The Truth about Sin

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Good morning Chapel family. We are at the halfway point of our series on “Truth,” where we are teaching through the Doctrinal Statement of our church. So I want to take a minute and remind you why we’re doing this. Our ministry plan for this year is to go deeper so we can reach wider. Just like a tree: if the roots are shallow, it’s not going to grow very large; it’s not going to bear much fruit. But if the roots go deep into the soil, the tree can reach wide and it can bear a lot of fruit.  

So this fall is all about sinking our roots deep into the soil of God’s truth. That’s why we’re studying doctrine and theology. The first day of this series, we had a book table in the lobby, with a book called “Christian Beliefs.” We sold out the first day—hundreds of books. That was a good sign. In the small group that I lead, we are literally reading from that book, out loud, and stopping after each paragraph to discuss. It’s been so rich, and I can see people’s roots growing deeper. So I want to encourage you: take notes in church; show up for your small group; read; study; sink your roots deep. And then in the winter and spring, we’re going to focus on reaching wide: sharing the gospel, answering people’s hard questions—by the way, make sure you have Wednesday, January 7 on your calendar—we are hosting a regional seminar by Rebecca McLaughlin called “Confronting Christianity.” Great event to invite your spiritually interested friends and family to. So in that second part of the year, we’re trusting God to grow his kingdom wider through us. So—today—we’re going to keep going deep.  

The next item on The Chapel’s Doctrinal Statement is about sin. A popular TV preacher was asked why he never preaches about sin. And he said, “People already know what they’re doing wrong; my job is to encourage them.” With respect, that pastor is not doing his job. Do you realize Jesus talked about sin a lot? The reason he got nailed to a cross wasn’t because he was positive and affirming. It was partially because he called people things like whitewashed tombs and hypocrites and brood of vipers and sometimes worse. He called people out on their sin. Why would he do that? Because he realized we will never have ears to hear the good news until we first own the bad news about ourselves. So today we’re going to talk about sin. 

Here’s what our doctrinal statement says: We believe in the total depravity of all mankind, and in the necessity of regeneration. We believe in the total depravity of all mankind, and in the necessity of regeneration. 

Let’s unpack that today under two headings. First: The Problem We All Have. The New Testament uses three different Greek words for sin. The first word is hamartia. It’s a word that means “missing the mark.” And it was used in archery. When you’re shooting an arrow at a target, the goal is to hit the bullseye. So when your arrow went into that target, the distance between the bullseye and your arrow was called the “sin” of the arrow. Kind of makes sense, right? God’s commands are the bullseye, but we often don’t hit that mark. In fact, sometimes my arrows miss the target altogether and wind up somewhere in the woods. So that’s the first word for sin: hamartia—missing the mark. 

The second word is actually a pair of words: paraptoma and parabasis, and they both mean “trespass.” In the Lord’s Prayer we say, “Forgive us our trespasses.” So what are you doing when you trespass? You are going someplace you shouldn’t go. You’re crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed. You took somebody else’s stuff. You slept with somebody else’s spouse. That’s sin. Trespassing. 

The third word is asebeias. And it means “disrespecting God.” Sometimes by acting like there is no God; sometimes acting like you’re God; sometimes not really caring what God says. For example, God says “love and forgive your enemies”; and you say, “I don’t care what God says; I hate my enemies and I’ll never forgive them.” That’s disrespect for God and that’s sin. 

So are you with me? Sin is missing the mark; it’s trespassing; and it’s disrespecting God. And let me pause for just a second: right now, if all the examples coming into your mind are the sins of other people…stop that. And ask God to shine the light on your own heart.  

Now, obviously, you can do all three of those things—miss the mark, trespass, and disrespect God—in your actions, right? In things that you do or say. Look at commandments six through nine in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Those are all things that you do. And we could think of tons of other ways to sin through our actions. 

But Jesus won’t let us stop there. Jesus takes us beneath the surface, and he says you can miss the mark and trespass and disrespect God without doing or saying anything. Matthew 5:27-28… 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. That’s a whole different standard, isn’t it? In other words, you can even sin in your attitudes. In fact, back to the Old Testament—what does commandment number 10 say? Thou shalt not…covet. You’ve got that great house…car…wife—I wish I had that! I’m not taking any action! But I really want what you have. And God says, “Yeah, that’s sin too.” 

So in both our actions and our attitudes, there is not a single person who can say, “I’m innocent.” We are all in the same boat. To quote the great theologian Bill Murray, “…we're kind of really ugly if we look really hard. We're not who we think we are. We're not as wonderful as we think we are. It's a little bit of a shock … it's hard." He’s right! And it’s because of sin. 

How did we get here? 

Well, the Bible says it traces back to the very first human. God created the world perfect. The crown of his creation was humans: he made Adam and Eve in his own image; he placed them in the Garden of Eden; he gave them tons of freedom but he warned them: Don’t eat the fruit of this one tree. Satan approached them in the form of a serpent and told them that God had lied to them about the fruit. We read in Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. And you say, “Well, bad decision by them, but what does that have to do with me?” According to the Bible, a lot.  

Romans 5:12—Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. See, Adam was acting as the representative, or the head, of the whole human race. So when he committed that first sin, it was like an infection that spread through all of his descendants. Have you ever heard the term “original sin”? Original sin means that because of Adam’s disobedience, every human being is born with a heart that’s bent toward selfishness and rebellion. If you don’t believe that, ask any parent who’s raised a child. Babies are cute and precious, but they’re also selfish and rebellious and sinful, because they’ve been infected by the sin of their ancestor, Adam.  

I know what some of you are thinking? You’re thinking, “That’s not…(everybody together)…That’s not fair!” Why should we get penalized for something Adam did? Fair question, and here’s the answer. First, even if you weren’t infected by Adam’s sin, you have voluntarily committed plenty of sin yourself. Right? So the result would be the same—you’re guilty before God. But then also, if it’s unfair for the sin of Adam to affect us, then it’s also unfair for the righteousness of Jesus to affect us. Does that make sense? So keep your mind open to the idea of somebody else’s actions affecting you, because it’s going to wind up being really good news.  

But back to the bad news for a minute.( Don’t get happy yet). Our Doctrinal Statement says “We believe in the total depravity of all mankind.” That doesn’t mean that we are as bad as we could possibly be! Obviously people do lots of good things. Even people who don’t believe in God—if the local atheist’s club bought Christmas gifts for orphans, that would be a good thing to do! But despite that, every part of us—our thoughts, our emotions, our motives—is tainted by sin. It’s like making a smoothie and putting a few drops of rat poison in the blender. Would you say, “Well, it’s just a few drops—it’s probably okay to drink!” Of course not! Because every part of it would be tainted by the poison. And every part of us has been tainted by sin. Which means that in our natural state, it’s impossible for us to please a holy and perfect God.  

Isaiah the prophet said, “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” 

Paul writes in Romans 3:10, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” 

Or Ephesians 2:1 (this is probably the harshest assessment of our condition): As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. You weren’t sick; you weren’t wounded; Paul says, “Before you knew Jesus, you had no pulse; no breath; you were spiritually flat-lined.”  

Now you know why that TV preacher doesn’t preach about sin, right? It’s not fun to talk about, and it’s not fun to hear. Oncologists don’t enjoy telling their patients that the tumor is malignant. Cardiologists don’t enjoy telling people their arteries are clogged, and they better cut down on the cheeseburgers. Those aren’t fun conversations. But man, I’m grateful for doctors who speak the truth, aren’t you? And I’m grateful that God speaks this truth to us in the Scriptures. And honestly, it explains so much about our world, doesn’t it? It explains so much about the darkness that we all struggle with in our own hearts. Because sin is real and it’s powerful and destructive. 

Saint Augustine spent his youth indulging in sin, and then God opened his eyes. Listen to how he describes that moment in his Confessions: 

But you, Lord…turned me back towards myself, taking me from behind my own back where I had put myself all the time that I preferred not to see myself. And you set me there before my own face that I might see how vile I was, how twisted and unclean and spotted and ulcerous. I saw myself and was horrified, but there was no way to flee from myself…I had known it, but I had pretended not to see it, had deliberately looked the other way and let it go from my mind. 

See, God had great plans for Augustine. God was about to flood his life with good news. But first he had to face up to the bad news. And it’s the same for us.  

Tim Keller said it much more simply: “As long as we think we are not that bad, the idea of grace will never change us.” So stop thinking of the sins of all those other people; stop making excuses for all the ways you’ve missed the mark and trespassed and disrespected God. See it; face it; own it. Fully accept the reality of your spiritual death. Because only then will you be ready to receive life.  

Which brings us to the second and final point: The Solution We All Need. The second phrase in this item on our Doctrinal Statement says we believe in “the necessity of regeneration.” What does that mean? 

About five years ago I was body surfing at the Jersey Shore. The waves were fantastic. I was by myself; it was after hours; the lifeguards had gone home. At some point, I decided to come back in…and I couldn’t. I kept trying to swim back to shore, but the current, which I now know was a rip current, was powerful. Yes, I know what you’re supposed to do in a rip current: don’t fight it; let it take you out; swim parallel to the shore. That sounds good on paper. But in the moment, there’s this powerful human instinct to get back to land. And I couldn’t. And as my body ran out of energy, I started thinking, “This might be it.” 

So as I was struggling, I noticed someone on the shore, waving at me. I didn’t wave back, because I was using both arms to survive. But I was kind of happy someone noticed my distress. And the rest is kind of a blur. I noticed a lifeguard buggy flying down the beach toward me; a lifeguard sprinted out toward me and threw me a torpedo-shaped float on a rope; he told me to grab on, and he pulled me to safety. It was a surreal experience. I later learned that a few blocks down, the lifeguards stay on duty later, and this man who had noticed my distress had run down and gotten the lifeguard. So I shook the lifeguard’s hand and thanked him; the people on the beach cheered for the lifeguard; and I went back to my beach chair, definitely in some level of shock.  

So as I’ve told people that story, imagine if I said, “You should have seen me! When that float came to me, I reached out my powerful arm, rippling with muscles, and I grabbed on and pulled myself in.” That would have been a lie. Or imagine if I said, “You know, I appreciate that lifeguard, but I didn’t really need to be rescued. I could have gotten back to shore.” That, also, would have been a lie. As humbling as it is to admit, I was desperate. I was completely unable to rescue myself.  

And because of the total depravity of every human being, that is exactly the spiritual condition every one of us finds ourselves in. We don’t just need a little moral boost; we are basically dead in the water; our only hope is for someone to rescue us. 

Remember the harsh assessment of our condition in Ephesians 2:1? As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. But then three verses later, look at this—Ephesians 2:4 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Regeneration is when God makes us alive. The Bible also calls it being “born again.” Not because we deserve it in any way; it’s purely by his grace. This is why sometimes the most responsible, hardest-working, most moral people can be the furthest from God. Because they think they’re making themselves acceptable to God through their good behavior; but what they really need is to humble themselves and allow God to regenerate their hearts. They need to stop trying, and start trusting. They need to let the lifeguard pull them in. 

I love the symmetry and coherence of the Bible. Because remember how we first got into this trouble? We were infected by the sin of Adam. Even though we have plenty of sin of our own, we were originally made guilty by someone else’s disobedience. But here’s the beautiful news: now we can be made righteous by someone else’s obedience. Remember how Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden? Satan also tempted Jesus in the wilderness. And where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. Romans 5:19 says: For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. In other words, Adam messed everything up for us, but then Jesus—who the Bible calls the “last Adam”—came and cleaned up the mess. And he did that through his perfectly obedient life and his sacrificial death on the cross.  

And that good news of what he did is like a torpedo float that God throws out to hopeless and drowning sinners, like us. And all we need to do is just grab hold and hang on by faith. That’s what it means to be regenerated. Born again. Saved. 

When Max Lucado’s daughter was in college, Max received an overdraft notice from his daughter’s checking account. She had spent more than the money she had in her account, and now she owed the bank $25.37. And Max said, “What should I do? Send my daughter an angry letter? That won’t satisfy the bank. Call her and tell her to make a deposit? I might has well tell a fish to fly—she has zero money to her name.” So he said, “I had the $25.37 in my account, so I transferred it into her account, plus a little extra. I did what dads do. I covered my daughter’s mistake.” 

So later on, he told his daughter, “You were overdrawn on your account.” And she said she was sorry, but she also knew she was broke. So she had only one option. She said, “Dad, could you…” And he interrupted her: “Honey, I already have.” He had met her need before she even knew she had one. And guys, before you even knew you needed grace, Jesus did the same thing for you. At the cross, he covered your sins; he paid your debt. So when you finally come to him and ask for grace, he says, “My child, I’ve already given it.” Just receive it by faith.  

The problem we all have is that we’re dead in our trespasses and sins. Total depravity. 

The solution we all need is to be regenerated by grace of Jesus Christ.  

And therefore—let me give you three takeaways. 

First, Live a life of humility and confession. Because even if you are a born-again, regenerated person, guess what? You still sometimes miss the mark, and trespass, and disrespect God. You still sin! Sometimes, you sin in ways you’re not even aware of. And knowing that should make you really humble. Paul said, “Christ Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.” He said, “I’m the worst sinner I know!” Because he knew his own heart so well. That’s humility. When you’re in an argument with your friend, or your sister, or your spouse, humility enables you to say, “You know, you’re probably.” Those are powerful words. So allow your awareness of sin to free you from ego and make you a humble person. 

And then, get in the habit of confessing your sins to God. Regularly. Remember: when a believer sins, your legal standing before God doesn’t change. You’re still forgiven! There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1) So when you sin, God doesn’t kick you out of the family, but it does disrupt your fellowship with God. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses.” Every morning, when I come to that line in the prayer, I just do a 30-second inventory of the previous day, and I confess anything God brings to mind. “Lord, I confess that thought…I confess that thing I said was kind of harsh…I confess having all that cake before bed—that was gluttonous.” Lord, thanks that Jesus died for those sins. Help me to turn from those sins and choose a better way today. And then just move on!  

Cornelius Plantinga said, “Recalling and confessing our sin is like taking out the garbage: once is not enough.” 

Second, Stop trying to save people, and let God do it. Do you have loved ones who are far from God? I do. And you know what I catch myself doing? Blaming myself, and thinking it’s up to me to get them saved. How ridiculous is that? As if I have the power to take a spiritually dead person and make them spiritually alive. I have zero power to do that, and it’s the same with you. We can’t regenerate anyone! But here’s the thing: God can! And when I really believe that, it takes the pressure off me, and it puts it on God. And now my role is to faithfully pray for that person, and when I’m with them, talk openly about my faith. Point them to Jesus, but realize that for anything spiritually real to happen, that’s God’s work and not mine.  

And then finally, Be born again. If you have not been born again, today could be your day. Jesus said, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws them.” Is the Father drawing you to Jesus today? See, regeneration is not something we conjure up; it’s an act of God. Jesus told Nicodemus that when people are born again, it’s because the Holy Spirit is stirring in them like the wind, drawing them to God. So if the Spirit is stirring in you, and showing you the reality of your sin, and how much you need a Savior, that means this a sacred moment. Don’t miss it. You can say to Jesus right now, “Yes—rescue me. I believe.” Be born again. 

Let’s pray and prepare our hearts for communion. 

PRAY