There are no magic words, formulas or three step programs. There is none of that and there is no way you can do anything, good or bad. There are some basic things in the Christian life that have been overlooked. I think the problem is that we assume most people understand the basic gospel. Surely this does not represent all churches but I think it puts a pretty big dent in modern evangelicalism. The one I want to write about now is sin. I don’t think most of us understand what it is.

If we were to take a poll most people would say that sinning is doing something bad like getting drunk, lying, or whatever. They are correct, but this isn’t the end of the story, it’s only the beginning.

Rules

We were given the 10 Commandments to show us what God considered sin. Fair enough, but these 10 are only the beginning.

What quickly began to happen was that they became a set of rules, just like today. The first thing we need to understand is that sin is sin because God says it is. It’s not sinful to get drunk because we may harm our liver. It is sin simply because God said not to get drunk.

How many times have we heard this, especially if we’ve spent a lot of time in church. We are told not to sin because God says. If that doesn’t work we’re told not to sin because our teeth will fall out, we’ll be weird (thanks for that by the way, I mean what 6th grader doesn’t already feel unwelcome in his own skin), or like I heard recently we’ll be gross zombies.

Humanism

Any other reasoning other than because God said so is humanism. Humanism says that the chief end of being is the happiness of man. Trying to avoid sin by using a humanistic argument will lead to worse things than we started with. It’s a slippery slope any time we put our own interests above God’s even when we are trying to do an apparent good.

What we end up hearing preached Sunday after Sunday are not so much come to Jesus messages but flee your sin messages. This really misses the point and causes a lot of people to reject Jesus without even knowing Him. I’m guilty of the very thing I’m talking about. Preachers preach entire sermons on sin and tell the congregation that if they don’t get right and stop all the craziness that they’re not saved, or they’re not going to be blessed. This is wrong and we hear it all the time. We hear it through respectable men and women who truly love God and I think it’s dangerous.

Struggle

I’ve struggled with many different sins in my life. When I say struggle I truly mean struggle. It’s not some cliché to say that, “Yeah, I used to sin”. I mean that I fought and fought trying not to commit certain sins. Try as I might I could not stop any of them. The harder I fought the easier it was to do them. I could spend all day praying and searching for scriptures concerning my particular sin but when the temptation came I was helpless. And that’s why I think the way we preach against sin is so dangerous.

Originally God gave Moses the 10 commandments for guidance. They were to keep the Israelites “close to God”, as we like to say. There were all the sacrifices that had to be made each year to receive atonement for commandments and other laws broken. You had to follow those rules to be accepted by God. No one was able to do that then and no one can do it now. It’s ridiculous to expect anyone to be able to and even worse to tell them they should.

Preach it Brother

Yet every Sunday someone will stand up and tell a gathering that if they don’t stop gossiping or telling lies that God is not going to bless them, or use them. God’s blessing doesn’t have anything to do with sinning. If it did we would have never received our salvation. What greater blessing? What is more undeserved? If Jesus died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8), and we enter into that forgiveness by simply believing (Romans 4:3) then what does sin even have to do with it? Not a lot.

But we have to live a holy life, right? Yes we do, but we don’t do that by trying not to sin. It’s like trying to love your significant other. If you have to constantly put forth a huge effort to love them something is wrong. We stop sinning by becoming more like God. It’s really just a by-product of spending time God. You are going to become like that which you spend the most time with.

Road Sign

Here’s the thing. Sin is a road sign. The rules are in place to simply let you know if you’ve veered off the right path. The actual sin isn’t the issue.

Before you think I’m being soft on sin let me clarify what I‘m trying to say. Sin is an issue of the heart and not the flesh. If someone gets drunk every day there is a problem, but spiritually speaking the problem isn’t the drinking. The problem lies much deeper than taking a drink. There is something out of sync between you and God that allows this person to do what they’re doing. Being out of sync is the sin.

What was the first sin? It was pride. It was Lucifer who thought that he was better than God and his pride caused him to rebel against God. What got him thrown out of heaven was not rebelling. What got him thrown out was his pride. What about Adam and Eve? Were they thrown out of the Garden of Eden for eating an apple, or from a certain tree? That was the observable aspect of it, yes, but not the real reason. They were thrown out of the garden because they both thought they knew better than God.

Let’s look at cancer as an example. Someone who has just contracted lung cancer is going to look normal. For all intents and purposes the person looks completely healthy. You wouldn’t be able to tell that, without intervention, in just a matter of months they would die. As the cancer progresses the person will begin to look and act sick. They will develop a cough, be wracked by pain, and begin to get weak. Whatever the sign or symptom of the disease we can be sure of one thing: the signs and symptoms are not killing them. It is the cancer that kills and not a cough.

Pride

This is how sin is and what sin is. Sin is simply pride at its core. It is this pride that leads us to believe we are better equipped than God to command the details of our lives. It is this pride that leads us farther and farther from God and causes all the symptoms.

Only by being submitted to God and making Him the focal point of your life will we ever be free of these sins that most of us really don’t want to do. Trying hard just isn’t going to get it done.