Foundation - Sin and Grace

What’s so bad about sin?

Jesus had some pretty hard things to say about sin?

Matthew 5:29–30 NIV

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Matthew 18:8 NIV

If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.

Hyperbole…yes, yes - if only gouging out my eye would keep me from lusting and cutting off my hand would keep me from grabbing things that are not mine, whether that is lust or power or praise.

Jesus view of sin and my view are not the same. Jesus seems to think sin is worse than mutilation.

Check this out Matt 18:6

Matthew 18:6 NIV

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

If you have a choice between death and causing a child, or a younger person, to make wrong choices. Death is the better option.

Hyperbole, hyperbole - but isn’t if fair to say that Jesus wants us to take sin really seriously.

Jesus hung out with creeps, sum bags and sleazy people.

& those people loved him

People don’t love people who are judging them.

How is this possible?

Religious people hate sin but then they end up - making everyone around them miserable.

Three views of Sin

-Unicorn - Out dated concept that has been debunked -everything is relative.

School Teacher - list of rules to do and not do. No spit wads or running in the hall - at least don’t get caught.

Amusement Park - It’s where all the fun is to be had.

Jesus describes Sin in a lot of different ways, here are three rebuttals:

Sin as suicide - It’s like branch that cuts itself off from the vine in the name of freedom only to wither and die. Jesus said “I am the vine”…apart from me you can do nothing.

This is the heart of original sin. “I will find life on my own.”

Sin is betrayal - Sin is like saying to your father, “Dad I want my inheritance NOW!” And then leaving home.

The new testament scholar Kennith Bailey writes:

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same…the conversation runs as follows:

Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?

Never!

Could anyone ever make such a request?

Impossible!

If anyone ever did, what would happen?

His father would beat him, of course!

Why? The request means—he wants his father to die. Bailey explains that the son asks not only for the division of the inheritance, but also for the right to dispose of his part. “After signing over his possessions to his son, the father still has the right to live off the proceeds…as long as he is alive. Here the younger son gets, and thus is assumed to have demanded, disposition to which, even more explicitly, he has no right until the death of his father. The implication of ‘Father, I cannot wait for you to die’ underlies both requests.”

"I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found." Henri Nouwen

Sin is living in the dark

Jesus said I’m the light of the world. Life with God is walking in the light. Sin is choosing our own light - It’s not like we have our own light. We simply have a kind of memory of when their was light.

Its like running around a dark room that we once new where things were.

Sin is betrayal, - “So I betrayed you, what’s the big deal?”

Sin is oppression, “So I took advantage of you, what’s the big deal?”

Sin is rejection, “So I rejected you, what’s the big deal?”

Sin is abuse, “So I abused you, what’s the big deal?”

Sin is addiction, “So I can’t say no, and will give anything for my precious, what’s the big deal?”

Scripture teaches that sin is far more about breaking relationship then it is about breaking rules.

“I just want to do it my way!”