Sermon Tone Analysis

*The question of sin?*

Last time we left here with a cliff-hanger ending.

As we have been peeling through layer upon layer of meaning in the cross we left last week with the idea that the cross stands alone as the only thing that opens the way to God.

If you were here last time, hopefully you remember the illustration we had set up here with the doorway.

And we had various signs that we hung up around that doorway.

These were signs that we are often tempted to place there because there is just something inside of us that feels compelled to add something over top of the sign of Jesus’ blood.

We had signs like Religious Observance, and Generosity / Service, and Morality / Godly Living.

And we ended last time by pulling those things down because we stated that they get in the way of the one sign that matters the most.

But then we left a giant question in its place.

So, what do we do with those things?

The apostle Paul asks that exact same question in Romans 6.

Romans 6:1 NIV

What shall we say, then?

Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

So today we consider our sin, and how we live as Christians.

And we consider how it is we relate those things to the cross.

The apostle Paul makes pretty good sense out of this, and the church has long followed the teachings of the Bible as Paul presents it in his writing.

But today I think the church needs a correction.

Not because Paul is wrong or because the Bible is wrong.

And not because we have mis-interpreted the Bible or its teachings.

But maybe we have misdiagnosed something along the way.

And our misdiagnosis has led us to a place of focusing all our attention on treating the symptoms with little or no effect.

While at the same time we have lost sight of where it is the Bible is urging us to place our true focus.

The reason we don’t know what to do with things like religious observance, Christian service, or morality is because we are stuck in a misdiagnosis.

And in effect what we end up doing as Christians is to take all of those things and place them over top of the cross.

Without meaning to we nullify the cross and throw away the grace of God as useless because we have made a mis-diagnosis.

At this point it would be good for me to point out some sources.

There is a footnote on the bottom of the notes in the handout.

Many of the ideas for this series have come from the work of theologian and author N.T. Wright from his book, The Day the Revolution Began.

This message especially borrows from his work because this mis-diagnosis as I am calling it forms the central argument of his book.

But i am also borrowing today from the writings of Louis Berkhof and Herman Bavink who have published volumes of systematic theology in the Reformed tradition, as well as some much older writing that comes from documents such as the Heidelberg Catechism.

The point is this.

What I’m talking about today is not a new idea.

It does not diverge from the teaching of the Bible.

And it does not turn from what two thousand years of church theology has taught.

Rather, this is more of a returning to what the church has believed and taught all along, but we have just found ourselves losing sight of it.

Paul asks in Romans 6 if we are to go on sinning.

This all has to do with the question of sin, and what the cross has to do with our sin.

And it begins to take its misdirection and misdiagnosis because many of us are living with the wrong idea of sin.

Let’s fill in the blanks on the outline with two different statements about sin.

What is sin anyway?

What makes us sinners?

What does it mean that we are sinful people?

First.

I am a sinner because I commit sins.

How do I know what sin is?

How do I know that I am a sinner?

How do I know that I am sinful?

Well duh, I commit sins.

In fact, that’s what sin is.

The Bible is filled with all these rules about what I am supposed to do, or not do.

And whenever I live in a way that does not follow along with what the Bible says, we call that sin.

Second.

I commit sins because I am a sinner.

So maybe it sometimes looks like sin just shows up as a list of do’s and don’ts from the Bible.

But actually, sin is something much deeper than that.

Actually, sin is something I am born with even before I ever have the opportunity to commit any particular act of sin.

These actions of committing sins are actually just a symptom of the real problem.

Committing individual acts of sin is the manifestation of what is actually something deeper inside.

That I have a sinful nature.

I am born with it.

And my sin shows up in the sinful acts I commit.

But essentially, even if I were to live in a way that I did not commit any acts of sin, I would still be a sinner, because I still have an inner sinful nature.

Which is it?

Which definition is right?

Maybe you think I’m being unfair here.

This isn’t a question of one statement being right and the other begin wrong.

Maybe there is a hint of truth in both.

Or maybe these are just two different perspectives at the same thing.

I choose one perspective, and maybe you choose the other perspective.

But that’s okay, right?

We just have different perspectives.

Does that make one right and the other wrong?

Quick church history lesson.

In the fourth Century AD there was a monk named Pelagius who taught the first option.

Pelagius taught that it is the acts of sin we commit that make us sinners.

And do you know how the church responded?

Did they say, well Pelagius I suppose that is one possible perspective.

No.

They called it heresy.

The church said to Pelagius, this is not at all what the Bible teaches.

And for 1600 years the church has been united in maintaining this.

It has a name.

It is called the Pelagian Heresy.

And the church still holds that it goes against the teaching of scripture.

We are not sinners simply because we commit sins.

The church has always held that the Bible says we are born as sinful people with a sinful nature.

And the reason we commit sins is because we are sinners.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15

1 Corinthians 15:22 NIV

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

We are all descendants of Adam and Eve.

We are all born as sinners whether we like it or not.

The Bible says no one is righteous, not even one.

Not even a brand new infant just born into this world.

That may seem harsh to say.

How can a cute tiny baby which seems so innocent be robbed of that innocence?

Then your child turns two and you realize the truth.

How did my kid even learn to be greedy or throw tantrums?

Truth.