11-15-09 Series: Fundamentals Message: How much sin should we expect in the church?

How much sin should we expect in the church? We have gauges for other elements of church life. We generally monitor attendance. We know how many people are in small groups and how many people come to each outreach event. Somebody counts the offerings. And often we don’t just measure what we’re interested in-we set goals.

 

Anybody hear of a church that set a goal for a 5-percent sin reduction next year? I don’t mean to be glib about this. Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is what keeps us from great joy and peace, goodness and blessing. Sin is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, and the death of every victim of every war.

 

Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin. “We wrestle not against flesh and

blood ….”  the scriptures tell us. Christians have measured the seriousness of the battle by the suffering and bleeding of the cross.

 

And sin doesn’t seem to be going away, either outside or inside the church. So how should we be thinking about sin – in our congregations and in ourselves? ”

 

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,” writes John. 1 John 1:8

 

It always helps to begin by identifying the boundaries. Then at least we know what mistakes to avoid. And one boundary is the notion that we can be fully rid of sin in this life; that by enough persistence, and will-power, and careful adherence to rules we can reach what used to be called sinless perfection (is there another kind?).

 

For some, the problem is that they become selective about which sins God hates the most, and, of course, the worse sins always end up being somebody else’s sins. This kind of thinking misses the deeper layers of sin: sin not just as concrete acts of lying or cheating, but the sin of self-centeredness that infects my preaching and my need to please people instead of pleasing God. We often times don’t look at the sin of my motives and emotions that I simply can’t turn off.

 

Jesus got very angry with the Pharisees and the other religious leaders of his times because they were content in their own righteousness and they looked down on everybody else.” The irony is that “looking down on everybody else” is a violation of the law of love, which according to Jesus is the absolute essence of rightness. Sin is a cancer that keeps mutating, and just when you think you have killed off one form, it turns out a deadlier strain yet that threatens your heart and mine.

 

Recalibrating your sin monitor

There is a paradox about sin: it may be impossible to know how well you’re doing at battling it.  In every great sport, when an athlete is on a role and they’re doing really well, they know it and everybody else knows it too. But when was the last time someone you deeply admire said to you: “I have really been on a roll when it comes to overcoming sin lately’? Those people among us who are doing the best in overcoming sin don’t seem to think they’re doing particularly well. Maybe this is more than just modesty or neurosis. Maybe they’re aware of something that those looking in from the outside cannot see.

 

In many theological camps there is a term called “Total Depravity”. The term was created to express the idea that human beings are completely without any good. The idea is that when sin entered the world, it completely corrupted all that was good and made it bad. It’s like the saying, “One bad apple spoils the barrel.” It is like us when we get sick. One stain of bacteria enters our bloodstream and all of us feels bad. Many theologians perceive sin to be like that.

 

Somebody asked the great theologian Dallas Willard, if he believed in total depravity. His reply was that he believed in “sufficient depravity.” Never having run into that term before, the interviewer asked for clarification. Dallas said, “I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved so that no one will ever get into heaven and say, ‘I earned this.”’

 

Perhaps we are sufficiently depraved, so that the more we grow spiritually, the more our awareness grows of what sin is because we can more clearly see what a life freed from sin would look like. One of the factors that determine if we’re growing spiritually is an increased ability to diagnose the true condition of my soul.

 

But here’s the question. Shouldn’t I be making progress?

On almost every page of the New Testament letters, there are statements, not simply about the change people will experience one day, but the transformation that seems to be expected now. Peter says, ”

You have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other 1 Peter 1:22

 

Paul says to the church at Thessalonica: “Your faith is growing more and more, and the love you have for one another is increasing.” 2 Thessalonians 1:3

 

Whatever else the New Testament teaches, it is surely more than the hope that God will get a group of saved people into heaven when they die. Paul clearly believed that, with the power of the Holy Spirit, a new way of living was available to ordinary human beings in a new kind of redemptive community, and that they ought to expect this.

 

Imagine an alcoholic going into an AA meeting and hearing: “We’re so glad you’re here. We want you to know that you are loved and forgiven through nothing you have done. Of course, don’t expect to change too much. Don’t expect to actually stop drinking. We

don’t like it when people suggest sobriety is possible. We believe that trying not to drink breeds arrogance and self-sufficiency. We have a little bumper sticker: ’12-steppers are not sober, just forgiven.”

 

The whole point of AA was to bring freedom from a evil spiritual power (what the Blue Book calls the “cunning, baffling, powerful, patient” enemy of addiction) that was destroying people’s lives.

 

This is not to say that people in churches could expect to stop sinning the way people in AA stop drinking. Addiction itself is closely related to sin, however sin is infinitely more complex, subtle, baffling, and more dangerous.

 

One advantage that AA has over most local congregations is this: people going to a 12-step group often know in their bones that their problem will destroy their lives.

For the most part, we simply do not have that understanding about sin.

 

Recognizing the badness of sin

Sin was once something Christians hated, feared, grieved, and fled; now when we see the word it’s often times used in the positive, like on a dessert menu, in ways that captivate us, like “Sinful Chocolate Delight”, and we’re drawn to it instead of repelled by it.

 

However, we cannot restore the horror of sin by merely saying loudly and often that sin is bad. We need to thoroughly understand what is bad about sin. Sin is bad because it powerfully corrupts the goodness of who we were created to be. Sin is a missing of the mark, a spoiling of goods, a staining of garments, a hitch in one’s gait, a wandering from the path, a fragmenting of the whole. Sin is what disturbs and distorts the way the world was created to be. Sinful human life is like a caricature of proper human life.”

 

We often speak of how people cannot comprehend the wonder of grace unless they grasp the badness of sin. And that is true. But it is equally true that people cannot grasp the badness of sin until they grasp the goodness of the life that sin corrupts. When we do not understand the destructiveness of sin, we are more concerned about getting punished

for our sins than the way we are punished by them.

 

This leads us to the next question.

Does God tire of forgiving the same sins?

 

Does the persistence of sin in my life threaten my salvation? People don’t generally ask aloud, but they wonder: How much sin can there be in my life before I need to start worrying? In other words, is there a level of sin that is in the acceptable zone for a Christian, but if you go higher, you’re in danger-like the level of mercury in Lake Michigan? Is there a low tolerance for impurity-like FDA standards for homogenized milk? Or is it more like the purity standards for hot dogs-lots of room for junk? Is it possible to be a Christian and just never grow?

 

The problem with those questions is that they are the wrong questions. The issue is not whether God will stop forgiving sins. Jesus told Peter he needed to forgive an

offender not seven times, but seventy times seven. And he wasn’t saying Peter could withhold forgiveness for sin number 49l. Jesus’ point was that forgiving is always the response to sincere repentance. God is not worried that he might be taken advantage of. He is not afraid that some bad boy will use his charm to put one over on heaven.

 

The problem is that, eventually, I become accustomed to my sin, in the same way that a person becomes accustomed to a wristwatch. I remember my first watch. I hated that thing, because it drove me crazy. My mind wouldn’t stop thinking about it. My mind reminded me of it all the time. It said, “That doesn’t belong on you, get it off. It chaffs, it’s restrictive, it’s weighty, it’s not natural, remove it! But after a time, my mind stopped comprehending it was even there. I paid no attention to it. I forgot it was even there. It wasn’t a nuisance at all.  

 

Sin damages my capacity to see God, to know God, to feel God, to hear God. Sin blinds. The danger is not that God won’t respond to my repeated repentance; the danger is that sin might become so habitual in my life that I might not be aware of it any longer. That I might not see it as a danger. That I might not regard it as wrong. That I would live as though everything was ok and that I didn’t really need God.

 

This is the dynamic at work when Paul says, “And God gave them over to a depraved mind” Romans 1:28.

 

You and I become what we worship. You and I become what we focus on. If we focus on sinful living long enough, at some point we are unable to get free from it. It’s like a frog in a pot of water on the stove. When the frog is place in the pot of room temperature water he is very aware of his new surroundings and ready and able to leap out at any perceived danger, but as the water warms in the pot, he becomes soothed and relaxed, so much so that at some point he cannot jump out of the pot. At some point the temperature of the water overcomes the frog and he dies. Sin is like that! Sin weakens us. It makes us less sensitive of our surroundings. It desensitizes us to what is good and right. It spoils our goodness in small almost undetected ways. It slowly erodes are awareness of God and our need for him. Sin slowly decays who we are like a dead tree decays in the forest.

 

So the question isn’t “How much sin am I allowed?” The question is “Am I moving toward the darkness or toward the light? Am I growing toward God, or away from him? Am I becoming more sensitive and responsive to Jesus or not?”

 

It is because of this that sin is to be taken so seriously. Paul says to the church at Galatia: “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Galatians 6:1

 

He doesn’t just say: “Invoke church discipline if there’s a sexual scandal.” He says we’re to help one another move toward freedom from sin. From all kinds of sin. It is interesting in our day that many churches speak much of Matthew 18:15, which is the passage about how we’re to deal with conflict. But that is only one application of the larger need stated in Galatians 6:1, which is for Christians not just to confront conflict but more generally to confront sin.

 

This can be done in a way that is not judgmental, because the reality is that we are in no position to judge the actual amount of spiritual growth that has taken place in another person; we do not see the genetic material they wrestle with; we do not know the forces that have shaped them.

 

Frank Laubach preached the gospel to a tribe that had a long history of violence. The chief was so moved by Laubach’s presentation that he accepted Christ on the spot. He then turned to Laubach in gratitude and said, “This is wonderful. Who do you want me to kill for you?”

 

That’s his starting point. I was raised in a church where the Scriptures were taught, given parents who loved me and each other, in a city where being a Protestant Christian was considered normal. So if I think I am superior to the chief because I’m less likely to kill somebody, I’m sadly deluded.

 

The question is: Am I moving toward the light, and helping others do the same? If I see someone trapped in sin and do nothing to try to help, that is not love. It is the sin of apathy! The sin of doing nothing! It’s the sin of allowing sin to flourish and human life to suffer. It is the sin of selfishness because I somehow believe that I am more important than they are.

 

As a leader I have to ask myself, “What are the sins in my congregation (and my life) that no one feels guilty over?” Do I have the courage to awaken guilt?

 

In Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1950s bus drivers would accept money from African-American riders, but then would make them get off the bus, walk down the sidewalk to the rear of the bus and enter through the rear door so that they didn’t touch a white person going down the center aisle.

 

Sometimes, for the fun of it, drivers would take the money and drive off while the African American person was walking toward the back door, and leave them without fare or transportation. There was a sin of anger here. But it was not that black people got angry. It was that white people did not.

 

Worse, it was that white people, who read the Bible and worshiped in church, did not rise up in fury to demand justice. Are we people who seek to love our neighbor as ourself?

 

But what’s most difficult about sin isn’t so much what to do about sin in the congregation I serve. It’s what to do about the sin in me! The hard part of sin is my sin.

 

v     I get angry at people for not doing what I want.

v     I avoid confrontation that is needed and I do this because I want to avoid pain and conflict.

v     I am apathetic toward injustice.

v     I lust.

v     I manipulate.

v     I am apathetic toward injustice.

v     I am self-centered.

v     I get defensive.

v     I am ungrateful for blessings.

v     I am not thankful enough.

v     I attach others or withdraw from then when I feel threatened.

 

Sometimes I am aware of my sin as I’m doing it. Sometimes my sin is so close to me, like my skin, I don’t even know it’s there. What matters most, I suppose, is not so much that

I am trying to reduce the sin factor. It’s that I should hate the sin that corrupts the Shalom – the peace on earth – the heaven on earth that God created us for. God created us for Goodness and sin spoils that. God created us to have great marriages, but sin spoils that! God created us to have great friendships, but sin spoils that. God created us to have great relationships with our parents, but sin spoils that. God created you and I to have great relationships with our mother-in-laws, and our bosses, and our neighbors, but sin spoils that, and I ought to hate that! I ought to war against that! I ought to do everything in my power to fight against hell on earth, because that’s what sin is, and to fight for heaven on earth, because that’s what God created us for.

 

Can my sin ever be totally tamed? Not in this life. Much of the sin that is in me I’m not even conscious of yet. As I grow more spiritually aware, I’ll see deficits that I don’t have the sensitivity to see right now. But even the sins I’m aware of are constantly tempting me. The Bible says, “We wrestle …. ” We wrestle-not against flesh and blood. We wrestle and as we faithfully wrestle, God allows us victories along the way. We wrestle-and as we wrestle, a Friend greater than we know is somehow at work wrestling in us and for us and through us. The greatest sin would be to stop wrestling, to stop fighting, to stop loving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life Link:

 

v     What’s your favorite pet or animal?

 

v     Summary

 

v     Was there anything that struck you, confused you, or that you disagreed with in Sunday’s message?

 

v     Do you ever feel like the fight against sin is a losing battle . . . or at least one that you’re not winning? Does this make you want to give up or weary you and cause you not to fight it? How does the analogy of the onion help you to see sin differently?

 

v     Do you believe that God will forgive you 491 times for the same sin if you are sincere about your repentance? Does it bother you that God’s forgives like this? Why or why not?

 

v     How are we called to forgive those who sin against us? Could you forgive someone 491 times if they were sincere? How can we grow in our ability to forgive people? Leader: Realize that it’s not flesh and blood we’re dealing with but rather a spiritual power. Hate evil, not the person

 

v     Have you ever worn something like a watch or a ring that was uncomfortable at first, but over time you became almost unaware of it being there, and if you removed it, it was like you were missing a part of you? How is sin like this? If sin has been in your life for a long time, do you think you would be aware of it or comfortable with it? Why is the Holy Spirit inside of us important for making us aware of our sin?

 

v     How is sin like the frog in the pot of ever warming water?

 

v     In what ways does sin affect our lives? Why is God so against it? On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad do you think sin is for your life? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you war against sin in your life and family?

 

v     Name one place that sin corrupts your life and keeps you from experiencing heaven on earth? What are you doing to wrestle with that sin? How is God involved?