©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

03/7/04

The True Nature Of Sin

3/7/04 The True Nature of Sin

For the past several weeks

I have been sharing with you

a number of areas in my Christian life

that I see so differently now

than I did when I first entered the family of God.

I’ve been calling this series “My Life’s Greatest Surprises”.

And this week we come to a topic

that is closely linked to the one we looked at last week.

If you were here last week

you’ll remember we spent the morning

looking at the true nature of righteousness,

and this morning I want to spend a few minutes

talking about the true nature of sin.

But I want to begin with a little review and expansion of what we did last week.

I shared with you that I began my walk with my Lord as a legalist.

I liked lists.

I liked the idea of measuring righteousness and sin

on the basis of a list.

I was comfortable with an approach to righteousness

that was based upon my knowing the list,

and keeping the list,

and then declaring myself,

or even better, having my God declare me “righteous”

on the basis of my having kept the list.

The whole process fit my personality,

and it just seemed reasonable,

and logical,

and consistent with what I knew of my God at that time.

I mean, really,

wasn’t He the one who etched those commandments on that stone tablet

and gave the ultimate list to Moses

so that he could then pass it on to the rest of us?

Wasn’t He the one who filled page after page of the Old Testament

with detailed lists defining and describing everything from which animals could and could not be eaten

to what to do with a man

who’s ax head accidently flies off the handle and kills his neighbor?

As far as I could see,

me and my God were right in line with one another

when it came to this whole list/righteousness/sin thing.

I figured all I had to do

was to be diligent in refining my own list

in a way that was correct for my life with Christ in the culture in which I lived.

I knew there were some major differences

between the structure handed to the Jews in the Old Testament

and the one given to us as Christians.

For example, I learned early in the process

that the Sabbath Day rest that formed such a major part in the Old Testament law

was actually placed into the Jewish society by God

as a visual illustration of the kind of rest with God

that we would receive through Christ.

It was simply a picture of the Christian’s relationship with God through Christ.

And once we entered into the true rest through Christ

the picture was replaced by the living reality,

a reality in which every day of our lives literally became a Sabbath day of rest with God.

And just as we no longer needed to offer lambs at the alter for our sins

because the Lamb of God had been offered once for all,

so we no longer needed to hang onto the Sabbath day picture of rest

because we now lived constantly in the true eternal rest with God through Christ.

These things made sense to me,

and allowed me to remove a number of things from my list

that had been present on the lists of those who lived before the coming of Christ.

But still,

the list mentality prevailed within me

as I diligently sought to find the perfect list for me and my life with Christ here and now.

And, of course, this list perspective impacted both my understanding of righteousness

and my understanding of sin,

because obviously righteousness and sin

are the two sides of the same coin.

But then, as my involvement in the New Testament writings deepened,

and as I began to listen more carefully

to what the New Testament writers were really saying

I started to make some unsettling discoveries.

The simple truth is

that none of us who come to Christ

possess anything more than just a tiny glimpse

of what we have really entered into

when we enter into Christ.

We are like a homeless person on the street,

our stomach aching with hunger,

calling out to those who pass by

for just enough money to by a hamburger and a side of fries.

And then someone stops before us,

kneels down,

and hands us two pieces of paper.

One is a five dollar bill,

the other is a check for a hundred thousand dollars.

We grab the two pieces of paper,

cram the check in our pocket without even understanding what it is,

and then run down the street filled with joy

because we have enough money for a hamburger.

When we first come to our God

most of us are just seeking His forgiveness,

and maybe the hope of some sort of new start to life.

He certainly gives us the forgiveness and the new start we long for,

but He also brings with Him so much more,

in fact a great wealth that we know nothing about.

In truth, He literally recreates our entire being at the deepest possible level,

forming us into a new creation,

and then establishing us in an eternal love union with Himself

that is unlike anything we could ever have even imagined.

All true Christian growth

is not the process of seeking more from Christ,

or even of seeking more of Christ.

All true Christian growth

is the process of God revealing to us by His Spirit

those things we have already received from Him

at the time we entered His family.

Peter says it so well.

2PE 1:2-3 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

It’s past tense...

He has already granted to us everything we will ever need

for truly successful living

and godliness.

There is nothing He has withheld,

no trial basis,

no collection of special blessings bestowed only on those who meet some higher standard.

Paul says it just as simply.

2CO 3:5-6 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

He has already made us completely,

totally adequate as servants of the new agreement between God and man

given to us in Christ.

Our problem, of course,

is that we understand almost nothing about what we have entered into

and until our thinking is renewed through the truth

we spend most of our time and effort

frantically attempting to live out the religious caricatures of the real thing

that we brought with us into our walk with Christ.

I shared with you last week

the transition I went through in my understanding of the true nature of righteousness,

gradually becoming aware that it was not the fulfillment of a list,

but rather learning what it really meant to relate in love to my God,

to myself,

and to those around me.

That process began by my Lord giving me eyes to see

things I’d never seen before,

and hearing things

I’d never heard before.

JOH 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

Well, that one wasn’t too hard to handle

because at first I could just tack it onto my list.

And, of course, the concept of loving one another was vague enough

so that I didn’t have to trouble over it much.

But then it began to get a whole lot worse.

The writings of Paul were the hardest on me.

On one side he forced me to be brutally honest

about what my lists could and could not accomplish in my life.

COL 2:20-23 ¶ If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" ... in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

Loosely translated

that is Paul’s way of saying,

“Go ahead! Keep all the lists you want. It won’t change you on the inside,

and it will never give you the strength and freedom you long for

over the sin impulses imbedded in your flesh.”

And then, on the positive side,

he said things like,

GAL 5:14 For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

And then in Romans 13:8-10 he took the same concept and expanded it.

... he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

It took me years before I finally heard what God was actually saying in these passages,

but once I heard it

it absolutely revolutionized my understanding of righteousness.

Up to that point my focus had been totally on the lists,

the rules,

viewing the achievement of righteousness

in much the same way as I viewed a major test in school.

The great question with both of them was, “How many did I get right?

How many did I miss?

How does my score compare with others?

And, of course, did I pass?”

But when I finally really heard Paul’s words, “...he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law...”,

I suddenly realized that my whole life,

and certainly my whole Christian life I’d been asking the wrong questions,

and because I’d been asking the wrong questions,

of course I kept coming up with the wrong answers.

I’d been asking myself things like, “What things really belong on the list and which do not?”,

and things like, “Are all things on the list weighted equally,

or are some more critical than others?”

and things like, “Does God respond to this kind of a willful offense

in the same way as He responds to that offense?”

But once I finally heard what Paul was saying,

once I finally understood that he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law,

two huge changes took place within me.

First of all, I began to ask myself the correct question for the first time in my life.

The question to be asked was not, “What’s on the list, or which list is correct?”,

the question to be asked is always, only “How can I relate to this person in love?”

What does it mean for me to relate to those around me in love,

and how can I go about doing it?”

And the second huge change that took place within me

was the realization that

not only are the moral commandments of God not some arbitrary list of do’s and don’ts,

but they are actually God revealing to us

how we can communicate real love to another human being.

And the implications of what I was seeing were amazing.

The one thing we human beings hunger for more than anything else,

more than everything else is love -

strong, healthy, secure love relationships

with those God has placed in our world.

And then here is our God revealing to us

just exactly how those love relationships can be built.

He is giving us the most incredible insight into the true nature of successful living we could ever possess.

Our Lord tells us, COL 3:9 “Do not lie to one another...”.

He’s not simply dropping an arbitrary little fence into our lives called “lying”

and then telling us that He likes people who stay on this side of the fence,

and He doesn’t like those who stay on the other side.

He is telling us

that dishonesty is always destructive in human relationships,

and that the more honest we are with one another

the stronger our relationships will be,

and whenever we start thinking that a little deception will be best

we are deceiving ourselves and damaging the relationship.

Certainly there are many people in the world

who are not safe people,

people who cannot be trusted with information about ourselves or others,

and we must use discretion in what we share and who we share it with.

But even with those who cannot be trusted with information,

we don’t lie,

we simply limit what we share.

Repeatedly throughout His Word

our Lord warns us about sexual immorality.

When He does that

He is not setting up another arbitrary fence,

He is revealing to us crucial information

about the way in which sexual contact impacts our human relationships.

He wants us to know

that sex is a specially designed form of communication

created by Him specifically for a man and a woman within the context a lifetime marriage commitment.

In that context it’s a great part of life.

But whenever we attempt to bring sex into any other type of relationship

it will always be destructive in the lives of those involved.

And so it is with every other moral command given to us by our God.

Well, it was those two discoveries,

the discovery that the key question is not, “what’s the correct list?”,

but rather “How can I love those around me?”,

and then the discovery that the moral commandments of God

are the perfect blueprint for what it means to love another person

that lead me to those 10 statements I shared with you last week.

And, because I’m a firm believer in repetition being the key to learning,

let me share them with you once again.

1. Developing true righteousness is not a point we reach,

it is a process we enter into with Christ,

a process that never ends as long as we are on this earth.

2. Righteousness is not a list of things we do, it is a way we choose to relate to our God, to ourselves, and to others.

3. Righteousness is not the goal, it is only a means through which we discover the true nature of the love of God for us.

Growth in righteousness is not something He demands from us,

it is something He shares with us

so that through the process we can discover aspects of His love

that we could never have known any other way.

4. Righteousness is not an action, it is an attitude.

If God has been able to create a righteous attitude within us

the actions that flow from that attitude will be righteous.

5. Righteousness is the only life framework through which true love can ever be communicated to another person.

If we claim to love another person

and yet act toward them in an immoral way

we are lying to ourselves and damaging the relationship.

Love and righteousness are two words for exactly the same thing.

6. Righteousness is the only life framework in which the human spirit can truly be free.

7. Righteousness is not something we must bring to God so that He will accept us,

it is something He seeks to bring to us because He has already accepted us,

and because He loves us with a perfect love,

a love that could never allow Him to remain uninvolved when bondage still remains in our lives.

8. True righteousness is not reaching the point where we say, “I will not do that because it is wrong.”,

true righteousness is reaching the point where we say, “I will not do that because it is not who I am.”

9. Through Christ, God has given to each of us

not a list we must fulfill,

but rather the freedom to enter into a growth process

designed to ultimately create within us a heart attitude of righteousness.

10. Whenever and where ever true righteousness has been created within us,

we will know it is the real thing

because it produces within us a spirit that overflows with gratitude to our God.

And then let me just say a few things

about the other side of that coin

and my growing understanding of the true nature of sin.

And here again, it took a number of years

before my Lord could bring me to the point

where I could hear what He was saying

above the screaming voices of my own assumptions.

Having come at this whole thing with the mind of the legalist,

for years I simply didn’t hear what was being said.

You see, the whole foundation of the legalist mentality

is the understanding that my actions are the bottom line,

the foundation upon which my relationship with God is built.

If I know the correct rules

and then keep them diligently

then God likes me and accepts me.

If I don’t,

then I must alter my behavior

so that I can then reenter His fold

and once again receive His kindness.

But the great breakthrough in my perspective on sin,

and the thing that caused my legalistic mind-set to begin to crumble

was when I finally starting hearing the truth

about what really happened to my sin through Christ.

PSA 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

COL 2:13 And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,

COL 2:14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

2CO 5:19 ... God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them...

2CO 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

ROM 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And on, and on, and on...

I know you’ve heard all of those statements before,

just as I had.

But I wonder if we’ve really heard them.

For me, coming from my legalistic bent,

accepting those statements as literal truth

was a terrifying thing for me

because I had just naturally assumed

that fear of God’s rejection

was an absolutely essential motivational force in the Christian’s life.

If it was removed,

what could possibly keep us in line?

But once the fear was gone

and I began to relax in my relationship with my God

I also began to discover aspects of His recreative work in me

that I had never recognized before.

I found He had placed within me

a hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I found that the growing awareness of His love,

an awareness that could never have existed

as long as I still believed my standing with Him

was dependent upon my performance for Him,

I found that this growing discovery of His love

filled me with a longing to live a life that truly honored Him.

And most of all,

for the first time I began to understand

why God wars against sin in our lives.

It is not because the sin is any threat to Him

or because it still has the power to separate us from Him.

His victory over sin is already complete.

The debt, in full, for all sin for all time has already been paid by God Himself for us with His own blood.

And once I began to actually believe what He was saying,

for the first time I could risk looking honestly at my own sin.

And when I did,

I saw why He fights so fiercely for my victory over it.

He does

because all sin brings bondage into my life.

All sin brings slavery,

all sin robs me of a little piece of myself,

and of a quality of life my God wants me to know.

God opposes sin in our lives

not because it is an enemy to Him,

but because it is an enemy to us,

and because He could not love us as He does

and fail to fight for our freedom.

He doesn’t just want us free from the penalty of sin,

He wants us free from its power over our lives.

The penalty of sin is already removed forever,

and now His Spirit works within us each day to break its power

so that we can discover the freedom of spirit

and the joy in life

that only righteousness can bring.