Here’s a fun topic… sin!

OK maybe not, but it is interesting. At least for a pastor it is an interesting topic. What exactly is sin? I suppose you could conduct a survey and get answers from people to define sin. However, it is not our description of sin that matters. What matters is how God views sin.

Now if you go searching in your Bible for sin, you will find a lot of references. There are 966 references to sin in the version I use. Unfortunately, 99.9% of them do not give a definition of sin. Sure, we see actions labeled as sin, but that doesn’t get to the core of what it actually is.

After searching from the book of Genesis forward, the first clear definition of sin is found in the book of Romans. “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Romans 14:23

Faith is the free gift of trust in Jesus from God. When we have faith, we have the ability to trust God with our lives including our thoughts and actions. With that as an understand of what faith is, Paul tells us that anything we do that doesn’t rely on faith is sin because it does not rely on God.

Some of this is complicated by the fact that we can’t see into people’s hearts. In other words, we can’t judge motivations because we cannot see motivations. Sin is an internal problem that can (but not always) manifest in the external world. What makes matters worse is that some people do bad things “in faith.” They may be totally misguided, but the act was committed with “good intentions.”

Clearly, sin is a murky matter.

That makes me wonder, what does Martin Luther think after all he is pretty smart and a Lutheran!

Dr. Cynthia Jurisson a Lutheran Scholar from the University of Chicago wrote this about Martin Luther and sin…

“In Luther’s view, sin is not so much a verb as a noun, not so much an activity as a state of being separated from God. This is one reason why Luther rejected the practice of indulgences. They were a waste of time and money because they didn’t address the real problem: humans live in sin, unable to bridge the chasm between us and God, unable to make full reparation to God and to others for our sins.

Only Christ, the Son of God, can bridge the chasm.

Luther’s definition of sin, as a state of being separated from God, functioned as one of the great democratizing principles not only of the Reformation, but of the early modern world. If sin is the great leveler of persons, then all persons exist—in the eyes of God—at the same level, whether pope, king or peasant.”

Not only do we sin, we exist under the cloud of sin. We can’t escape it on our own. Luther refers to this as “original sin” or the sin that has been present since the beginning of creation and passed down through humanity.

Where does this leave us? I am not sure there is any resolution here other than this: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23.

We all (and when the Bible says “all” it means the whole world) have a need for a God who is willing to bridge the gap between our sin and a relationship with God. More simply, the world needs Jesus.

The problem is that we let sin get in the way of sharing Jesus. That is totally weird and contradictory but it is true. We (sometimes) determine who is worthy and who is not, yet the Bible clearly lays out the fact that we all need Jesus because of our sin.

Furthermore, Jesus comes and dies on a cross to take sin out of the equation. Why then do we judge others because of “their sin” when Jesus Christ does not? The answer: sin.

Sin is a messy business that we cannot escape… any of us. That is why Jesus comes to us and forgives us. Let us also bring Jesus to everyone we meet and not let sin be a factor in deciding who is worthy. None of us are worthy.

God bless,
Pr. Ben