Worship While It’s Warm

In my last post, I talked about the nature of sin being rebellion in our hearts that does not want to conform to God’s moral and righteous standards and therefore, wants to act independent of God’s standards.

Now you may be reading this and say, “ok that does not really apply to me because I have the love of God in my heart”. And perhaps may even relegate this discussion to those who do not know Christ.

But the simple truth is that each one of us contends with sin everyday, the principle at work in us that does not want us to conform to righteous demands of God. And that sin will want self to rule. If we love the Lord and desire to follow after Him, I don’t think that self-rule will be bold or blatant but will be very subtle and creep in to what we consider our opinions and our perspective on things.

Now our perspectives will be influenced by many factors, including life experiences, expectations and disappointments, family history, and general life observations. And the sin principle at work in us will want us to filter our christianity and biblical understanding through the lens of our perspectives. The self-rule will say “I think this is important and this is the way it should be”.

So consider for a moment those ideas that you hold dear about what this christian life is all about, or suppose to be about from your perspective. More importantly, consider your doctrinal positioning and think about the defenses you raise when there is a contradictory position. I have found in my blogging travels that certain people will rally around discussions about specific topics but are nowhere to be seen in others. Why? Perhaps there is an agenda to uphold a certain position.

We come to Christ with baggage and that baggage must be left at the foot of the cross. The sin principle that wants to keep our agendas at the forefront, must first be recognized and as self-interest but more importantly subjected to the unadulterated and objective consideration of biblical truth. We will undoubtedly come across concepts and commands that trouble us that we may even deem unfair. The self-rule of our perspective may dismiss these ideas as contrary but a submitted heart would say to God “I don’t like what this is saying, but if this is true, help me to understand”.

If we are not mindful of this self-rule, we will most likely gravitate to those with like opinions and reject opposing viewpoints. With mass support, our positions become validated. And so I consider Paul’s encouragement to Timothy:

Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For a time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:2-4, nasb)

Let’s face it, we just don’t like to talk about sin. There is something rather disconcerting about the subject. In fact, I am of the opinion that teaching on the doctrine of sin is probably one of the least understood and most underrepresented topics in modern day evangelicalism, which reinforces the notion that it is better left untaught and out of discussions.

Yet, a solid biblical understanding of sin, what it is and how it has impacted us is critical to not only understanding our salvation, but also the sanctification process. Tim Challies gave an excellent treatment to this topic by denoting sin is not what we do but who we are due to the condition of hearts that are rebellious towards God. (link here). And I believe that the foundation of this rebellion will address the reasons that we don’t like to talk about sin and why it seems to be a missing link in modern day teaching. So a more appropriate title for this post would be the Problem with talking about sin…is sin.

The heart of this rebellion I believe is found in 1 John 3:4, which says that sin is lawlessness. And the lawlessness is a “lack of conformity to the moral law of God either in act, disposition or state” (Basic Theology, Charles Ryrie, page 243). Sin rejects God’s moral standards and is contradictory to God’s character and demands, and therefore, wants to act independent of His character and demands.

Sin, being imputed to us through the fall (Romans 5:12) puts us in a state of separation from God (Romans 3:23). So we see in this separation, our natural man rejects the things of God and cannot subject himself to God’s laws (1 Corinthians 2:14, Romans 8:7). Therefore, in our unregenerate state, we are in a state of lawlessness that wants to act independent of God. And don’t we see this played out in the focus of “goodness” as a criteria of heavenly attainment? The natural man will want to justify himself with being good apart from God.

When we come to saving faith in Christ, its because we realize that we are not good, that we are sinners. No matter how “good” we can be, it will always miss the mark of God’s standards. And so we consider Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, how He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Our trust then is in what He did. In Him and through Him and only because of Him, our dependence turns into compliance. When we see sin in context of the holiness and righteousness of God and the necessity of the sacrifice of Christ, recognizing and confronting it is not a problem.

However, after salvation, there is still a bone of contention. Paul indicates in Romans 7:21-23, that there is still a law at work in us, a principle of sin that wants us to do what?…commit acts of lawlessness. And its this very principle that will not want us to comply with God’s moral law and will want to act independent of God. But it follows in Romans 8 that our victory is found by virtue of what God has already granted to us through “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (vs 2). Thus, Jesus Christ must be central to our teaching for our understanding of living life in the Spirit.

So the problem with sin is that it wants self to rule. And that self-rule will not want to confront God’s moral law. The less we trust in Christ, the less we yield to the Spirit, the greater will be our aversion to confronting sin. I believe this is the reason why that for present day teachers, the further the teaching deviates from the centrality of Christ, the less likely that teacher will talk about sin.  So in a today’s christian culture, that focuses on new ideas and new formulas and talks more about Jesus meeting our needs than being our need, the issue of sin gets lost.  And why the topic of sin it is virtually non-existent in prosperity theology that focuses on gratification of the flesh as opposed to trust and surrender in Christ.