Sin
Ken’s Notes
Our Primary Identity:
We are not sinners who are also loved by God. We are beloved beings who also sin. The order is key. Our primary identity is not that of sinner (i.e. original sin is not the beginning of the story), our primary identity is one made in the image of God (image bearers) out of love and desire for relationship who are blessed and without shame. This is our starting point. This allows us to remember that sin is not the ultimate thing, sin is not what our story is primarily about, sin is not the central plot. We do not begin our story with a problem (sin) otherwise Jesus becomes merely a solution to a problem, a means to an end. Sin is serious it is just not primary.
The Triune God who created the cosmos and us is primary, God is the main actor, God’s unending and unrelenting love, his blessing and desire for relationship with us is the plot.
Two primary images of the cross, under which all others fall:
Atonement: meaning that at or on the cross, for some defined wrong that was committed, some price of some sort was paid by God in Christ.
Victory: that on the Cross, Jesus is victorious over some power.
Sin-Cross-Salvation:
What do we mean by Sin?
Sin is both individual and corporate
Sin is “the wrongs” we do
- Here the purpose of the cross is primarily atonement. Justice needs to be met, a price paid, a wrong righted and through that, forgiveness comes.
but SIN is also a power, something outside of us, enslaving us.
- Here then the purpose of the cross is victory. A defeating of the powers of darkness, sin, the law and death, victory over the devil, Satan and evil. Through the cross then we are set free, healed, released.
The Eight images or motifs:
Sin is rebellion, disobedience, treason so the cross offers forgiveness/pardon.
-Jesus as prosecutor and victim
-Cross is punishment for a crime, the seriousness of sin, an offence against God/others
-Courtroom image
-Romans 3:21-31, Romans 5, 6Sin is enslavement so the cross offers a price paid to set us free
-Jesus as redeemer
-Israel in Egypt, forced labour
-Slaves to sin, to flesh, to the law…Romans 6,7
-Jesus is the redeemer, the cross pay the price of freedom, cancels the debt, set slave free
-Salvation is freedom, (Galatians 5:13),
-Galatians 2:15-3:14Sin is being lost, wandering from God so the cross calls us home, a beacon on a hill
-Israel in the desert (lost but close to God because utterly dependent for survival).
-Lost sheep, coin, son
-I have come to seek and save the lost
-Luke 4:18-19, and every account in the gospels where Jesus welcomes or restores the outcast, those deemed unclean, lepers, women, tax collectors
-Israel’s lost mission to be a light to the Gentiles
-Cross is a beacon on a hill, lighthouse guiding us home
-Jesus is the father welcoming us back, the shepherd searching for the sheep
-Salvation is finding our way home, returning from exile.Sin is captivity so the cross offers release from captivity
-Jesus as liberator
-Imprisonment, Babylon
-Jesus casting out demons (Luke 4:18-19, and every casting out account in the gospels)
-Captive to: demons, mental health, addictions, habits, culture
-Cross victorious over evil powers, over captives, setting free, opening the prison doors, Luke 4
-Salvation is liberationSin is sickness and brokenness so the cross offers healing
-Jesus is the physician, healing the sick Luke 4:18-19, and every healing account in the gospels
-Salve…healing…salvation
-Paralyzed man “sins are forgiven”, man born blind
-Sin is a disease, a virus spreading, cross is anti-virus
-Salvation is healing but not just physical healing but also social healing/restoring/mendingSin is abandoned, orphaned
-Jesus is our brother
-Through him we can call God Abba Father
-Sin causes us to feel alone and disconnected
-Salvation is adoption (Romans 8:12-17 and John 15:15, Galatians 4:1-7)Sin is shattered shalom so the cross offers reconciliation
-Jesus as reconciler
-Destroyed relationship between man, God, self, creation…
-Jeremiah 32:36-41, Romans 5:12-21, Romans 8:9-17, 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
-We are invited to participate in this act of the cross, to be ambassadors of reconciliation
-Salvation is reconciliationSin is death so the cross offers new life
-Jesus through his resurrection conquers death (1 Corinthians 15)
-Those who sleep are awakened (1 Thess. 4:13-18)
-Romans 5:12-21 and 6:1-14, John 11
-Salvation is life which it truly life (life eternal)
Todd’s Notes
We have misunderstood sin.
I would like to walk through a few points of what we mean when we say “Sin”
Firstly, sin is not ultimate. Sin is not the big story. It is not the beginning of the story. It is not the centre of the story. Be careful about people who are more focused on sin than they are on God.
A couple of Thomas Merton quotes;
“THE devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them of the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “ God is satisfied, ” and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other people.”
“IT sometimes happens that people who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other people. They think the world does not appreciate them, and this is their way of getting even.”
When we start with sin, we start with a problem; something is wrong that needs correcting. So sin first and then Jesus. This is less than a Christian way of seeing.
Start with a problem and then give a decisive answer. Sin is not ultimate.
We instead – seek to begin with Christology. Begin with Jesus. The knowledge of Jesus precedes the knowledge of sin.
We should first speak of God’s design and only then of humanity’s disorder.
Secondly, most sin is not Promethean.
Prometheus, in Greek mythology steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity. Associated with pride. Often it is pride that is thought of as the central or defining sin. Pride leads me to want MY WAY, to counter you, to argue, to disobey, to steal or cheat.
What We Mean When We Say Sin – think of SLOTH before pride.
The proverbial image (Book of Proverbs) of sloth is a person who puts their hand in a snack bowl, nuts, potato chips and is to lazy to bring it back to their mouth; they just leave their hand there – this person is referred to as a sluggard. Slothful.
Years ago I remember hearing a Tony Campolo talk in which he said that people today (then, but now too) lack passion. He presented the image of people sitting around, slouched.
He said – “people used to know how to sin” – If you are going to sin – SIN – be like David – HE KNEW HOW TO SIN!
What Campolo as getting at; SLOTH –
“The refusal or failure to see who we are in Christ. It is a tardiness, a failure. It is a counter movement to the elevation of God.”
In other words, God has for us to be elevated, in Christ. Sin is that which pulls us down.
It is “a life which moves and centres around itself.”
Merton again
“All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life around which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honour, knowledge, feeling loved, in order to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.”
Karl Barth to end this little teaching; describing sin/sloth:
“He turns his back on God, rolling himself up into a ball like a hedgehog with prickly spikes.”