My Problem with the idea of Sin….and Everything that Comes with That
My main problem with Sin was that I could not reconcile the reality of God to the reality of sin. The difficulty with that is that without the reconciliation of that reality, I can never truly understand why Christ had to die, and how powerful it is that the Triune Godhead (The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, were willing to do this for us).
A lot of us don’t like the idea of being sinners or the idea that sin is bad. Or the idea that sin might mean that we’re bad or fallen or unredeemable without some sort of intermediary. Our reaction to this idea can range from scoffing skepticism to outright rage or rejection and I know this because all of these things used to be my responses.
On Bibletools.com, a Forerunner commentary hosts the following definition and explanation of what sin is. I looked up this particular definition because it reminded me of a conversation I’d once had with a Muslim friend of mine who said that he liked this definition. It was one that he’d heard in a recovery meeting, but I don’t know or think that it was one that either of us had tied back to the Bible, which of course, is the source of the concept of sin. At any rate the explanation is as follows:
“The apostle John writes, “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness” (I John 3:4). The Greek word for “sin” is hamartia, an archery term for “missing the mark.” We could say that sin is not just making an error in judgment in a particular case, but missing the whole point of human life; not just the violation of a law, but an insult to a relationship with the One to whom we owe everything; not just a servant's failure to carry out a master's orders, but the ingratitude of a child to its parent.”
For most of my life, sin was not real to me. I don’t know that I even ever really thought about it properly. Probably not. I probably ignored it when I should have at least given it some thought!!! But if I’m honest, I can say that while I was introduced to the idea of sin as a child, I was pretty confident in my rejection of it early on as a teenager and a young adult.
Now, I should clarify that at the age of 14, I was pretty straight edge. I didn’t drink or smoke or have sex which, for the kids I was hanging out with, was pretty exceptional. I was known as “Malcolm Farrakhan” or “Sharief” which if you know those references means that I was one of those people who always preached about something or rather whether you wanted to hear it or not. I did, however, smoke cigarettes, curse and watch porn. So I was certainly not without sin and could very easily have taken the time to think about it. I did not.
For the most part, throughout life, this disconnection from sin would continue. It would continue as I became active with drugs and alcohol. It would continue as I became sexually active. It would continue as I would lie, and cheat and steal. And mind you, I did feel guilty about such things. But I did not see myself as separating myself from my creator who loved me. And why is that?
Well, after years of thinking about it, or at least after some time of the Holy Spirit really prompting me to think about it (if we’re being honest), I’ve boiled it down to 3 key reasons that I want to share with you all.
Sin was not real for three basic reasons and all of them come back to the Lord:
The Lord was not a real entity to me.
The Lord was not a personal entity to me.
The Lord was not a Holy entity to me. Or at least, I didn’t understand Holiness well enough to understand that the Lord was Holy.
Let me say a little bit about each of these things and why they were a challenge for me.
The Lord was not a Real Entity to me:
I can say, with a reasonable degree of confidence that I have always genuinely sought the truth and as a result I have always genuinely sought the Lord (God). And for the most part was always willing to acknowledge his presence even Biblically to a certain degree. But, I wanted God on MY terms. I wanted God to be who I wanted him to be, not who he actually is. A God of my own imagination is no God at all. Not only that but, when God is not a real entity, reality itself ceases to be real to a certain degree.
In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Light.” Psalm 119 deals with this on many levels including verse 142 which states, “Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, And Your law is truth.” In fact, Proverbs, one of the greatest documents on wisdom known to humanity very clearly states that the, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”
This, of course, is all just scratching the surface. But the point is that these verses, verses like them and the whole of the Bible, do not describe an entity that requires our “imagination” to define him. We are lucky to even comprehend The LORD’S existence, let alone be capable of “creating” a god of our. And yet, this was, spoken or unspoken, often my goal. To create a God that fit my whims or my needs at the time whatever they might be. Indeed, this remains many people’s goal when it comes to their relationship to GOD. Know to know the LORD, but to create something that resembles him. But, that’s just it. There is nothing like the LORD. Nor will there ever be.
The Lord was not a Personal Entity to me:
I was one of those people who viewed God in a very generic way. As a sort of far off entity that maybe was concerned with us, and maybe was not, but certainly was not that directly involved in the affairs of human beings and the history of the world. In fact, I would say that is probably true for a lot of us. A lot of people want a God that doesn’t know or is far too busy running the world to think that you and I are important to him. How do we know this? Because I’m sure we’ve all heard someone say something to the effect of, “What makes you think that God is thinking about your day. You have to be some kind of egomaniac to be thinking that.” Which, ok, maybe. But also, everything about the God of the Bible describes exactly that. He was a God that knew people, and knew their children, and their habits, and their hopes and dreams and wants and desires. He created Eve for Adam because he didn’t want him to be alone. He empathized with Cain who, while he needed to be disciplined he was also willing to protect. In Jeremiah 29:11 he tells the young prophet not to worry because, “even the hairs on his head are numbered.” Even the hairs on his head!!!
Have you ever stopped to count the number of hairs on yours, or anyone else’s head. No. No you have not. And do you know why you have not? Because you are a human being and for you and I that is a ridiculous task. I don’t care how much you love or adore that person, you ain’t doing that. Well, I will speak for myself. I ain’t doing that and I ain’t sitting around while someone does it. Further, building a machine that does it does not count.
But for the LORD, that's just who he is! And he knows ALL of US like that. And because he knows all of us like that, and because he LOVES all of us like that, he sent his SON, his beautiful perfect Son, to die a most horrible and painful death on our behalf so that we might actually KNOW him as well. Because he is Holy. And we need a middle man, an advocate, an intercessor. Which brings me to my third point.
The Lord was not a Holy entity to me. Or at least, I didn’t understand Holiness well enough to understand that the Lord was Holy.
I have a confession. And that confession is that at the age of 43, I may have just now started to understand what Holiness actually is and why it matters. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thought about Holiness at a few different stages of my life. I really have. But I don’t think I’ve ever understood. Actually, I still don’t. I just understand that I can’t understand it. I can’t properly conceptualize it. I can’t grasp or hold onto the idea with any real merit or weight. At best I can kinda sorta explore the idea of it because, for instance, as a human being I can never be sinless, but I can be blameless. Meaning I can be sinless right now…but man, the idea that I can never even come remotely close to the Holiness of the Lord, that if I were to even be placed with a certain range of God that the sheer power of his Holiness could rip my body to shreds, that’s a real thing man. You know, in the Bible you see certain responses to the Lord, Job’s response to the whirlwind for instance, or John’s description of the Angels who just cannot stop talking about it and it’s sort of hard to wrap your mind around except consider this.
Think about good and right notions or virtue in existence. Pick any one. Truth. Justice. Hope. Faith. Any of them.
Ok, now, whatever you choose, add it to the purest, most potent form of every other one, multiply that by infinity and you're still short of the Glory of God. Again, if there’s no Jesus in the picture, most of us, if not all of us are basically in the worst position possible because we really couldn’t get it right if we tried. And most of us, like myself, don't even try. Most of the time we don’t even want to try.
These three gaps in my understanding made it impossible to understand a REAL God that was VERY aware of my sin, the Loved and cared for me but also simply could not tolerate such sin because of his own Holiness. Once I was able to reconcile this reality, I was able to not only understand why sin was death (and make no mistake it is. Every single time. But that is another article), but also how amazing it is that the LORD was willing to balance the scales of justice using his SON (His own “flesh and blood”) to save us basically from ourselves because we can’t follow the rules. Or at least, often do not want to. For any number of reasons.
One of the most major, dangerous and sad consequences of sin, and the one I think has been on my mind the most lately is the hardening of the heart. Again, that in and of itself should be it’s own article and may be among one of the next things that I write. But sin, taken to an extreme with no repentance or effort at purification, sanctification or righteousness can only lead to a hardened heart. And what, biblically speaking is a hardened heart. Well, the most simple explanation for a hardened heart is one that is so enamored with its own voice, it’s own sin, it’s own lust or greed or hatred or sense of superiority, that it cannot or will not hear the voice of GOD whether that voice is the Whisper of the Holy Spirit or the shout of judgment.
