Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian – Part 3
Christians: Former Sinners
Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog series: “Bringing Clarity to the term Christian”. I sincerely hope you have been following along thus far by reading Parts 1 and 2 of the series and I pray that it has been helpful.
In our last blog, we explained Statement 1 and gave reasons as to why the Christian submits to the Holy Scriptures, taking them as true, authoritative, and infallible. We learned that the Scriptures were inspired or “God Breathed” and that the Holy Spirit, through his divine influence “carried along” men at different times and in different ways so that they would write, miraculously, what God wanted to say to us. The “Bible” is truly God speaking to us and on the basis of the Bible, all of the other 13 statements we will discuss in this series will be defined. As we stated in our last blog:
The foundation of Christianity itself rests on what God has spoken.
In this blog, we will discuss Statement 2 which says:
A Christian is a former slave to sin and an enemy of God.
Although this statement is rather brief, the subject matter is critical to understanding the foundational truths the Christian has come to embrace. Because there is so much to discuss on this statement, it will probably take us more than one blog post to complete it. But I think that it is vital to lay the groundwork regarding the subject of sin because of its significance to us. We will patiently work through Statement 2 as we began to understand what God’s Word is communicating to us regarding our relationship to Him and with Him.
Sin has been given a myriad of categories in our modern world. Aside from this true but rather overly simplistic definition given to sin, which is just “wrong-doing”, people assign different and more “nuanced” meanings for sin for different reasons. When we as men and women often talk of our own “wrong doing”, we tend to use a whole host of glossed over, excuse filled, and dismissive vocabulary to explain it, or in many cases, explain it away. When faced with the reality of our wrong behavior, we often respond by saying:
- It was something that we couldn’t control – (for example, we say…..)
- “I couldn’t help it”. “It just came out of my mouth that way”.
- “There was a lot of money to be made and I couldn’t say no to it.
- It was someone or something that made us respond like we did. – (we say…..)
- “She is the one who made me act like a fool !”
- “It’s not my fault he left his money on the desk. If he didn’t want it taken, he should have been more careful.”
- We admit that what we did was bad, but what they did was worse. (we say…._
- “Yes, I “fudged” my numbers only a few times just to get my boss off my back, but I know other accountants who do it “all” the time and that’s just not right.”
- We say that even though what we did was unethical, we had a “really good” reason for doing it. – (we think to ourselves …..)
- ” Yes, I “adjusted” my tax return a little because I just wanted my family to enjoy a decent vacation for a change”
- “He got blamed and fired for my “mess-up” but he has only been with the company 2 years and I have 15 years here. I can’t afford to lose ‘my’ job.”
These are just a few of the ways people cope with the reality of sin in their own thinking. I am sure we all can come up with a lot more examples than what I have described here. The main point is that, aside from all the rationalizations, qualifications, and justifications we give to sin, if we are purely honest with ourselves, we all, deep within, even without having a textbook definition of it, know pretty objectively, what sin really is. The reason we are all so often quick to make sin “so many shades of gray”, is because we all either are, or once were servants or slaves to it.
For the sake of clarity, we should give the objective definition of sin. The term “sin” is a translation of the Greek term “hamartia” which literally means to miss the mark. It is described as a flaw, failure, transgression, or fault in one’s moral character or nature. Sin, then, is failure to meet God’s standard. It is missing the “mark” of God’s righteousness. Therefore because God’s righteousness is the standard or target, the wrong doer or sinner is one who “always” misses the mark. This is any person who has an inability to meet God’s standard of righteousness. Whenever a person is engaged in hamartia, no matter the kind of sin or to what degree, that means that his non-righteous conduct or behavior is a display of his inability to do just that…meet God’s standard. The sinner described here, according to the Holy Scriptures, is both you and me.
Paul the Apostle in his “God Breathed” letter to the church of Rome puts it very simply:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
Romans 3:23 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
God tells us that each and every one of us has an inability to measure up to God’s righteousness. Although many of us may console ourselves in the the fact that we are not the “worst” the world has to offer, There is no real distinction between sinners and so called, “hard core” sinners. In comparison to a completely Holy God, we all equally…. “miss the mark”
There is an earlier passage in Romans 3 that I would like to review in more detail later in this series, but I think it is important to note it here as well. This passage, which is in fact a quote the Apostle Paul uses from the much older book of Psalms, says:
as it is written,
“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
Romans 3:10-12 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Taken from Psalms 53…
Paul is describing for us the state of humanity apart from the Creator. The very nature of mankind itself is sinful and rebels against God. In fact, Scripture teaches us that we were born with this flawed nature. In the book of Psalms, God uses David, the ancient King of Israel, when writing a song of contrition and repentance for his sin of adultery, to give us some insight into how deep the reality of sin is for all of us. David says:
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
Psalm 51:5 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
This is such a massively thought provoking passage. What is God saying to us through the words of David ? God is telling us something that is very often not taken well by many at face value because of its implication. Is God actually telling us that we were all born incapable of living lives free of doing wrong? Are we from the moment we come into the world, already marked for sin? The answer to that question is yes.
All of us who have been born into this world, came into it with a flawed nature and an overpowering desire to do things contradictory to what God commands. David says that as he was taking shape as a baby in his mother’s womb, the stigma or stain of sin was already active in his nature.
All of us who have kids know this is true. Do you ever wonder why you never have to teach a child to be selfish? No training is necessary for a child on how he is to fight his brother or sister when angry. Temper tantrums, lying, playing with objects after being told not to, require no instruction manual whatsoever.
In addition, think about many of your places of employment. What is the most frequent training you receive at work, perhaps even more than the training you receive for your actual work assignments? Its ethical training isn’t it. I know you’ve heard these training titles endlessly:
- Preventing Compliance Violations
- Workplace Violence Avoidance
- Sexual Harassment Prevention
- Preventing Conflicts of Interests
- Rules Regarding Bribery
- Commitment to Confidentiality Agreements
- Securing Intellectual Property
- Preventing Employer/Employee Intimidation
This list, I’m sure, could go on. But have you thought about what is consistent in this training? The required training leans heavily on teaching good and positive behavior while only exposing the unethical behavior. Why is this? Because unethical behavior does not have to be taught.
The fact that companies have to have ethical training at all means that they assume something about people. Companies assume that people, given an opportunity that appears personally advantageous, lucrative, satisfying, and free from repercussions, will, in many cases, do the wrong thing at the company’s expense, and do it quite well with no assistance or training to do it at all. Therefore, to steer people into doing the right thing, companies have to explain what “right” behavior is in the workplace, and explain the consequences, such as, termination of employment if the behavior is not adhered to.
So even without using any religious jargon or special spiritualized verbiage, the world in which we live and work acknowledges, perhaps without even realizing it, that we as human beings are in fact sinners.
The ancient profit Jeremiah, who lived much earlier than Paul, also spoke of the gravity of our sinful condition with these words:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Sin is a part of our spiritual so called “DNA”, and all of us need to come to terms with how deadly it really is, and more importantly, how to rid ourselves of its control over us.
Many of you may be asking: “OK …why then am I a sinner?” “Why is it that I am in this condition to begin with?” We will address this in our next blog post. I have much more to say so please continue with me in this discussion as we expand more upon Statement 2 in Part 4 of our series next time.
Thank you again for coming by and sharing in this series, “Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian”
God bless you and yours…..
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