The Nature of Sin (2)

We are looking at what the Bible teaches about sin on Wednesday nights, which is a natural follow-up to what the Bible says about man or mankind. You cannot separate those two. When the Bible speaks of man, the obvious natural link to Bible truth is the doctrine of sin. Now what we did last week was we looked at some scriptural words for sin, Old Testament words, New Testament words, and basically what we are trying to answer is this question, what is sin? What does the Bible mean by sin? What is sin? And that may seem kind of straightforward. Simplistic answer might seem to suffice, but really as we saw last week when we looked at the different biblical words in the Old Testament and New Testament, we found that there were three basic concepts that are found in those different words. One is to miss the mark. Second is to be crooked or perverse to twist God's purpose, if you will, and the third was rebellion. And all three words in the Old Testament and New Testament, those three words in each Testament basically mean the same three things. So those three concepts are the three basic concepts of sin in the Bible. Missing the mark, twisting God's purpose, being crooked or perverse, and then the idea of rebellion. Now that's the place to start when we're trying to find out what does the Bible mean by sin? What is sin? The place to start is with the biblical words, and we saw there many other words as well, at least eight others in the New Testament besides those three main words. But then we started talking about the nature of sin. Now what we're going to do is kind of build toward a clear biblical definition of sin. So begin with the words. Now we're going to talk about the nature of sin. Last week we saw or at least began to talk about four general forms of sin. When you think about the nature of sin, what it is, there are four general forms that sin may take. Last week we looked at the first one. Sin can be a state. And again, just want to remind you we're not talking about Ohio. We're talking about a state of being, if you will. We're talking about a disposition of the heart and attribute that characterizes us and element of our nature. We're talking about the sin nature. We all are in that condition, that state, if you will, of having a sin nature. We saw some verses that talk about that. Psalm 51 five. We have been sinners from the moment of conception. Jeremiah 17 nine, the heart is desperately wicked, is deceitful, desperately wicked above all things who can know it. And then we saw Romans chapter seven verse 17 where Paul says, as it is, it is no longer by myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. We're talking about that pull, that sin nature that pulls us away from the delight that we have to do the word of God, the will of God. But Paul says there's something else in me, this sin nature, this principle, this condition that pulls me away and causes me to not do what I know I should do. And he goes on to say, for I know that good itself does not dwell in me. That is in my sinful nature. Well, I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. So we are hindered in our pursuit of holiness by a sin nature. That's what we mean by sin as a state or a condition. But secondly, sin can also be described in the Bible as a thought. We can sin in thought, not just in action, but also in thought. And even thought may take a lot of different forms. It may be the intention to do something. If you intend to kill someone, whether or not you ever do it, you've sinned in your mind, in your intentions. Sin may be an impulse. It may be a motive. So all of those kinds of thoughts could be characterized as sin. Let's look at these three verses. We'll have the verses on the screen for you tonight. Most of them so that the easier will have to take time to turn Exodus chapter 20 verse 17 says, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. So there is the sin of coveting the sin of the heart or the mind that desires something which has not been given by God's will. Leviticus 19 17 another sin of thought do not hate a fellow is relighting your heart, rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. So to hate someone in your heart that that particular thought process is a violation of God's will and thus is sin. And then Jesus said in Matthew 5, a lot of different things like this, but this is probably the clearest. You've heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So there's the sin of the mind, the thought process, not just a state. We don't live just in a condition of sin. We could also sin through our thoughts. But sin is also described in the Bible as an act. An act can be sinful in itself apart from the motive or the thought behind it. It's not just the motive and the thought which is sinful, but also the action itself can be seen as sinful. A couple of verses to show that John 3, 19, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light. Why? Because their deeds were evil. Not just their thoughts or intentions, motives, not just their sin nature. Their deeds were actually evil. There are evil actions. There are immoral actions. So there are there is absolute moral and immoral actions. And then Romans 7, 19, the follow-up verse to what we read a little bit ago, Paul says, where I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do this, I keep on doing. Obviously the emphasis there is on actions. He says the actions are motivated by a state that dwells within me, the sin nature, but the actions themselves are still sinful. What I'm doing is evil, he says. So sin is seen as a condition or a state that exists within us, our sin nature. Sin can be expressed in thoughts. Sin also expressed in deeds or acts. But then fourthly, sin is also seen in the Bible as an omission, an omission or a failure to do something. One of the clearest statements of this in the Bible is what Samuel said to Israel after they had chosen the king and kind of rejected his leadership. He says, ask for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you the way this is good and right. So notice if he fails to pray for them, Samuel considers that to be sin. He would be sinning against God if he failed to do something. So the omission of that righteous act of prayer would be sin. Another clearest statement of this is James 417, you're familiar with this if anyone then knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them. So here it's not a question of committing an evil action or thinking an evil thought or having an evil condition or state within us. Here it's knowing what you should do, the good we should do and failing to do it. Not doing it. That is sin also. So sin is described in at least those four ways in the New Testament as a state or condition, disposition of the heart, a thought, an act and an omission. Okay, let me stop for a moment. See if you have any questions, comments, additions, subtractions, multiplications, whatever. Tommy? Yeah. Well that's one that we all need to take heed to. If you didn't hear from in the back, Tommy was saying, you know, a lot of times we tell people I will pray for you and then never do it. And it's very common for us to say, well, I'm praying for you or I will pray for you. If we don't intend to do that, then we shouldn't say it. That failed you to pray for somebody, especially when we have said we would do it, is a sin, a sin of omission. So I've heard some people say rather than tell people I'm going to pray for them, I've heard some people say, well, rather than say I'm going to pray for you, they say, let me pray for you right now and they just pray for them right at that moment. And others I've heard will say, when I tell someone I'm going to pray for them so that I don't forget it, I real quickly pray right then for that person so that I can truly say I've prayed for them. So that's a good point, Tommy. We need to be careful about making those kind of empty statements that we really don't intend to carry through on. Steve? Yes. That's a good clarification. James says it most clearly to the person who knows to do good and doesn't do it, it's sin. All of us probably have things in our lives that we're ignorant of that we don't know that we should be doing and that in itself is not sin. It is knowing what we should do and not doing it. Either we know it because of what the Bible says or the Holy Spirit is prompting us to take a certain course of action and we don't do it. We're resisting the Spirit of God and resisting the Word of God. You have to be careful with that and I'm thinking a little bit here which is dangerous by the way. But you have to be careful with that one. You cannot take the converse of that and say, well I didn't know that was wrong and so a person might say they lied about something or they stole something. Well I didn't know that was wrong. A person might say that or that's an extreme example but you cannot plead ignorance as an escape from doing wrong. So we have to be careful about the converse of that too. Okay. Sounds like there may be a story behind that, Tom. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good. We could all plead guilty on things like that for sure. Yes sir. I'm not sure how that word is used. I'm thinking of the word transgression. Which means a rebellion, a knowledgeable rebellion. Trespass, I'm not real sure I have to look that up. Yeah. The Old Testament does make a distinction distinction between sending with a high hand as it's called. In other words, an act of rebellion. I know this and I am just not going to do it or I know I shouldn't do this. I'm going to do it anyway. That's what the Old Testament called sending with a high hand. Sending with full awareness of what you should or should not do but you do it anyway or you don't do it. I think, yeah. Let me just pause there because there are really two trains of thought we're thinking here. You know, Paul said God had mercy on him because he had done what he did ignorantly and in unbelief, 1 Timothy 1, when he was persecuting Christians. But what he did was still wrong. It was still sinful. He just wasn't aware of it. So I guess what I was saying earlier is we cannot plead ignorance to mean what wasn't wrong. Now it's still sin. It's still wrong if it violates God's command. But there is a difference between sending with a high hand as the Old Testament says and sending in ignorance, not being aware that something is wrong. And there may be some cases, I'm trying to think of an example. Didn't give good ones earlier. There may be some cases where a person really does is not aware that something is wrong. It's not aware that something is a violation of the Bible. Sure, that's a legitimate prayer. In fact, it's a prayer that David himself prayed. Psalm 139, search me, God, and know my heart, test me, and know my anxious thoughts, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. In Psalm 139, David is praying that kind of a prayer. Lord, there may be something that I have done that's offensive to you that I'm not really aware of. Help me to know that. Convict me of that so that I can get that right with you. There's sense in which he's saying that. Yeah, he says, if they send in their heart, doesn't he have net the way he says it? I think it may have been, Job might have been uncertain. I'm not sure. Let me look at it. Job 1. Job would offer, when a priest of feasting had run its course, Job's children, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified early in the morning. He would sacrifice and burn offering for each of them thinking, perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. I think it was Job that was uncertain about whether or not they'd done it. And so just to make sure he's offering as the family priest, he's covering their sin as the family priest. And again, remember, this is a little different in the Old Testament economy of family priest covering the sins through a sacrifice. A little different than what we experienced today. Who knew where we were going to get into all that? Any other questions? Okay, those are the four natures or forms I should say of sin. Let me try to get closer to a definition now. We're going to start with some false definitions of sin. One false definition is that sin is simply an illusion. A figment of the imagination, Christian science teaches this. That sin is basically an illusion. There's no reality to it. It's just all in your mind. Now, they have a little more clever way of saying it. They say that it is an inbuilt sense of what ought not to be. And so this inbuilt moral sensitivity basically means that the real problem is in your mind. Not in your actions. Sin is just in your mind. It's equivalent to guilt. So really the transgression, the sin, is not what you do. It's the fact that you feel guilty about it. And so you have got to think differently, reeducate yourself, and you'll cleanse your mind from all of those guilt feelings. Well, there's a little bit of a problem with that, isn't there? I've just summarized very briefly what Christian science teaches. It's much more in depth than that, much more philosophical than that. But we all realize that we should realize at least that sin is not just a matter of straightening out my thinking so that I don't feel bad. And I get rid of my guilt. Sin actually is a violation of God's standard. There is a moral standard that we can violate. First John, chapter one makes it clear, verse eight, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 10, if we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. So here the Bible is saying very clearly to us, nobody can claim that sin is just an illusion, that it's just in your mind, there is a reality to sin. And Christian science tries to kind of twist that around, play mind games with it. A second false definition of sin. And this is more a philosophical definition. And that is that sin is equivalent to finiteness, to being finite. And here's the, here's where the reasoning goes. To be created human, to be a created being is to be finite. To be finite means to be limited. So if you are limited, then that includes the fact that you are morally limited. You have moral limitations. So that means you are sinful. So in that thinking only God is not sinful, because only God is not a created being. There's a problem with that. Trying to restrict the definition of sin to just being finite. And that is there are some created beings who are not God who have never sinned. Who are they? Good angels. Good angel, never sinned. They are not capable of sin now. Remember when we studied angels, we saw they were all created with the capacity to choose, but once they chose either to rebel against God or to stay faithful to God, theologians say they were confirmed in either their holiness or unholiness. So bad angels can't be saved and go to heaven. Good angels can't fall now. So angels do not, good angels do not sin. Although they are finite, they are limited. They are not, I'm like present, omniscient, omnipotent like God is. They are finite created beings. Although they're spirit beings, they are still finite created beings, but they do not sin. So that definition doesn't work. The third definition that is given, and this is also more philosophical, and although it has had tremendously damaging consequences throughout church history. And that is that sin is sensuousness. Now I'm not saying sensuality. I'm not talking about sexual sin here. Sensualness is the idea that sin is a normal part of being a physical being, of being in a physical existence. The Greek philosopher Plato, this was a very important part of his philosophy, and he basically taught that sin was related to the physical body. Anything physical or material was sinful. And so in order to overcome sin, you had to punish the body. And you had to try to pursue the realm of the spirit and punish the body. Well, that heavily influenced many in church history, particularly in the early centuries of church history, and it led to the monastic movement. The monks that pulled away from society would punish their bodies, go live in caves, no earthly pleasures at all go for long periods of time without eating. They would actually beat their own bodies and so forth. And that has done a lot of damage throughout church history. The idea that material things are sinful, and only the following of the spirit is pure and holy and so forth. In fact, in the early church, really toward the end of the New Testament era, era, it was leading to a theological error that John addressed in his first epistle. And that was that Jesus Christ could not have had a physical body, because the physical body is evil. And so Christ could not have had a physical body. That's why John says in 1 John chapter 4, anybody that teaches that Christ has not come in the flesh is teaching false doctrine, is an anti-Christ. Do not believe every spirit, he says, test the spirit, as many false prophets have gone out in the world. This is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the anti-Christ. So the first doctoral error about the doctrine of Christ in church history was actually starting to rise before the New Testament was completed. And it was, it came straight out of Platonic dualism, the Platonic, Plato's philosophy that material is evil, spirit is good, and so you can't combine the two. And those who were influenced by Plato's philosophy taught that you could not combine Jesus with a physical body. And so Jesus did not have a physical body. It was just some kind of apparition. Well, obviously that is not biblical. John and others in the New Testament, Paul and Book of Colossians fights against this same thing. You know, Paul and Colossians fights against what's called asceticism. asceticism is the punishing of the body in order to become more spiritual. That's not the way you become spiritual. And Paul was already fighting that in the book of Colossians. So many sins have no relationship to the body. Pride, envy, selfishness, unbelief, all of those sins have nothing to do with the physical body, not necessarily. And so this is an inappropriate definition of sin. Plato was wrong. And the damage he's done to the church through church history is terribly unfortunate and tragic. Paul also talked about it in 1 Timothy 4. We'll get there at some point on Sunday mornings where he talks about people who says you can't eat this or you can't eat that. You've got to punish the body and so forth. Okay, so those those are inappropriate improper definitions of sin. Let me just real quickly give you some incomplete definitions of sin. And these come a little closer to the truth, but they're still incomplete. They don't really give a the best definition of sin. One is that sin is selfishness. The way this is reasoned basically is this. There are two great commands in the Bible, love God and love others. Jesus said all the Old Testament summarized in those two commands. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbors yourself. So love God. Love others. So basically, there are people who say selfishness is the opposite of that. Selfishness is the opposite of loving God and loving others. So selfishness is the nature of all sin. Well, that's an incomplete definition. It sounds good. I think we could say that all selfishness is sin, but not all sin is selfishness. You can't say that every sin is rooted in selfishness. For instance, unbelief may not always be selfish. So I don't think you can limit sin to just the idea of selfishness. Another incomplete definition is unbelief. And again, I think we could say all unbelief is sin, but not all sin is unbelief. We can sin in spite of belief. In fact, there is a very large group of people, not people. There are very large group of beings that sin constantly in the face of strong belief. And that's demons. James 2.19. You believe that there is one God? Good. Even the demons believe that and shudder. So demons have a faith system. They believe in God, which a lot of people think is okay for salvation. That's all you need. But demons believe in God, but yet everything they do is sinful. So you can't say all sin is unbelief. Third incomplete definition. Some people say, well, the sin is the absence of goodness. Well, it's true that sin includes the absence of goodness, but again, sin is more than just the omission of something. There are positive choices that result in sin and positive choices that result in holiness. There are negative choices that result in sin. So the absence of goodness, yeah, that is sin, but not all sin is the absence of goodness. And then the fourth and probably the closest to a good definition of sin, but still incomplete is lawlessness. Some people say, well, the best definition of sin is lawlessness. And they base that on 1 John chapter 3 and verse 4. Everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is lawlessness. And there have been those who have said, well, here it is. That's a biblical definition of sin. Sin is lawlessness, but really that's one form of sin. Sin is lawlessness, but sin is also rebellion. Sin is also missing the mark. Sin is also deviation from God's purpose. Lawlessness is one form of sin. And sin is lawlessness, but sin is also other things. And so that's a good definition. That passage is not trying to limit all sin to that one category of lawlessness. It's just giving one category of sin. So let me give you a complete definition. And then we'll stop for this moment, see if you have other questions. Here I think is a good definition that rings true biblically. Sin is any personal lack of conformity, any personal lack of conformity to the moral character or will of God, any personal lack of conformity to the moral character or will of God. Now that definition includes all the four incomplete definitions. It includes all four of those. But I want to point out a couple of key concepts in this definition of sin, which I think makes it a good biblical definition. First, the word personal. Only persons are capable of sin. Animals are not capable of sin. They may be capable and are in many cases of stupidity, but not sin. Okay. So only people can violate God's standards. Moral, any lack of conformity to the moral character of God, we're talking about his righteousness, his justice, all of his moral characteristics. Any violation of that is sin. And then the will of God by that I mean his commands. Any lack of conformity either to the moral character of God or his commands, his will as expressed in scripture, even if it's a command is not clearly grounded in moral character, when God commands something, even though we may not see a clear tie to moral character, if we violate his word, we've sinned. So I think that's a fairly comprehensive definition of sin. Questions, comments before we wrap it up tonight. It is a view of salvation, which basically says the sin nature is destroyed. And I think it's a misunderstanding of what Paul teaches in Romans six and seven, where Paul talks about being slaves to sin and that's done, that's over. And he talks about the body of sin or the old man being crucified with Christ. And what he's talking about there is the person you were as an unsaved person, that old person is dead. You're no longer that person. You are alive in Christ. You have new life. So you're a different person. You're a new creature, is it worth? It does not mean however the sin nature has been destroyed. And that's where those those groups come up with that. So if they believe that Paul is teaching, then I no longer have a sin nature. I'm no longer capable of sinning. You got to find some way to describe the stuff you do that you did before. And you're still doing so conveniently call it a mistake or an error or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, again, it flies right in the face of first John. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, we call God a liar. So, and he's talking to the believers there, isn't he? Really, it's a it's a misunderstanding of Romans six and seven, which leads to this kind of rationalization that I've got to find some way to explain the things I do that I know are not right. They can't be sin because I'm no longer capable of that. But that's a terrible misunderstanding of Romans six and seven. Good good question. Any others? Okay. Let's finish it up by just talking about the awfulness of sin for just a moment. But I think as we try to define what sin is, I think we need to we need to recognize and this is a good thing to end on the awfulness of sin. It's one thing just to kind of give a textbook definition, try to pull together, okay, the biblical words lead us this direction. The information makes this view of sin incomplete or wrong. It's one thing to kind of come up with a textbook definition. It's another thing to realize how awful sin really is. And I think we need to be reminded of that, especially when we get to where sin doesn't bother us like it should. It's good to remind ourselves of three things. Number one, the angelic proof that sin is awful. Think about this. Satan and all of his followers, all of his angels who became demons were condemned to hell for pride and rebellion. Satan and all of his angels. That's serious stuff. That is that is not remedied in any way. Redemption does not cover that. That's how awful and horrible sin is that when angels would rebel against God, they would be condemned to hell for that pride and rebellion. But there is also a human proof of the awfulness of sin. And it's this. Think about it this way. One disobedience in the garden, one disobedience of Adam and Eve brought the downfall of the whole human race. Drug us all into sin. Made us all worthy of the wrath of God. Now that's pretty serious. When you think that one violation of one command of God would end up in the whole human race being condemned, tainted with a sin nature and condemned under the wrath of God. You think about that and it really magnifies how horrible how awful sin is. And then think about this. Not only the angelic proof and the human proof, think about the divine proof of how awful sin is. And the divine proof is found in Christ's death. When you think about how awful sin is, think about Christ dying on the cross and the break of fellowship that happened between the Father and the Son. The Son is treated as a sinner because he is bearing our sins on the cross. And that those hours of separation were absolutely abhorrent to the Savior. It's what he was withdrawing from in the garden. When he prayed, Lord, let this cup pass from me. Don't misunderstand that Jesus was not a weakling who was fearful of the punishment of the cross. It was not a lack of courage in the garden. That was not the issue. The issue in the garden had to do with the cup. And if you understand the way the word is used in the Old Testament, particularly in the book Psalms, the cup often has to do with the outpouring of God's wrath. Interesting in the tribulation time in the book of Revelation, seven of the judgments are bold judgments poured out on the earth. And so the idea in the Old Testament, the cup of God's wrath. And when Jesus says, let this cup pass from me. He's using Old Testament wording, Old Testament imagery. He wasn't a lack of courage. He wasn't afraid of the cross. What he was shrinking back from was being separated from the Father. That was absolutely abhorrent to him. That had never happened in all of eternity past. And Jesus is withdrawing from if there's any other way for me to pay for the sins than being separated from you. I don't want to be separated from you. And it was so agonizing, so horrific to him that he sweat as it were great drops of blood. The capillaries near his skin were literally bursting under the stress and blood was coming through his pores of his skin. That's how awful sin is. And so when you think of what the very thought of bearing our sin, which would cause separation from the Father, what that meant to Christ, that's how awful sin is. So when we start getting a little comfortable with sin, a little use to sin, we need to remember what it did to the angels. We need to remember what it did to the human race through Adam and Eve. And we need to remember what it did to Christ. And catching a glimpse of those three events will steal our soul with the reality of the horrible nature of sin. And may keep us from some foolish choices of sin. So what is sin, any personal lack of conformity to the moral character of God or the expressed will of God in his word is sin. And that covers pretty much everything we've talked about, the incomplete definitions, the words for sin, and so forth. Okay, any other quick question before we have to go, Tommy? It is a lot to think about when we think about how our sins have affected others, the consequences in other people's lives. And that also can be a deterrent to sin in the future, should be. All right, let's pray. We're done. Father, thank you for being able to look into your word to examine what it says about the nature of sin. Father, we pray that we'll not just come to a better mental understanding of what sin is, but we will see the awfulness, the horrible blackness of sin, and that we will not become comfortable with it, that we will recognize what it did to the angels, what it did to the whole human race, and what it did to your son and our Savior. So help us to flee unrighteousness and to follow after you in Jesus' name, amen.