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Sin, cf. Hamartiology
Silt Destroyed the City
What happened to the great city of Ephesus? Often mentioned in the New Testament, it was one of the cultural and commercial centers of its day. Located at the mouth of the Cayster River, it was noted for its bustling harbors, its broad avenues, its gymnasiums, its baths, its huge amphitheater, and especially its magnificent Temple of Diana. What happened to bring about its gradual decline until its harbor was no longer crowded with ships and the city was no longer a flourishing metropolis?
Was it smitten by plagues, destroyed by enemies, or demolished by earthquakes? No, silt was the reason for its downfall—silent and non-violent silt. Over the years, fine sedimentary particles slowly filled up the harbor, separating the city from the economic life of the sea traders.
Little evil practices, little acts of disobedience may seem harmless. But let the silt of sin gradually accumulate, and we will find ourselves far from God. Life will become a spiritual ruin. In the book of Hebrews we are warned of the danger of “the deceitfulness of sin” (3:13). James said that the attractive pleasures of sin are really a mask covering death (1:15).
God forbid that we let the silt of sin accumulate in our lives! - VCG
Our Daily Bread, September 24, 1998
Thirty-one New Testament Descriptions of Sinful Mankind
1. Alienated from God (Eph. 4:18).
2. Blind (John 12:40; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 John 2:11).
3. Carnally or fleshly minded (Rom. 8:6, 13).
4. Corrupt (Matt. 7:17-18; 1 Tim. 6:5).
5. Darkened (Matt. 6:23; John 3:19; Rom. 1:21; Eph. 4:18; 1 John 1:6-7).
6. Dead in sin (John 5:24; Rom. 8:6; Col. 2:13; 1 Tim. 5:6; 1 John 3:14).
7. Deceived (Titus 3:3).
8. Defiled or filthy (Isa. 64:6; Titus 1:15; 2 Pet. 2:20; Rev. 22:11).
9. Destitute of truth (Rom 1:18, 25; 1 Tim. 6:5).
10. Disobedient (Matt. 7:23; Eph. 2:3; Titus 3:3).
11. An enemy of God (James 4:4).
12. Evil (Matt. 6:22; 12:33-34; John 3:20).
13. Foolish (Matt. 7:26; Eph. 5:15; Titus 3:3).
14. Going astray (1 Pet. 2:25).
15. Hateful (Titus 3:3).
16. Hypocritical (Matt. 6:2, 5, 16; 23:13, 28).
17. Impenitent (Rom. 2:5; Heb. 3:8).
18. Malicious and envious (Titus 3:3).
19. Pleasure or world-loving (2 Thess. 2:12; 1 Tim. 5:6; 2 Tim. 3:4; Titus 3:3; 1 John 2:15).
20. Proud (Rom. 1:30; 1 Tim. 6:4; 2 Tim. 3:4; James 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5).
21. Refusing belief (John 3:35; Titus 1:15).
22. Rejecting truth (2 Tim. 4:4).
23. Resisting God (Acts 7:51).
24. Guided by Satan (John 8:44; Eph. 2:3).
25. Lovers of self (2 Tim. 3:2).
26. Self-satisfied (Rev. 3:17).
27. A slave of sin (John 3:34; Rom. 6:16-17, 20; Titus 3:3).
28. Subordinating God (Rom. 1:25).
29. Unconscious of bondage (John 8:33; Rom. 7:7).
30. Unrighteous (1 Cor. 6:9; Rev. 22:11).
31. Vain in their imaginations (Rom. 1:21).
J. L. Meredith, Meredith’s Big Book of Bible Lists, (Inspirational Press, NY; 1980), pp. 457-458
What Is Sin?
Sin is anything that is contrary to the law or will of God. For example: if you lie, you have sinned. Why? Because God has said not to lie (Ex. 20:16). If you do what God has forbidden, then you have sinned. In addition, if you do not do what God has commanded, you sin (James 4:17). Either way, the result is eternal separation from God (Is. 59:2). Sin is lawlessness (1 John 1:3) and unrighteousness (1 John 5:17). Sin leads to blindness (John 9:41) and death (Rom. 6:23).
Paul, in the book of Romans, discusses sin. He shows that everyone, both Jew and Greek, is under sin (Rom. 3:9). He shows that sin is not simply something that is done, but a condition of the heart (Rom. 3:3:10-12). In Ephesians Paul says that we are “by nature children of wrath” (Rom. 2:3). Yet, “while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).
The power of sin is centrifugal. When at work in a human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery. Bits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left. Eventually bits and pieces of the core itself go flying off until in the end nothing at all is left. “The wages of sin is death” is St. Paul’s way of saying the same thing.
Other people and (if you happen to believe in him) God or (if you happen not to) the World, Society, Nature—whatever you call the greater whole of which you’re part—sin is whatever you do, or fail to do, that pushes them away, that widens the gap between you and them and also the gaps within your self.
For example, the sin of the Pharisee is not just (a) his holier-than-thou attitude which pushes other people away, but (b) his secret suspicion that his own holiness is deficient too, which pushes part of himself away, and (c) his possibly not-so-subconscious feeling that anybody who expects him to be all that holy must be a cosmic SOB, which pushes Guess Who away.
Sex is sinful to the degree that, instead of drawing you closer to another human being in his humanness, it unites bodies but leaves the lives inside them hungrier and more alone than before.
Religion and unreligion are both sinful to the degree that they widen the gap between you and the people who don’t share your views.
The word charity illustrates the insidiousness of sin. From meaning a free and loving gift it has come to mean a demeaning handout.
“Original Sin” means we all originate out of a sinful world which taints us from the word go. We all tend to make ourselves the center of the universe, pushing away centrifugally from the center everything that seems to impede its freewheeling. More even than hunger, poverty, or disease, it is what Jesus said he came to save the world from.
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, A Theological ABC, (Harper, San Francisco, A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1973), pp. 88-89
Our Sinful Nature Always Has the Potential to Erupt
Scores of people lost their lives. The world’s mightiest army was forced to abandon a strategic base, property damage approached a billion dollars. All because the sleeping giant, Mount Pinatube in the Philippines, roared back to life after 600 years of quiet slumber.
When asked to account for the incredible destruction, caused by this volcano, a research scientist from the Philippine department of volcanology observed, “When a volcano is silent for many years, our people forget that it’s a volcano and begin to treat it like a mountain.
Like Mount Pinatube, our sinful nature always has the potential to erupt, bringing great harm both to ourselves and to others. The biggest mistake we can make is to ignore the volcano and move back onto what seems like a dormant “mountain.”
Stephen Schertzinger, Seattle, Washington, quoted in Leadership, Summer Quarter, p. 47
Washing Your Hand
If you don’t wash your hands, you’re threatening your own health as well as the health of others, especially if you’re involved in handling food, at work or at home. More than forty million people get sick every year from hand-carried bacteria, say health experts. Washing your hands is the simplest but most important thing you can do to control the spread of infectious diseases.
A new device that costs three thousand dollars had been devised to check restaurant employees to make sure they wash their hands after visiting the washroom. Keeping clean is expensive, but spreading germs costs even more. It’s good to pray “Wash me” (Ps. 51:2, 7), but don’t forget that God expects us to wash ourselves (Isa. 1:16; 2 Cor. 7:1).
Prokope,’ Vol. 1, No. 4, October-December, 1997, p. 4
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Guidelines
Los Angeles Times (editorial by Margaret A. Hagen): If ever the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it will be paved diagnosis by diagnosis with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s new guidelines forbidding employment discrimination and mandating employer accommodation of mental disabilities.
The American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual lists 374 mental disorders that are potentially deserving of accommodation by employers under the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
The office worker who suffers from Tourette’s disorder, for example, must be allowed an adjustment in his or her working conditions that takes account of the uncontrollable urge to snarl and shout out obscenities.
The depressive who is groggy in the morning from medication is not asked to rise earlier in order to be fully awake for the job because the EEOC has specified that it is the employer who is required to accommodate the sleepiness.
Even where the disabled worker suffers from “intermittent explosive disorder”—repeated “episodes of failure to resist aggressive impulses that result in serious acts or destruction of property”—the workplace must accommodate him.
As a number of experts have noted, the new guidelines in many respects amount to a license to behave badly; Lateness, absenteeism, slovenliness, carelessness or rudeness must be accommodated if these behaviors are linked to a psychological condition.
But the category of disorder that most boggles the mind as necessitating employer accommodation rather than employee behavioral adjustment is that of the personality disorders, especially “antisocial personality disorder.” Persons with this affliction used to be known as sociopaths.
According to the psychiatric diagnostic manual, this distressing disorder is characterized by “repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest...repeated lying, use of aliases or conning others for personal profit or pleasure...irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults, reckless disregard for safety of self or others, consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations.”
It is impossible to imagine the range of accommodations necessary to turn such a person into a productive worker who will not be dangerous to the life or well-being of fellow employees, employers or the business itself.
Only people who work in the insulated world of civil service could possibly have perpetrated such a hideous suspension of common sense as employer accommodation to sociopathy.
Only psychological professionals whose bread and butter is provided by the proliferation of so-called mental disorders could possibly conceptualize such behavior as manifestation of illness, to be accommodated on a par with arthritis, say, or cancer.
Only a society that has completely and comprehensively medicalized the concept of bad behavior could possibly entertain the idea that it is the employer’s job to allow for the remorseless lying, stealing, aggressive sociopath.
Congress sensibly has exempted from the EEOC rules those persons diagnosed with the “disorders” of kleptomania, pyromania and compulsive gambling, as well as many of the sexual disorders such as pedophilia, and those of alcohol and drug abuse.
Congress should extend this rational approach to the rest of the mental diagnostic manual.
Let disorders be introduced one by one and defended by mental health professionals as genuinely biologically determined before requiring any employer to change the conditions of the job or the workplace to accommodate them.
Reasonable accommodation to and mindless discrimination has become mindless accommodation to irresponsible behavior.
Source unknown
Brought Down By a Tiny Insect
It was reported recently that an enormous pine tree in the mountains of Colorado had fallen victim to a pine beetle and died. According to locals, up to that point the tree was thought to be indestructible. It had survived fourteen lightning strikes and many years of Colorado winters, including avalanches and fires. But it was eventually brought down from within by a tiny insect that did its work silently.
Today in the Word, October 1997, p. 28
What Is Sin?
Anything that fails to conform to the law of God. Evil is a complex phenomenon in the Scriptures. The idea of sin is conveyed by a variety of expressions with meanings like missing the mark, rebelling, going astray, transgressing, stumbling, etc. Basically, “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), referring to an inward attitude as well as to the breaking of written commandments. All people commit sin (1 Kings 8:56; Rom. 3:23). To deny that we have sinned is to make God a liar (1 John 1:10); all his dealings with humanity are on the basis that we are sinners. But the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin (1 John 1:7).
The Shaw Pocket Bible Handbook, Walter A. Elwell, Editor, (Harold Shaw Publ., Wheaton , IL; 1984), p. 359
Evil Is Like a Wild Wolf
The 19th-century pastor Henry Ward Beecher told of a mother in the wild frontier country who was washing clothes beside a stream. Her only child was playing nearby. Suddenly she realized he was no longer near her. She called his name, but there was no answer. Alarmed, the mother ran to the house, but her son was not there. In wild distress, the frightened woman dashed out to the forest. There she found the child, but it was too late. The youngster had been killed by a wolf. Heartbroken, she picked up the lifeless body, drew it close to her heart, and tenderly carried it home. Beecher concluded, “Oh, how that mother hated wolves!” Understandably, she detested them because of what they had done to her beloved child.
Every Christian parent should feel that way about evil. Like a wild wolf, it can destroy children. Many mothers and fathers who are so careful to guard their youngsters from physical harm don’t notice the sinful forces that threaten the spiritual welfare of their boys and girls. As a result, they leave them unprotected. They show little concern for the friends their children make, the magazines they read, or the TV programs they watch. But if any of these influences are evil, they should be viewed as a deadly threat. Like the psalmist, we must determine, “I will not know wickedness” (Psalm 101:4). And we should protect our children from it.
The mother in Beecher’s story had good reason to hate wolves. And, as parents, we should hate evil with that same passion. - R.W.D.
Our Daily Bread, July 23
Blacksmith Made a Chain
The following story was often told by Charles Haddon Spurgeon: “A cruel king called one of his subjects into his presence and asked him his occupation. The man responded, I’m a blacksmith.’ The ruler then ordered him to go and make a chain of a certain length.
“The man obeyed, returning after several months to show it to the monarch. Instead of receiving praise for what he had done, however, he was instructed to make the chain twice as long.
“When that assignment was completed, the blacksmith presented his work to the king, but again was commanded, ‘Go back and double its length!’ This procedure was repeated several times. At last the wicked tyrant directed the man to be bound in the chains of his own making and cast into a fiery furnace.”
Like that cruel king, sin exacts from its servants a dreadful price: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). But the good news is the last part of that verse: “The gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” If you are not a Christian, consider the consequence of your sin. Then “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). - RWD
Our Daily Bread, December 28, 1996
Sin
Sin will take you farther than you ever thought you’d stray
Sin will leave you so lost, you think you’ll never find your way
Sin will keep you longer than you ever thought you’d stay
Sin will cost you more than you ever thought you’d pay
Source unknown
Hatred of Sin
Holy Lord God! I love Thy truth,
Nor dare Thy least commandment slight;
Yet pierced by sin, the serpent’s tooth,
I mourn the anguish of the bite.
But though the poison lurks within,
Hope bids me still with patience wait;
Till death shall set me free from sin,
Free from the only thing I hate.
Had I a throne above the rest,
Where angels and archangels dwell,
One sin, unslain, within my breast,
Would make that heaven as dark as hell.
The prisoner sent to breathe fresh air,
And blest with liberty again,
Would mourn were he condemn’d to wear
One link of all his former chain.
But, oh! no foe invades the bliss,
When glory crowns the Christian’s head;
One view of Jesus as He is
Will strike all sin for ever dead.
Olney Hymns, William Cowper, from Cowper’s Poems, Sheldon & Company, New York.
Crime and Human Nature
In the 1950s a psychologist, Stanton Samenow, and a psychiatrist, Samuel Yochelson, sharing the conventional wisdom that crime is caused by environment, set out to prove their point. They began a 17-year study involving thousands of hours of clinical testing of 250 inmates here in the District of Columbia. To their astonishment, they discovered that the cause of crime cannot be traced to environment, poverty, or oppression. Instead, crime is the result of individuals making, as they put it, wrong moral choices. In their 1977 work The Criminal Personality, they concluded that the answer to crime is a “conversion of the wrong-doer to a more responsible lifestyle.” In 1987, Harvard professors James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein came to similar conclusions in their book Crime and Human Nature. They determined that the cause of crime is a jack of proper moral training among young people during the morally formative years, particularly ages one to six.
Christianity Today, August 16, 1993, p. 30
Defining Deviancy Down
U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recently published a disturbing essay entitled “Defining Deviancy Down.” In the Nov. 22 issue of The New Republic, Commentator Charles Krauthammer writes that “Moynihan’s powerful point is that with the moral deregulation of the 1960s, we have had an explosion of deviancy in family life, criminal behavior and public displays of psychosis. And we have dealt with it in the only way possible: by redefining deviancy down so as to explain away and make ‘normal’ what a more civilized, ordered and healthy society long ago would have labeled—and long ago did label—deviant.” Christian Research Institute letter, December 6, 1993
Source unknown
Quotes
- Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in us. All these good things, and all our security, are rightly found only and completely in him. - Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine
- Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil,” it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil. - Sidney J. Harris
- This was how Susannah Wesley defined “sin” to her young son, John Wesley: “If you would judge of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of pleasure, then take this simple rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, and takes off the relish of spiritual things—that to you is sin.” - Resource, July/August, 1990.
- “Ah! If our likeness to God does not show itself in trifles, what is there left for it to show itself in? For our lives are all made up of trifles. The great things come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones every time the clock ticks.” - Alexander Maclaren
- No one knows the one-hundredth part of the sin that clings to his soul. - John Calvin
- According to sociologist Robert Bellah, “One of our current psychological gurus says that 98 percent of Americans are dysfunctional. No doubt he is right. He has just discovered original sin, though he is mistaken if he things 2 percent are without.” - Our Daily Bread, April 19, 1995.
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Areas of Greatest Challenge
A recent survey of Discipleship Journal readers ranked areas of greatest spiritual challenge to them:
Survey respondents noted temptations were more potent when they had neglected their time with God (81 percent) and when they were physically tired (57 percent). Resisting temptation was accomplished by prayer (84 percent), avoiding compromising situations (76 percent), Bible study (66 percent), and being accountable to someone (52 percent).
Discipleship Journal, 11-12/92
Put In Prison He Built
Not long after a wealthy contractor had finished building the Tombs prison in New York, he was found guilty of forgery and sentenced to several years in the prison he had built! As he was escorted into a cell of his own making, the contractor said, “I never dreamed when I built this prison that I would be an inmate one day.”
Today in the Word, July 12, 1993
Poisonous Mushrooms
There are a thousand or more varieties of mushrooms that are good to eat....The most dreaded of the poisonous mushrooms are two members of the Amanita group. One is the death cup, and the other is the fly amanita. The death cup grows in the woods from June until fall. Its poison acts like the venom of a rattlesnake, as it separates the corpuscles in the blood from the serum. No antidote is known for the poison of the death cup. The only hope for anyone who has eaten it is to clean out his stomach promptly with a stomach pump. It is small wonder that one variety is known as the destroying angel. The death cup has often been mistaken for the common mushroom. A person should not make this mistake if he observes carefully. The poisonous plant has white gills, white spores, and the fatal poison cup around the stem. The plant that is safe to eat has pink gills, brown spores, and no cup. Many of the mistakes come from picking it in the button stage, for it does not show all these differences until it has grown larger.
Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, 1991, Multnomah Press, pp. 17-18
Prevention vs. Intervention
Do we help people only after they’ve sinned, or seek to prevent that sin in the first place?
The Stress Myth, p. 11
Resources
- Definition of, Whatever Became of Sin, K. Menninger, p. 18
- Between Two Truths, Klyne Snodgrass, Zondervan, 1990, p.41
- Wake Up Calls, Ron Hutchcraft, Moody, 1990, p.96
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Sin Comes When…
Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were the most important goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs. And that sin is magnified when, for these lesser goals, we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals. So when we ask ourselves why, in a given situation, we committed a sin, the answer is usually one of two things. Either we wanted to obtain something we didn’t have, or we feared losing something we had.
Augustine in The Confessions of St. Augustine (Christian Classics in Modern English), Reflections, November 23, 1992, p. 41
Black Tuesday
October 7, 1969 the Montreal, Canada police force went on strike. Because of what resulted, the day has been called Black Tuesday. A burglar and a policeman were slain. Forty-nine persons were wounded or injured in rioting. Nine bank holdups were committed, almost a tenth of the total number of holdups the previous year along with 17 robberies at gunpoint. Usually disciplined, peaceful citizens joined the riffraff and went wild, smashing some 1,000 plate glass windows in a stretch of 21 business blocks in the heart of the city, hauling away stereo units, radios, TVs and wearing apparel. While looters stripped windows of valuable merchandise, professional burglars entered stores by doors and made off with truckloads of goods. A smartly dressed man scampered down a street with a fur coat over each arm with no police around, anarchy took over.
Source unknown
Parable of the Chain
Mr. Spurgeon once made a parable. He said, “There was once a tyrant who summoned one of his subjects into his presence, and ordered him to make a chain. The poor blacksmith—that was his occupation—had to go to work and forge the chain. When it was done, he brought it into the presence of the tyrant, and was ordered to take it away and make it twice the length. He brought it again to the tyrant, and again he was ordered to double it. Back he came when he had obeyed the order, and the tyrant looked at it, and then commanded the servants to bind the man hand and foot with the chain he had made and cast him into prison. “That is what the devil does with men,” Mr. Spurgeon said. “He makes them forge their own chain, and then binds them hand and foot with it, and casts them into outer darkness.” My friends, that is just what drunkards, gamblers, blasphemers—that is just what every sinner is doing. But thank God, we can tell them of a deliverer. The Son of God has power to break every one of their fetters if they will only come to Him.
Moody’s Anecdotes, pp. 48-49
Why Would Christians Choose To Sin?
Why would Christians choose to sin rather than choose what they know God wants them to do? Four answers are commonly given today.
1. Some would point to Romans 8:16 and explain that Christians who willfully sin have forgotten their true identity as “children of God.” While it is true that Christians can forget who they are and sin as a result, Christians can also be well aware of who they are and sin anyway.
2. Some say Christians choose to sin because they have lost sight of what God has done for them. 2 Peter 1:9 indicates that Christians can be “blind or short-sighted, having forgotten [their] purification from [their] former sins.”
3. Some wisely state that Christians consciously choose to sin because they have forgotten that God will severely discipline disobedient believers.
4. Some have said that Christians who consciously sin have lost their focus on the future. These Christians have forgotten that God will reward in heaven only those who have lived faithfully for Him here on earth (1 Cor 9:24). Christians who fail to keep eternity in mind often sin in the here and now. Why Christians Sin, J. Kirk Johnston, Discovery House, 1992, p. 31
Source unknown
Our Guilt
“Our guilt is great because our sins are exceedingly numerous. It is not merely outward acts of unkindness and dishonesty with which we are chargeable. Our habitual and characteristic state of mind is evil in the sight of God. “Our pride and indifference to His will and to the welfare of others and our loving the creature more than the Creator are continuous violations of His holy law. We have never been or done what that law requires us to be and to do. We have never had delight in that fixed purpose to do the will and promote the glory of God. We are always sinners; we are at all times and under all circumstances in opposition to God. “If we have never loved Him supremely, if we have never made it our purpose to do His will, if we have never made His glory the end of our actions, then our lives have been an unbroken series of transgressions. Our sins are not to be numbered by the conscious violations of duty; they are as numerous as the moments of our existence.”
Charles Hodge
Sin
Sin is a blasting presence, and every fine power shrinks and withers in the destructive heat. Every spiritual delicacy succumbs to its malignant touch...Sin impairs the sight, and works toward blindness. Sin benumbs the hearing and tends to make men deaf. Sin perverts the taste, causing men to confound the sweet with the bitter, and the bitter with the sweet. Sin hardens the touch, and eventually renders a man “past feeling.” All these are Scriptural analogies, and their common significance appears to be this—sin blocks and chokes the fine senses of the spirit; by sin we are desensitized, rendered imperceptive, and the range of our correspondence is diminished. Sin creates callosity. It hoofs the spirit, and so reduces the area of our exposure to pain.
John Henry Jowett in The Grace Awakening, C. Swindoll, Word, 1990, pp. 140-41
Drugs
Few college football coaches have made a point against drugs as effectively as Erk Russell of Georgia Southern College. He arranged for a couple of good ol’ country boys to burst into a routine team meeting and throw a writhing, hissing, six-foot-long rattlesnake onto a table in front of the squad. “Everyone screamed and scattered,” Russell recalls. “I told them, ‘When cocaine comes into a room, you’re not nearly as apt to leave as when that rattlesnake comes in. But they’ll both kill you!”
Source unknown
What is Sin?
- Man call is an accident,
God calls it abomination.
- Man calls it a defect,
God calls it a disease.
- Man calls it an error,
God calls it an enmity.
- Man calls it a liberty,
God calls it lawlessness.
- Man calls it a trifle,
God calls it a tragedy.
- Man calls it a mistake,
God calls it a madness.
- Man calls it a weakness,
God calls it willfulness.
Moody Monthly
Any Time We Break The Law Of God We Sin
First, sin is a failure to do what we are obligated to do. God as Creator has given us responsibilities for which He holds us accountable. If we fail to carry out these responsibilities, we incur a debt.
Next, sin is an expression of enmity, a violation of the personal relationship human beings are supposed to have with their Creator. When we sin against God we break that relationship. We express not love and devotion to Him but rather a kind of hostility that is serious and must be addressed.
Finally, the Presbyterian Westminster Shorter Catechism says that “sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” In modern English that means any time we break the law of God, we sin. If a crime has been committed, then we have to deal with penal sanctions. If a debt has been incurred, then we have to come to grips with what we all pecuniary sanctions.
Enmity has to do with personal relationships, and these need to be healed. If I steal $1000 from a man, I may not feel that I owe him anything, but I do. I may not feel that I have committed a crime, but I have. I may not feel that I’ve acted in a hostile fashion toward him, but he feels it. Whether I realize it or not, a bad situation exists, one that must be corrected or else I will suffer for it.
Tabletalk, June 9, 1990
Niagara Falls and the Birds
Dr. Ralph Sockman writes about an experience he had while standing on the edge of Niagara Falls one clear, cold March day. Wrapped in white winter garments, the falls glistened in the bright sun. As some birds swooped down to snatch a drink from the clear water, Sockman’s companion told how he had seen birds carried over the edge of the precipice. As they dipped down for a drink, tiny droplets of ice would form on their wings. As they returned for additional drinks more ice would weigh down their bodies until they couldn’t rise above the cascading waters. Flapping their wings, the birds would suddenly drop over the falls.
Today in the Word, October, 1990, p. 14
Time-Lapse Photography
Time-lapse photography compresses a series of events into one picture. Such a photo appeared in an issue of National Geographic. Taken from a Rocky Mountain peak during a heavy thunderstorm, the picture captured the brilliant lightning display that had taken place throughout the storm’s duration. The time-lapse technique created a fascinating, spaghetti-like web out of the individual bolts. In such a way, our sin presents itself before the eyes of God. Where we see only isolated or individual acts, God sees the overall web of our sinning. What may seem insignificant—even sporadic—to us and passes with hardly a notice creates a much more dramatic display from God’s panoramic viewpoint. The psalmist was right when he wrote, “Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Keep back your servant from presumptuous sins” (Ps. 19:12-13).
Source unknown
Nibbling Their Way to Lostness
Mike Yaconelli wrote in the Wittenburg Door:
“I live in a small, rural community. There are lots of cattle ranches around here, and, every once in a while, a cow wanders off and gets lost . . . Ask a rancher how a cow gets lost, and chances are he will reply, ‘Well, the cow starts nibbling on a tuft of green grass, and when it finishes, it looks ahead to the next tuft of green grass and starts nibbling on that one, and then it nibbles on a tuft of grass right next to a hole in the fence. It then sees another tuft of green grass on the other side of the fence, so it nibbles on that one and then goes on to the next tuft. The next thing you know, the cow has nibbled itself into being lost.’
“Americans are in the process of nibbling their way to lostness. . . We keep moving from one tuft of activity to another, never noticing how far we have gone from home or how far away from the truth we have managed to end up.”
Mike Yaconelli,The Wittenburg Door
No Tresspassing!
- STOP. I know you’re thinking about crossing this gate. What you should know is that if the Coyotes, Cactus, Mesquite, Heat, Dust or Rattlers don’t get you, I will.
No Trespassing sign seen in west Texas, with rancher’s name signed in blood red paint at bottom.
Parable of Snake and Mouse
A man purchased a white mouse to use as food for his pet snake. He dropped the unsuspecting mouse into the snake’s glass cage, where the snake was sleeping in a bed of sawdust. The tiny mouse had a serious problem on his hands. At any moment he could be swallowed alive. Obviously, the mouse needed to come up with a brilliant plan.
What did the terrified creature do? He quickly set up work covering the snake with sawdust chips until it was completely buried. With that, the mouse apparently thought he had solved his problem.
The solution, however, came from outside. The man took pity on the silly little mouse and removed him from the cage. No matter how hard we try to cover or deny our sinful nature, it’s fool’s work. Sin will eventually awake from sleep and shake off its cover. Were it not for the saving grace of the Master’s hand, sin would eat us alive.
Source unknown
We Are Always Sinners
Our guilt is great because our sins are exceedingly numerous. It is not merely outward acts of unkindness and dishonesty with which we are chargeable. Our habitual and characteristic state of mind is evil in the sight of God. Our pride and indifference to His will and to the welfare of others and our loving the creature more than the Creator are continuous violations of His holy law. We have never been or done what that law requires us to be and to do. We have never had delight in that fixed purpose to do the will and promote the glory of God. We are always sinners; we are at all times and under all circumstances in opposition to God. If we have never loved Him supremely, if we have never made it our purpose to do His will, if we have never made His glory the end of our actions, then our lives have been an unbroken series of transgressions. Our sins are not to be numbered by the conscious violations of duty; they are as numerous as the moments of our existence.
Charles Hodge
We Never See Sin Aright Until We See It As Against God
W. S. Plumer said, “We never see sin aright until we see it as against God...All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught...Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul and Judas each said, ‘I have sinned’; but the returning prodigal said, ‘I have sinned against heaven and before thee’; and David said, ‘Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.’”
Quoted in The Pursuit of Holiness, J. Bridges, p. 20, cf. Gen. 39:9
Sin Is Like an Alcoholic With a Drink
There is something terribly right about...realizing that our struggle with sin is in many ways similar to an alcoholic’s struggle with drinking. It’s never over. How often I find myself talking about sin in the past tense as if being a sinner is something I’m beyond—a page turned in the book of my life. But sin is like alcoholism. Sinners are never cured; they simply decide to stop sinning...and it’s a daily decision.
John Fischer in Contemporary Christian Music, September, 1987
Hating Sin in Our Lives
For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. . . In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. . . But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is in anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Resource
- Loving God, Colson, p. 103
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Weeds
It’s like a World Series of weeds, a Hula Bowl of herbicides, with agriculture students from U.S. and Canadian universities competing to identify problems in farm fields. This year, Iowa State took top honors in the Collegiate Weed Science Contest, which tests students’ abilities to identify weeds and the right chemical to kill them and diagnose herbicide failure. “They need to be able to recognize weeds when they are tiny,” said James Worthington of Western Kentucky University, president of the North Central Weed Science Society. “When they get big enough that anybody can recognize them, it’s too late to do anything about them.”
Spokesman Review, July 27, 1989, p. A9
Do You Feel the Weight of Your Sins?
Peradventure some sinner will say, “perceive nor feel any weight in myself, do I ever so many sins.” To whom we answer that if a dog having a great stone bound about his neck is cast down from a high tower, he feels no weight of that stone as long as he is falling down, but when he is once fallen to the ground he is burst all to pieces by the reason of that weight.
From a sermon preached by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (ca. 1508), quoted in Christianity Today
Cocaine and Heroin
When John Belushi died in the spring of 1983 of an overdose of cocaine and heroin, a variety of articles appeared, including one in U.S. News And World Report, on the seductive dangers of cocaine:
“It can do you no harm and it can drive you insane; it can give you status in society and it can wreck your career; it can make you the life of the party and it can turn you into a loner; it can be an elixir for high living and a potion for death.”
Like all sin, there’s a difference between the appearance and the reality, between the momentary feeling and the lasting effect.
Daniel Hans
Augustine’s Stages with Sin
1. Lord make me good, but not yet.
2. Lord make me good, but not entirely.
3. Lord make me good.
Source unknown
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