Tag Archives: Sin

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I have heard it said (correctly) that the early Christians faced a moral world that in either the same depravity, or worse than what we see now.

Well, farther back than that.

If the Hebrew people had not lived surrounded by idolators and other evils, they would not have fallen in WITH them. So the evidence is that their world saw evil, as ours does.

The Jews just before Christ had forcibly dispersed, and some had returned; and the evil that they saw was as evil as today.

I think (purely subjective) that today seems more difficult for us because it appears so new to us. And (objectively) we do see things that we have NEVER seen before.

Was immorality rampant in 1st Century Rome? Absolutely. Was it worse than today? I don't know. Some say yes, others say no.

I think that we feel it more because Western Christians have long enjoyed "majority rule," thus staying safely wrapped in the insulation of tunnel vision.

The phrase "total depravity" best describes the world, and always has. We expect it.

We grieve - yes, for that depravity, but we grieve having to stand by, seemingly helpless, watching the DECLINE of our country and culture, at a breakneck speed.

Homosexuality is the best example.

Only a couple of decades ago, we (collectively) viewed same-sex-sex as abnormal. We knew gay people, we loved them as friends and family, but we loved them, not their chosen lifestyle.

Gay people sometimes (perhaps often) faced bullies and that should never have happened. People should never see bullying as acceptable.

In (culturally speaking) a very short amount of time, we see a decline.

- Traditional family unit (dad, mom, kids) and the gay community as outliers.

- A move away from the traditional family unit with the introduction of "consequence free sex" and "no-fault-divorce" (note: we do find good and Biblical reasons for divorce, and I don't find "nobody's fault" on the list.)

- With the traditional family unit undermined, open acceptance of the homosexual becomes tolerated by the culture

- As single motherhood becomes more acceptable, homosexuality becomes not only tolerated, but acceptable as a viable option.

- Demand of recognition of gay relationships becomes more popular, as does public spending for single motherhood.

- Demand of recognition of gay relationships becomes the demand that the culture view those relationships as identical to heterosexual relationships.

- The demand to see homosexual relationships as identical becomes the demand for culture (via "we the people") to sanction these relationships.

- the demand for sanction becomes the demand for approval

- the demand for approval becomes the demand for celebration by all people.

- the demand for celebration becomes the demand for participation, regardless of sincerely held religious convictions.

As Christians today look around and see our spiritual siblings SUED and FORCED to provide services to ceremonies found morally offensive, I find myself able to identify with Christians in other times and places, who steep in total depravity through no fault of their own.

We, who enjoyed cultural insulation for centuries, may find this a difficult transition. No, we WILL find this a difficult transition. From power to weakness, from majority to minority, from peace to persecution.

Is the "remnant" ready? I want to be part of the remnant - and I know I'm not ready. If the "steps of grieving" can be applied to this - I'm still in the "denial stage" but we need to get ready.

We need to be in the world, but not of the word. Persecution awaits, Jesus promised. Whether we will be found worthy of the persecution that HE endured, is yet to be seen.

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He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned-every one-to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

This time around, one line stood out: "Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace."

Peace is a big word.

In this passage, "peace" is peace with God.

God is a God of love; He is also a God of justice. That's not contradictory: perfect love demands perfect justice, and that doesn't mean justice for me, it means justice for everybody.

Justice doesn't mean that the person who wronged "me" gets what they deserve: it means that the God of justice demands payment for each sin committed.

Only when justice is satisfied, can peace begin.

Jesus was pierced for our transgression; THAT chastisement brought the elect peace with the Father.

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To do its worst, evil needs to look its best. Evil had to send a lot on makeup...Vices have to masquerade as virtues - lust as love, thinly veiled sadism as military discipline, envy as righteous indignation, domestic tyranny as parental concern...From counterfeit money to phony airliner parts to the trustworthy look on the face of a con artist, evil appears in disguise. Hence the need for the Holy Spirit's gift of discernment. Hence the sheer difficulty, at times, of distinguishing what is good from what is evil

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.~~"Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin"

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Reason #3 - I'm not going back

We are not as bad as could possibly be...but all possible parts of us are touched with bad.

When Adam fell, sin entered the world. As a result, we are all sinners. "Total depravity" doesn't mean that we are as wicked as we can possibly be. It does mean that every single part of our being has been tainted by sin. Our "will" (ability to make decisions) has been so tainted that not a single one of will willingly, of our own accord, turn and follow Christ. Because of our sin nature, no one seeks God...no not one. We have all gone astray. When left to our own devices, we will...we MUST...act according to our nature...and the nature that we are born with is a sinful one. Without the Holy Spirit's effectual call, we will continue the path of destruction, unable to choose any other path.

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I've been reading about porn lately in a number of places and it's time.

I've been single for 9 1/2 years and I've chosen to stay quiet because there are things that I don't want my kids to know.  But I'm pretty confident that they don't read this and there are a few things I need to say.

I read a lot about "his sin" and the innocence of the woman.

Read this:

If the sins of another person focuses our hurt, our wrath, our anger and our "consequences" onto that person...we have missed the point of the Gospel.

Did the sin of my husband hurt me...

any more that **my own sin** hurt the heart of God?

Do I really believe that my own wretched selfish sin...is any better than the sin of my husband...that I could hold it over his head in my own reactions of hurt and anger?

Is that the way I want to be treated by God?

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Today is the Jewish Day of Atonement and it brought to mind a post I wrote a while ago:

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When I think of "sacrifice" - the first sacrifice that comes to my mind is the sacrifice of my Saviour. The story of the scapegoat is such a beatiful "looking forward" to Christ. Too many times we read the New Testament through the eyes of the Old Testament; today I read the Old Testament with eyes fixed on Christ.

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, 1854. Hunt had this framed in a picture with the quotations "Surely he hath borne our Griefs and carried our Sorrows; Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of GOD and afflicted." (Isaiah 53:4) and "And the Goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a Land not inhabited." (Leviticus 16:22)

Leviticus 16:7-22.

The only time this word "azazel" is used in the Bible is in reference to the "Day of Atonement"

Aaron was to take two goats and cast lots over them - one of the goats would be for the sacrifice, the other would be for "Azazel" (KJV translates "azazel" as scapegoat; the word has two roots ez [she-goat, goat, kid] and azal [to go away, evaporated, gone])

Before anything - Aaron was to sacrifice a bull as a sin offering for himself and to make atonement for himself and his household...

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil

Aaron was to do with the first goat as he had done with the bull - the blood of the sacrifice was to be sprinkled on the mercy seat.

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself

Many people have never read this story - we know the word "scapegoat" but don't really know how Biblical it is.

The people of Israel were sinners (aren't we all?). On their Day of Atonement, all of their sins were placed on the scapegoat and sent away.

How does this relate to us?

As Christians, our day of atonement came on the day Christ died on the cross. On our Day of Atonement, all of our sins were laid upon the Lamb of God.

Romans 3:25
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.

Just as Aaron laid the sins of Israel on the scapegoat, so God laid on Christ the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:6) Christ his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), just as the goat bore all of Israel's iniquity on itself.

The goat went out into the wilderness. The Hebrew word is midbar {mid-bawr'} and means (among other things) "uninhabited land" - a place where nobody was. Psalm 103:12 tells us that "as far as the east is from the west,so far does he remove our transgressions from us. That's a long way. Not only that, but our sins are gone out from us, Jeremiah tells us that (under the New Covenant) God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more.

Our sin is GONE and God will remember it NO MORE!

The carnival theme is "the Beauty of Sacrifice" - how beautiful is "NO MORE"?

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The audio book is on my iPod and I've been listening to it on my travels.   I know I have a paper copy somewhere, but I can't put my hands on it right now.

There was something that resonated with me.

Repentance is not "oops, sorry".  Lewis said something to the effect that repentance is a turning - an "unlearning" of the bad behavior that has been learned.

(there is a difference between "sin" and "sins" that I may get into later)

But in order to repent, you have to have a part of "good" inside you that wants to unlearn the behavior.  That part of you is already good - already turned.

Only a good man can repent.  Only a bad man needs to.

Only a perfect man can repent perfectly - and the perfect man doesn't need to.

The bad man must repent and cannot.

Lewis was not Reformed by any stretch of the imagination, but what I can apply here is "regeneration".  We are all affected by "total depravity" - every part of us is touched by Adam's sin.  We are sinners who sin and we all are in need of repentance.

Through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, we are enabled to repent, however imperfectly.  It is only through the act of the Holy Spirit who calls that we are able to turn to him.

Perfect repentance?  Only God is perfect and only Immanuel, God With Us, is our perfection.

I am a bad person.  There are things that I don't know how to repent of!  I can only trust Christ to cover that sin.,

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A while ago (years) I read an article about a woman who had a wretched childhood and grew up into a wretched adulthood.  Prostitution, porn, drugs, etc.

Then Christ made her His child.

There were a number of bloggers out there who had problems with her telling her whole story and the issues they had were varied.

One was - why does she glorify sin by telling of the sin she was in?  That is not the way to look at it...she is glorifying God by telling the depths to which she had sunk and that God can nobody is beyond God's grace.

Another - who is she to think that she can just repent  and have a "get out of consequences free" card?   Does she really think that she can just become a Christian and be accepted?  Hello?  do you know what she did?  That is not the way that it is!  If the Father embraced the prodigal, so should we.  It is our job to raise up the children in the faith, not keep them down.

Next - Okay, she's a Christian?  but she will never be qualified for ministry - after all, she may be forgiven, but there are earthly consequences.  No...no...  Paul was  a murderer.  So was Moses.  David was a murderer - and an adulterer.  They were all ministers of God's Word.

The prodigal should be restored.  Period.

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Gen 3:4-7a But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked(...)

(vv.22-24)Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (ESV)

I was in Starbucks yesterday before meeting an old friend for coffee.  At the table next to me were you young men - one of the still quite young, either in middle school or early high school.  The other one was a bit older, maybe college age.  They were reading Scripture and taking notes.  I asked them what they were studying and the older one looked at me, duh.  "the Bible."  Okay...yeah.  What part of the Bible?  They were reading through Genesis and Psalms.  Cool.

That side-note from yesterday over, I've noticed a couple of things from Genesis 3.

- Did sin enter the world through Eve?  She played a part, certainly.  But Scripture does NOT say, "the woman ate, her eyes were opened, she gave it to the man and his eyes were opened.  Either it was a total joint effort (the time involved not being defined) or...their eyes were NOT opened until after Adam ate because (a) Adam was the only one who was given the direct command by God and/or (b) Eve was deceived, but Adam rebelled.

Question:  if sin entered the world after Adam ate (and not after Eve ate), does that mean that Adam truly is the "federal head" of the human race, since when Eve ate it did not effect their "eyes being opened" until after Adam ate?
-  Were Adam and Eve punished for eating the fruit?  Yes.  What was the punishment?  Read the curse...pain in childbirth, subjugation to the husband...sweat of the brown, weeds (and I'm thinking mosquitoes) and so forth.

Was being sent from the garden of Eden part of the punishment?  A plain reading of the text says...no.  That surprised me.  My answer (before reading verse by verse) would have been, "of course."
Being driven from the garden of Eden was not part of the spoken "curse".  It was not part of the punishment, it was a preventative measure:  "lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever...the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden."

Question:  Why did God not make being driven out of the garden part of the spoken curse?  (from a philosophical standpoint and not reading into Scripture that which is not there)
- Were BOTH Adam and Even driven out, or just Adam?

I have heard egalitarians argue that it was only the man who was driven out of the garden and that the woman followed out of choice, since it is אדם who was driven out.

I have also heard egalitarians argue that we should have gender-neutral language in Scripture because אדם also means "human race".

If אדם means "human-kind" then it is certainly a proper reading to say that "human-kind" (אדם) were driven out of the garden...both of them.

If it was only the male-type-person (אדם) who was driven out of the garden, that argues against gender-neutral language anywhere else in the Old Testament were אדם is used, unless there is a gender-specific name to go along with it.

Question:  Which is it?  Does אדם mean the only male-type-person was driven out of the garden, or that or human-kind was driven out of the garden?