says that ' Jesus isn't a crutch for the weak...He's a stretcher for the dead.' And we need Him badly because the children of wrath assessment is particularly grave, even for those dead in their sins who feel like that grave is providing them with all the promise and party that they need.
So,as we need Jesus, our attention will turn towards Him next Tuesday in the next instalment of this series.