FollowBy Kendrick & Janna Gilli
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.” Proverbs 14:34 (NIV)
Pastor Steve was right when he said that Americans hate the word sin. We are fiercely independent and do not like being told what to do or what we are, and so when it comes to being called sinful, Americans bristle at it. Americans also like to believe that people are basically good—maybe a few bad mistakes in life, maybe a few bad apples in the bunch. This, of course, starts as a baby and a toddler, because they are so cute and angelic.
And we wonder why so many people feel hurt by Christians! We tell people that they are sinful from birth. Often the familiar response is, “What! My cute little angelic baby is sinful?” We tell people that only the Holy Spirit can help us realize our sin and work on it and we get, “I don’t need no stinkin’ help; you can’t tell me what to do!” We tell people that only Jesus can wash away our sin so that we can be with Him in heaven. The response is often, “What do you mean? What are talking about? I am a good person and those anger issues are because it is overcast here so much. It is not really my fault.”Job said it best: “I have concealed my sin as people do, by hiding my guilt in my heart” (Job 31:33).
People equate the idea of sin as gigantic and associated with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. No, that baby is not Hitler. No, just because you get mad doesn’t mean that you are Stalin. Why can’t people realize that we don’t have to be Stalin to be sinful? People tell others all the time that they do not have to be perfect. If this is true, then they must recognize on some level that everybody has faults (i.e., sins).
A favorite story in my family goes back to when I was a few months old and my sister was one year older. She liked to pick up a doll and hit me with it. What was in her heart that made her want to hit her baby brother? What about when my daughter would throw temper tantrums when she was two to four years old? Sin is in our hearts even as children, and we need help from our parents to recognize it and deal with it. Even the world agrees that parents need to teach their children right from wrong. However, the world also believes that once we have grown up, we magically stop doing things wrong. In fact, the “wrong things” as an adult are just considered “choices,” that we are just being whom we choose to be. Sin has become a bad word or politically incorrect.
It is also interesting how, as Americans, we persist in thinking we do not need any help. We love to help others but are too proud to ask for any help ourselves. What would you do if your car broke down in the middle of the intersection and four guys came to help you push it out of the way? Would you refuse? Of course not! Then why do we refuse help with correcting mistakes we make? Why are we not willing to accept help from God? He just wants to help us be better and when we do things wrong, He wants to forgive us. Yet, we believe that we can solve our problems ourselves or we are too proud to ask God to help us change.
As a nation, we seem to have gone to the extreme with our pride and denial. In fact, Satan is doing a darn good job pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. So as Christians, how do we deal with this? The first part of this answer is recognizing the truth and asking God to convict us and to show us our sin; then, we must be willing to ask Him to change us from the inside out. The second part of this answer is LOVE. Being Christ to the world and living with love will open up doorways to conversations about sin and God’s solution for it. And finally, the last part of the answer is prayer; we need to be prayer warriors and to ask God for grace and opportunities to share the gospel with unbelievers. We need to fight against the lies that Satan is spreading, lies that make us complacent and okay with our sin. An unseen war is raging all around us, and we need to put on our armor daily and pray that God opens our eyes to it.
Views – 168Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:10–12)
I have lots of discussions with people (on the Quora platform) who claim there is no such thing as sin.
“Well, I think we need to get our definitions straight before we make absolute claims,” I tell them. “Do you ever get upset about injustice? About child abuse? About someone who lies to you or cuts in front of you in a long line or intentionally steals or cheats you out of something that’s yours?”
“Of course I do,” they invariably assure me.
“Well then, you can’t get angry about injustice or abuse or lying or cheating or stealing without acknowledging that sin exists. Those things, and many more things both greater and lesser, are sin as the Bible defines them.
“In fact,” I’ll share with them, “you are probably sinning at this very moment without even realizing it!”
And yes, they bristle at this. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how Jesus defined sin,” I reply. “He considered sin to be falling short of God’s standard of holiness. And holiness requires a posture of utter submission to and dependence upon God. Jesus said he didn’t say a single word or take a single action unless God His Father told Him to. He was utterly dependent upon and submitted to His Father.”
So then I drop the mike: “By that standard, if you haven’t spent time today asking God exactly what He wants you to be doing, listening to what He says, and doing that; or even worse, if you don’t believe you need to do that, or if you don’t believe in God and that all He tells us is true — then by Jesus’ standard, you are sinning.”
We always say there are sins of commission and sins of omission. Commission is doing wrong things. Omission is failing to do the right things. Some of us commit huge sins. But all of us (except Jesus) live almost daily in sins of omission.
That’s what turns our claims of self-righteousness into “filthy rags” in God’s sight.
Thanks for the sobering post, Kendrick!