What Ever Happened to Sin?
G.K. Chesterson once said the doctrine of original sin was the one belief that empirically validated by 3500 years of human history. But the doctrine of sin has fallen on hard times lately. Not because we have bettered ourselves, nor even because we have denied it, but because we have given it another name besides “sin!”
If you doubt, read your newspaper.
A man from Boston was acquitted fo flying illegal drugs into the United States because he suffered from “action addict syndrome,” and emotional imbalance that makes a man crave dangerous adventure.
A mob of young men in Miami robbed, beat, then shot to death a middle-aged man as he stopped for an accident in their neighbourhood. Witnesses say the robbery of twenty-seven dollars from the victim’s pocket was a secondary motive. The real culprit? “Young men in the neighbourhood have too many guns and too much time on their hands,” said the Associated Press in 1994.
This past fall, a man walks into an Amish community school and murders five school girls, some in execution fashion. In his suicide note to his wife, he talked about molesting two little girls twenty years earlier, and dreamt of doing it again.
Whatever became of sin? In his book with the same title, Karl Messinger asked the question. This is what he said in his book.
“[Sin] was once a wordon everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin involved in all our troubles - sin with an “I” in the middle? Is no one any longer guilty of any thing? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired and atoned for?... Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?”
What Is Sin?
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Romans 3:23
There are about twenty words in the Bible for “sin” The most popular is hamartia, “to miss the mark.” But in the Greek context is everything. “Missing the mark” is not merely an innocent blunder or a poor shot. It is something worse.
Sin is a problem of the will and desire. We are known by our actions, and defined by our nature. Jesus taught in Mark 7:21-23 that people do sinful things because they are tainted.
For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ’unclean.’
Mark 7:21-23
R.C. Sproul put it this way: “We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.” The heart or mind of a person is already polluted with something that is opposed to the authority of God or the idea of surrender - something that sets itself up against the life of purity and discipline. This what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” (Romans 8:5)
Dogs bark. Birds fly. Bees sting. Sinners sin. Each one is done for the same reason: it is their nature to do so.
So sin, real sin, is not the committing of murder, theft or adultery. It is the evil desire behind the act. It is the desire to live outside of God’s presence and on our own; to put ourselves first; to make our own decisions. Isn’t that the trap that snared Adam and Eve? The act of eating the fruit did not bring sin into this world. They placed their own beliefs above the word of God.
When the will is changed, however, the power of sin is broken. This is the miracle of conversion. To find a change, true repentance must take place.
This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation…”
(Isaiah 30:15)
Repentance is more than an admission of guilt. It is a well-aimed missile into the heart of the sinful nature.
It is neither sorrow without change, nor change without sorrow. It is sorrow with intent to change.
True repentance is not the first step toward salvation. It is salvation! In the Old Testament, “repentance,” or nacham, is associated with both emotion and resolve. In the New Testament, “repentance” (metanoia) is used to describe the changing of one’s mind.
In true repentance, the seeker changes his mind, not only about God but about himself and his sin. This involves not only turning away from sin, but a turning toward God in humility and conviction. Mark 1:15 puts it all in a very simple little nutshell, "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15) Early Christians expected more from their repentance... and got it.
Now is a pretty good time to determine what is exactly meant by the call in Matthew Gospel to “repent... [and] produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3-2,8).
1. True repentance is motivated by inner conviction. False repentance is motivated by outer pressure.
There are some who seem ready to repent as a way to fix their troubled lives, yet too often they grieve only the sins of the present crisis, and no more. So, when the pressure is off, the repentance is over. This is not true repentance. It is crisis management.
Others simply want to avoid hell, so they surrender any sins they believe will send them there. This is not true repentance either. It is death insurance.
But there is a kind of repentance that heads to the temple, or altar, and cries, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13). It is motivated by the conviction that one has offended the holy God and is willing to do anything to reconcile. His, or her audience is in heaven. He is not thinking of anything else.
2. True repentance abhors sin. False repentance minimizes sin.
False repentance glosses over sins, or excuses them, or may even call it something else. People who have such shallow experiences do not hate sin itself, only the grief or inconvience is causes.
True repentance is to change our minds about many things, beginning with our love for sin itself. We regret the past. We do not believe that sin was fun while it lasted. This does not mean that we will never sin again. It only means the “want-to” has been changed, and the good I want to do will be “the good I want to do,” and the evil I resist will be “the evil I do not want to do” (Romans 7:19).
3. True repentance accepts the consequences. False repentance seeks to avoid them.
There are many today who confess the crime but resist the consequence - as though confession suspends what sow. False repentance minimizes the consequences and usually underestimates the agony and the time necessary to heal. It wants to forget and move on.
Interestingly, even after Jonah preached and the Ninevites repented, they still did not presume upon the forgiveness of God. “Who knows?” said their king when he commanded his subjects to repent. “God may yet relent and... turn from His fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:9) The implication here, of course, is that God may not turn from His anger and forgive them. But even this grim prospect does not deter them from repenting.
4. True repentance is changed behaviour. False repentance is cyclical confession.
There is an important distinction between “you’re right” and “I’m wrong.” The first is only a confession. In confessing our sins, we are telling God that He was right all along. That doesn’t change you. True repentance is shown by a life that is lived in opposite to the former.
5. True repentance begs forgiveness. False repentance promises to do better.
True repentance is about forgiveness and restoration, first with God - whose laws alone we have broken - and then with any others we may have offended. It is not acknowledging only our sin, but also our helplessness to do anything about it. Wesley wrote, “We cannot cast away all confidence in His, until we are delivered [through repentance] from trusting in anything we can do, we cannot thoroughly trust in what He has done and suffered.”
6. True repentance is a habit. False repentance is a debut.
“The individual who truly repents,” wrote Finney, “does not close his eyes to the tendencies of sin.” The search for sin in our lives has only begun the day we are converted. And each time we find it, we repent of it, and the process continues. Those growing in holiness will tell you that perpetual self-examination plays as big a part in their daily walk as it did in their initial conversion.
The deceived stop searching for their sin the moment they believe they are forgiven. To them, repentance is only the turnstile into heaven . This is evident from the reluctance of many Christians who confess anything they do as “sin.”
Conclusion
True repentance is not the hurry-up apology we pretend. It is a surgery. It hurts, but in a good way. Just like surgery, true repentance brings us closer to what really ails us. We realize that we are sick (sinful) people, and only the hands of the Master do the work that needs to be done.
A true joy in repentance is that our guilt is removed. It is guilt of the sin in our hearts that drives us to cry out to God, but there is a joy found in those when that guilt has been removed.
Lastly, the truest joy in true repentance is that is marks a new beginning. Our feet are placed on a new path, and we can walk in fellowship with God.
