A lot of the time I don’t want to stop sinning. Sometimes it seems to me a bit like there’s a bit of an arbitrary list of rules which I have to follow. And I enjoy sin; it’s much easier than living ‘the good life’. People tell me Jesus offers freedom from the law and freedom from sin. But I don’t really know what that means for me today. I can sympathise with the person that says “if Christ offers forgiveness for sin to anyone and everyone, since I quite enjoying sinning it would be much easier just to repent on my death bed than trying to not sin for my whole life”. Paul says that “the wages of sin are death”, but I’m ok, grace will cover me, I’m not planning to die for a while yet, so why should I stop sinning?
Unless I get the right perspective, this can be my response to sin. I don’t think this is really taking sin very seriously. I hear people talk about sin all the time, but I don’t always understand what they mean. What is sin? Why is it so serious? I’ve heard it defined as ‘selfishness’ or ‘turning away from God’. But why should I avoid it?
I used to think of sin a little bit like this: God made humanity with a list of rights and wrongs which he gave to them. If they chose the right ones they got to live with him forever, if they chose the wrong ones he had to judge them and find them guilty because he is a just God. It went for a long time that man tried to choose the good option, but always ended up choosing the bad one because it was easier, and felt better. Then God decided to sort this out by sending Jesus so that when we choose the bad option, Jesus takes our punishment if we accept it and now we can live with him forever. You might have heard it summarised like this: God loves you, you have sinned, Jesus died for you, what next?
But I’m not convinced that the gospel can be neatly summarised into four points, I don’t think this fully encapsulates what Jesus came to do and I’m not sure it takes sin seriously enough. It makes “the wages of sin are death” seem like an arbitrary choice that God decided to hold certain things against me, I find it difficult to really take sin seriously if this is all it is.
I’m not saying that I don’t think this is all true, but just that I don’t think that is a full enough definition of sin. It captures an important aspect of the seriousness of sin for our eternal destiny. The problem with this definition is not that it isn’t true, but that it focuses only on the eternal significance of sin and not on the seriousness of sin in the present; what difference it makes to my now. And the consequences of this are that if this is my account of sin, then my only account of the gospel is forgiveness of sins and life eternal. My perspective is all on eternity, all that really matters is that I ‘become a Christian’, that I make sure I say sorry when I ‘sin’ and then try and make others do the same. It is a faith focused only on the life to come and very little on the present. It makes sin quite difficult to grasp.
How do we make this kind of Christianity relevant to a generation of people who increasingly don’t believe in life after death? It’s not like we can scare people into Christianity just because they want to avoid hell when most people think that all that will happen after death is that they will rot into the earth. Why would people live by a set of “outdated and arbitrary rules” because a man with the placard tells them they will be judged and punished if they don’t? In order to really take sin seriously people need to see what difference it makes not only to their eternal destiny but to their life on earth. The wages of sin are death in the next life yes, but in this life also. Sin destroys families and relationships, it corrupts hearts. Sin is serious, but if we just ignore the seriousness of it in this life, we aren’t really taking it very seriously at all.
The reason that God tells us to avoid certain actions is because he knows that the consequences of them will be worse for us now. It will harm my character to sin; if I seek after lust I’ll struggle to love appropriately, if I seek after pride I’ll end up falling. The things that the bible talks about as sin are the things that are in my interest not to do. Sin damages us today. The problem is that this isn’t always obvious to us. We can’t ever understand the full consequences of what we do; we can’t see how our actions are destructive immediately. The difference is: God can. The reason it hurts God so much when we sin I don’t think is just because he decided what would be right or wrong and wants us to follow the rules, but that he knows what is best for us, what will make us complete.
The reason that sin is so destructive is because it destroys you. It’s not just that sins stops us from being close to God, but that it stops us being who we really are. Jesus offers real freedom in the present. Not just so we can do the right thing and ‘go to heaven’ but because we were made to live a certain way. Sinning is like using a coffee machine to make toast- it just wasn’t made for that, and it’s going to end up pretty messy if you keep trying. Sin is serious but taking sin seriously is being able to see the dangers of living the wrong way for our lives and for the people our actions effect.
If we start to get more of a perspective on sin we can see real change and real freedom today. This isn’t a list of arbitrary rules; these are the things that lead to death, that lead to destruction that will damage us. When we get this perspective the gospel isn’t just about the change to come but it’s also about the change available now- there’s another way to live and its better. Jesus can transform your character; he can bring freedom where there is entrapment, addiction, and obsession. If we look at sin not as a ‘rule’ which we ought to obey but as a divine foresight in your best interest then we can start to take sin more seriously. And when I get this perspective on it, I want to avoid sin, I want to live in the fullness that God has designed for me, I want to take him seriously.
