Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Email |
I am a sinner. I don’t deny it. But most of the time I don’t
think much about it either. I don’t seem to obsess about sin the way the
ancients used to, at least not about my own sins. I don’t punish myself or go to extreme measures
to fight sin off. Most of the time, my sin feels more like a low-grade fever
more than it does a raging fire. Its presence is an ongoing irritation that may
hinder me from being my best, but it doesn’t keep me from functioning. Sin
doesn’t bother me that much either. If anything, the fact that I am a sinner
serves as a kind of escape clause when things go badly. “What did you think
would happen?” I want to say. “I am a fallen person living in a fallen world.
Of course, I went off the rails.”
The fact that we are sinners is one of the few religious concepts that a majority of people agree upon. Most people identify with the label sinner. I think we actually derive a measure of comfort from the assertion. We are strangely comforted by sin’s universal presence. For some of us, the comfort we take in knowing that we all sin is the kind that a bad student might take from the class curve. We reason that if sin is normal, then we are normal. Even if there is something wrong with us, we can at least say that it is only your average, garden variety of wrong. Everybody suffers from it. Surely God won’t penalize everybody?
The ancients weren’t as sanguine about the subject. The
early Christian monastics went into the wilderness not only to pursue holiness
but to make a study of their sinfulness. Those early Christians analyzed sin
and categorized the many ways it manifests itself. They were interested not
only in identifying the specific acts that should be regarded as sinful but
wanted to understand the internal dynamics which shaped sinful behavior.
Why do we think so differently? One reason is that we have
very different notions about virtue. Most moderns don’t think much about virtue
at all. The word seems too out of date. Virtue sounds more like something our
Victorian great-grandparents would have been concerned about. The notion of
virtue is indeed an ancient one. The Greek philosopher Aristotle saw virtue as
the pattern of right behavior that characterized a person. Virtue is a habit of
life that moves in the right direction. Vice is the same, only moving in the
opposite direction.
But even if the term seems archaic, the idea of virtue is
not as old fashioned as we might think. Not if we understand virtue as a
preferred pattern of life. We may have dropped the philosophical language as a
culture, but we still have strong feelings about the way people should live. Theologian
James K. A. Smith captures this when he defines virtue as “an ultimate vision
of the good life.”
We may not talk about virtue much, but we believe in it. If
you doubt this, spend a few hours reading through the opinions expressed on
your favorite social media feed. What is all that outrage about? More often
than not, it is about virtue or the failure of virtue. We may not all agree on
the standard but our vision of “the good life” is clear enough that we
regularly criticize those who don’t measure up to that vision. Contemporary
interest in virtue seems to be primarily negative. Our ideas about what is good
do not necessarily serve as a basis for self-examination and personal
improvement. Often they merely provide the grounds for carping against others we
perceive to have fallen short.
Others of us treat sin the same way we do high cholesterol
or obesity. We know that if we ignore it, things will go badly for us. But our
hope is that if we take certain basic measures, we can keep sin under control.
This approach takes two primary forms, one is medical, and the other is
athletic. The medical model sees sin as a kind of disease. The athletic model
approaches sin like a weakness that can be remedied through discipline. Either
view makes sin seem manageable. If sin is a sickness, it can be cured through
treatment. If it is a weakness, that weakness can be eliminated with training.
One of the appeals of the medical model of sin is that it alleviates the moral pressure that comes with an awareness of sin. So far, I have had two major illnesses in my life. When I was a child, I contracted polio. As an adult, I was diagnosed with a form of cancer. I felt bad on each occasion, but I did not feel responsible. I knew that something was wrong with me, but I did not think that I was at fault. Even Jesus seemed to give credence to the medical model when, after being criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners, He observed, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matthew 9:12). But the Bible also says that sin has a moral quality. Every sin is an act of rebellion. This is because sin’s ultimate reference point is God. As theologian Cornelius Plantinga explains, “All sin has first and finally a Godward force.” Plantinga defines sin as an act (any thought, desire, emotion, or deed) that displeases God and is worthy of His blame. This is what makes sin different from disease. Sin always comes with guilt, and that guilt is deserved.
The appeal of the athletic model of sin is that it makes me my own savior. If sin is a matter of weakness, then all I need to do to fix the problem is to find the right program or the right guru. I need a spiritual gym and a trainer. With a few disciplines and a little determination, I can lick this sin thing. But if you’ve ever known anybody who has tried this approach, you know that success inevitably gives way to intolerance. The “good” can’t understand why the rest of us can’t seem to “get it together” like them. The rest of us recognize such thinking for the pride that it is. But the virtuous are so fixated on their improvement that they are no longer able to see their sin.
According to Romans 7, sin is more than the absence of
positive qualities in our character. It as a living force that resides within
us. In that New Testament chapter, the apostle even gives sin’s location. It
dwells “in my flesh” (v. 18). Flesh, in this case, is not a physiological term.
It is not the skin that covers our bones. Sin is not organic in that sense.
Rather, it is organic in an altogether different way. Sin is a force that is
integrated into our nature. As New Testament scholar H. C. G. Moule so vividly
puts it, “the intruder has occupied the whole dwelling, and every part of it is
infected.”
There is no medicine that will cure me of this problem. There is no training program strong enough to counter sin’s own strength. But there is a remedy. It is the remedy that is echoed in the sinner’s prayer in Jesus’ parable: “God be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). It is not the prayer that is the solution. It is the one to whom the prayer is addressed. God’s mercy, shown to us in Jesus Christ, is the only solution when it comes to sin.
We cannot reason our way out. We cannot work our way out. We can only look to Christ to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Jesus alone is sin’s answer. He is the only antidote to its poison. Sin is far more serious than we could have imagined, and God’s answer to sin is far greater than we know. Indeed, this may be the worst effect of all when it comes to our downgraded view of sin. Because we fail to understand the depth of our sin, we cannot see the magnitude of Christ’s salvation. Jesus was right. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. A sinner like me needs a savior.
Like this:
Like Loading...