The Problem of Sin

Intro

What is wrong with humanity?

There’s not a single belief system in the world that doesn’t think there’s something wrong with us. What is it? And what should we do about it?

There are those who say that the problem is a lack of education and enlightenment. If we could just educate people out of evil, we could all get along. Yet we live in the most educated and advanced era in humanity’s history, and the evil in the world is only getting more complex, not less.

Others say that our problems are evolutionary in nature. Our animal instincts have conditioned us toward oppression and violence. We need to evolve past our baser instincts. Follow this thread to its logical conclusion and you end up with an elitism of a ruling class over those they deem to be inferior.

I’ve known people who say that evil is predetermined because all matter, including our brain cells, is governed by the laws of nature physics. Some people do evil because they can’t help it; other people do good because they can’t help it. Follow this idea to its conclusion and you get genocide. We need to remove the people with bad cells.

Some belief systems point to the presence of dark spirits in the world. There’s evil because dark spirits twist us into doing evil. This feels like a cop out and minimizes individual responsibility.

Others say that most humans are basically good and there’s just a few bad apples. But if we’re honest, we know that the complexity of evil and injustice in our world is going to shut that idea down pretty quickly.

Everyone agrees something is wrong. But what actually gets to the core of our problems, and where can we find a real solution that will heal us and the world around us?

The Bible says that humanity’s root problem is sin. Now, as soon as I say that, I have no doubt that many of you had a lot of internal thoughts and emotions rush at you, some of which may be unconscious and you’re not even aware of them.

Some of you, if you’re exploring the Christian faith, the idea of sin sounds antiquated, even barbaric. Maybe you think that only superstitious, culturally insensitive people talk about sin.

Others of you, you’re coming out of situations where the idea of sin was used as a weapon to cast blame and create systems of dominance. That’s why your jaw is clenched and your shoulders are tense. I get it.

Maybe the idea of sin has been used in your life by spiritual authorities who create long lists of rules you have to keep in order to avoid “sin.” Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t gamble, don’t dance, don’t wear this, don’t say that, then you won’t sin, then you’ll be holy. You’re preparing yourself for me to burden you with the rules you have to keep to be a part of this church.

As hard as it may be for some of you to do, I’m asking you to give me twenty minutes to address the idea of sin from this text in a way that might challenge you, surprise you, and even encourage you. Far from being primitive, unkind, or harsh, the Bible’s teaching on sin reveals more of God’s kindness and faithfulness to us.

But before we get into all that, I want to ask for God’s help as we address challenging and painful realities in our lives.

Three headings for our time together tonight. First, God is kind to name our sin. Second, we are miserable when sin is not confessed. Third, Jesus is faithful to forgive us of our sin.

God is Kind to Name Our Sin

I want you to recall the pain of loss. I recognize that for some of you this pain is very near to the surface.

The pain of loss. We all know it. Have any of you ever been fired from your job? I have. It was awful. Even though I know it was unjust, it still hurt. It was awful.

Have any of you lost a close friend after an argument? So painful.

Some of you have gone through the pain of a divorce. That’s a pain I can’t even imagine.

Others of you lost a parent, or a spouse, far too soon. Grief, as my therapist taught me, doesn’t have a timeline. You don’t know if you’ll ever really heal.

After you experience loss, what is the best way to deal with it? Does it help to ignore the pain, to stuff it down, to try and forget about it? No. We need to name the pain. We need to bring it out into the open. We need friends who understand us, and wise counselors who will hold our hand as we try to heal.

Now I want you to imagine a situation where you’re born into a state of loss and you don’t even know it.

One or both of your parents die the day after you’re born, or your parents divorce before you’re old enough to remember them together.

Or, imagine you’re a child born into the holocaust, or Jim Crow. You don’t know a day where you haven’t been told you’re inferior simply because of who you are.

As a child born into a state of loss, in any one of these situtions, you’re going to grown up having experienced trauma and you don’t even know it. You’re going to experience all kinds of challenges and you won’t even know why.

Unless someone tells you. What if, in any one of these situations, the people in your life thought it best not to tell you about the trauma you’ve experienced? Wouldn’t that be so unkind and unloving of them? Of course it would. So selfish of them. They’d rather let you struggle through life never being able to name why you hurt.

You need someone who loves you enough to tell you the truth about why you hurt, otherwise you’ll never be able to heal.

Our passage tonight shows us that every one of us is born into a state of loss and we don’t even know it. Look at verses 5 and 6.

God is described as light. Light is life. Light is truth. Light is purity, holiness, and righteousness. It is beauty.

We, because of sin, are described as those who walk in darkness. Darkness is the complete opposite of light. Darkness is death. Darkness is lies. Darkness is corruption, violence, and evil. It is chaos.

Because of sin, we are born into loss - a world of darkness - and we don’t even know it. The Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 5:8 that apart from God, we were once “darkness” - not in darkness, we were darkness. In Colossians 1 he said we once lived apart from God under the dominion of darkness.

These are all different ways of getting at the same idea: to be in darkness is to live opposed God. We were made to be with God in his light. The corrupting, violent force of sin - this darkness - means we are born into a world that we weren’t made for. We are born into loss and trauma, where we ache, where we suffer, where we’re miserable, where we hurt others, and we don’t even know why.

Not unless someone loves us enough to tell us why.

God loves us enough to tell us why.

As hard as it might be to confront the reality of our sin, its actually such a kindness to us. God doesn’t name our sin to crush us, but because he loves us enough to tell us why we hurt. He doesn’t want us to stay stuck in our loss and trauma in the darkness. He wants us to join him in the light. And its only when we agree with God about our sin that we can move out of the loss in the darkness into his life and light.

We are miserable when sin is not confessed.

The exhortation of this passage is to confess our sin, including our lies, our violence, our injustice, and all the ways we try to go through life without God. When we confess our sin, we’re agreeing with what God says about the darkness. When we don’t agree with God about our sin, when we’re unwilling to confess it, we’re miserable. God loves us enough not just to name our problem but also what happens when we don’t address is.

Our passage highlights numerous ways that we’re miserable when we don’t address our sin. For example, look at verse 8. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves. What does it mean to be self-deceived? You’re ignorant. You’re self-righteous. You’re aggressive. You’re exactly the kind of person nobody wants to be. You’re miserable.

There are so many examples in this text of how sin leads to misery. For our purposes this evening, I want to focus on a point John makes here that I think is important for us to draw out. Look at verse 7.

If we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another. What is implied here as the opposite of light and fellowship? If darkness is contrary to light, and God’s light is how we have fellowship with each other, then the darkness is why we’re hostile toward each other.

See, the realities of sin and darkness are not just an individual matter. Sin isn’t just an issue between you and God. Sin and darkness are social realities. They are the reason for all of our violence, hostility, and oppression. So part of naming our sin in confession is acknowledging all of the ways we are complicit in social realities that create misery in the world.

Allan Boesak is a Black South African theologian who wrote a number of powerful essays in the 70s and 80s when his country was still under the unjust laws of apartheid. In one of his essays confronting the sins of racism (Black and Reformed 102-103), he said that we must acknowledge racism is not an individual sin alone but also a social one.

First, he said, racism is a sinful ideology of racial domination that incorporates beliefs into systems to justify unequal treatment of particular groups.

Second, it is the consequence of sinful historic cultural, economic, political, and psychological practices that we have inherited.

Finally, it is a sin in theological beliefs that is used in social systems to deny the image of God and the unity of all humankind.

I think we could take Boesak’s description of racism here and apply it to all forms of social misery, whether its economic injustices, immigration, misogyny, you name it.

I know many of us in this room are burdened by the miseries of our society. We want to know what we can do about it. I’m with you. This is why you should come to our evening with Malcolm Foley. We are going to be a church that confronts sinful social realities.

But before we do anything else, God says to us, you need to confess. You can’t just point fingers at everyone else. You’re not exempt. You’re complicit. Don’t be self-deceived. You need to acknowledge the part you play in the misery in our society.

Jesus is faithful to forgive us of our sin.

The assumption of this passage is that you and I are sinners. You see that clearly in verses 8 and 10. If we say we have not sinned, we’re deceived. We’re saying that God is a liar. We’re living opposed to God in darkness.

Three times, in verse 6, 8, and 10, John draws out ways that we can deceive ourselves by minimizing sin. Notice these here. Each sentence starts off with, “If we say…” John was actually addressing real people in the community in the church who were minimizing sin. These were some of their arguments.

We can have a relationship with God and do whatever we want…

I’ve become sinless, I have no need for Jesus…

No, what you call sin, that’s not sin, that’s just your opinion, I’m good…

Don’t we still do this today? Of course we do. In his sermon on Psalm 8 at Purdue University in 1958, Dr. King described our problem in this way:

As we look at man, we must admit he has misused his freedom. Man is a sinner in need of God’s divine grace. So often we try to deny this fact. We hate to face it. We have explained his shortcomings in terms of errors or lags of nature. We have sometimes felt that progress was inevitable, and that man was gradually evolving into a higher state of perfection. But if we are honest and realistic, we must admit that it isn’t like that, for man is a sinner. We take the new depth of psychology, and misuse it to explain our bad deeds. We find ourselves saying that they are due to phobias, to inner conflicts.

But when we look at ourselves hard enough we come to see that the conflict is between God and man.

What was he saying? We’ll look for all kinds of ways to describe our problems, but we never want to call it sin. We use psychological language. We hope for the best. We say we’re educating ourselves away from sin.

Maybe we don’t recognize our thoughts and behavior as sin. Maybe we don’t see the harm or the offense we’ve caused.

Maybe we won’t confess our sin because we’re doing avoiding responsibility.

But I think most of the time, the reason we don’t want to be honest about sin, is because we’re afraid. What’s going to happen if I’m honest? How will other people think of me? How will God think of me?

Remember what I said earlier: God doesn’t name our sin to crush us, but because he wants us to be with him in the light. In our Call to Worship from Mark 2, we saw how Jesus was accused for being friends with sinners. He ate with them. He hugged them. He enjoyed them.

Because he loved them. And he loves us.

That’s why we have this promise in verse 9. When we confess our sins, Jesus is faithful and just and will forgive us and cleanse us of our sin.

Maybe you hear that and think, that sounds good, but how do I know? How do I know he’ll make good on his word?

Chapter 2 verse 2, Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He laid down his life as a guarantee of the promise. He entered into our darkness, and took our sins upon himself, so that by faith in him, we would be healed.

This church is a safe place to confess. I say that with full confidence. We’re not perfect, but I know the people who call this church home, we’re stumbling toward Jesus together. We’re trusting his promises. We’re believing he is good. We know it is better to confess our sin and bring them into the light, where he is. We don’t want to hide in darkness.

Listen, if you want to make that step tonight and put your faith in Jesus, if you want to come out of the darkness and enter the light, then please, come forward tonight so we can pray that for you. You’re safe here. There’s no shame.

If you have something on your chest