I believe in the forgiveness of sins. lecture

Introduction

What is sin?

One of our greatest challenges in the church is a continual depletion in our doctrine of sin and particularly original sin for the sake of evangelism and the sin nature for the corruption we sin in the church.

Sin in the Bible

Sin, iniquity, transgression.... different words in the bible that get at similar meanings. They feel antiquated and out of touch but when we dig deeper we find that the bible has a profound diagnosis of human nature.

Iniquity: behavior that is crooked

Transgression: breaking trust

Sin: Khata and greek haramtin.... to fail or miss the goal

Examples:

To not miss the mark. From Judges there were these soldiers who were impressive with a sling shot apparently.....

Judges 20:16 NIV

16 Among all these soldiers there were seven hundred select troops who were left-handed, each of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.

and then in proverbs it is about getting lost...

Proverbs 19:2 NIV

2 Desire without knowledge is not good— how much more will hasty feet miss the way!

A failure to fulfill a goal...

What is the goal?

Well from the very beginning the calling, the goal, was to live as imagers of God in the world. To love God, to love others.

Think 10 commandments. This famous code of conduct.... half of them are about loving God and the other half are about loving people.

To sin against people is to sin against God.

Sin is a failure to be truly human

Original Sin

What do we mean by this doctrine?

Wesley distinguished from Augustinian thought:

None of us is individually guilty because of sins another person has committed, or at least it should be said, none of us is eternally lost because of inherited guilt. We all bear our own responsibility for sin. On the other hand, we all share an innately corrupt nature, which can only be described as a natural propensity to sin. In this way, Wesley embraced a thoroughly “evangelical” understanding of sin (note the lower-case “e”) but without the determinism of his Augustinian/Calvinist peers.

Here is what I mean. With regard to the creation accounts in Genesis 1 & 2, Wesley appears to have understood clearly their message about the beauty and nature of human existence, including the rich intimacy of human relationships with the earth, with animals, with each other, and especially with God. Genesis 3 explains the brokenness of human existence and the loss of such intimacy in our relationship with God and in all other relationships (Gen 3:1-24). Although this text is never called “the Fall” in the Bible, it later became the cornerstone for the Church’s reflection on the human condition. Wesley, for his part, explained the presence of pain and evil in the world as a result of the liberty of humanity, “a will exerting itself in various affections,” without which the rest of God’s grand creation would have been of no use. “Had he not been a free as well as an intelligent being, his understanding would have been as incapable of holiness, or any kind of virtue, as a tree or a block of marble” (Sermon 57: “On the Fall of Man,” §1). But having this freedom, humankind chose evil over good, and sin entered the world, bringing with it misery of every kind.

Christians agree that Genesis 3 explains in some way the general fallen nature of humanity, and that the rest of the Primeval History in Genesis 4–11 illustrates the depth and breadth of sin’s penetration and ruination of the cosmos. Once sin was introduced into the human experience, it almost immediately ruined God’s good creation. In the theological traditions of western Christianity, early theologians used the expression peccatum originans, or “originating sin,” to explain that the first act of human sinfulness somehow brought about all subsequent sinfulness. The strong influence of Augustine among Protestants led to the widespread belief that all humanity is implicated in Adam’s sin. As the New England Primer put it in 1690: “In Adam’s fall / We sinned all.” And the determinism implicit in Augustinian thought resulted in a concept more like “original guilt” that by implication considered that each human being deserves judgment for Adam’s sin.

But surely we Wesleyans mean something slightly different by the doctrine of Original Sin, and by its corollary “total depravity.” Fortunately, Wesley had already worked out the answer. His understanding of Original Sin was consonant with Augustine’s, although nuanced considerably. Thus we also hold to total depravity, but with a slightly different definition. For example, Wesley edited Article IX (“Of Original or Birth-Sin”) of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the doctrinal standards of the Church of England, to emphasize the transmission of a corrupt nature but not a transmission of guilt to all future generations of people. Prior to Augustine, the earliest Christian traditions generally didn’t read Genesis 3 in the terms that would eventually be formulated as a distinct doctrine of the church. Indeed, Genesis 3 doesn’t support the traditional doctrine of Original Sin, either as a genetic transmission of sin and guilt or as an attribution of blame to all humanity through the rebellion of the first set of human parents. Objections to this way of understanding Original Sin are raised by the Bible itself, as well as by evolutionary biology and ethical, philosophical, and theological reflection on the idea that God holds humans responsible for the brokenness and rebellious actions of past generations. Indeed, the Bible shows little interest in the origins of human sinfulness among our ancestors but rather shows an intense interest in the universality of human sinfulness, its character as a disease infecting all humans, and its social effects. Rather than “original sin,” we might think of a strong, primal desire or tendency to continue sinning, which is characteristic of all humans. We might call it “Originary Concupiscence” (although that will hardly catch on). A Wesleyan reading of Genesis 3 acknowledges the Bible’s basic intuitions about sin, including its corrupting effects, and the notion that all humans share in its universal solidarity. This universal propensity to sin means Wesley shared a view of total depravity with western Christianity.

This is where Wesleyan understanding of prevenient grace comes to be important.

Grace given to all to free the will and have the opportunity to accept the gift of salvation or to reject it.

Repentance

Initial or legal repentance on the way to justification:

“First, by repentance you mean only conviction of sin. But this a very partial account of it. Every child that has learned his catechism can tell that forsaking sin is also included in it; …living in obedience to God’s will, when there is opportunity; and even when there is not, a sincere desire and purpose to do so, …and faith in God’s mercies through Christ Jesus.”

In a document written in 1744 Wesley published that repentance must be more than guilt:

Now repentance is not one work alone, but is, as it were, a collection of many others, for in its compass the following works are comprehended:

1. Sorrow on account of sin

2. Humiliation under the hand of God

3. Hatred of sin

4. Confession of sin

5. Ardent supplication of the divine mercy

6. The love of God

7. Ceasing from sin

8. Firm purpose of new obedience

9. Restitution of ill-gotten goods

10. Forgiving our neighbor his transgressions against us

11. Works of beneficence, or almsgiving

Believers repentance:

1. repentance

This about yielding more and more of yourself each day. Repentance is the primary joining and yielding to this gift of sanctifying grace. It is a stance of humility and self-awareness that paves the ways for the person to embrace the gradual work of love born into the believer. Finally, repentance is about the removal of the obstacles of grace.