So a recent conversation with my pastor has prompted me to think about what exactly ought to be a Christians response to their own sin. Let us assume for the sake of this post that a Christian means someone who has been saved by Jesus and is going to heaven regardless of their actions. I'm not going to get into the whole debate of whether a person can lose their salvation or not because I dont think it is conducive to understanding the problem. The point is their are people who are legitimately Christians (myself and most of you reading this, at least you would say so) and yet we still sin. However our sin is payed for already Jesus said, "it is finished", on the cross implying that the debt which sin creates has been forever payed by Him and Him alone. We can do nothing in regards to that debt. Neither can we make it bigger nor can we make it smaller because it is done away with. Praise God for that.
Now if the debt is paid, what then are we left with? I think here we must redefine what we had previously thought of as sin. Sin by definition is an action contrary to God's will, the action being done a barrier appears between us and God. Combining personal experience with my reading of various Christian fathers throughout history and the Bible I've come to "think" that their are two natures to this barrier which sin creates. The first is all encompassing, totally segregating the sinner from the Father. God may have interaction with that person but the person can not respond. This first barrier is removed and removed forever by Jesus' death on the cross. The removal of this barrier enables the human to be saved and to pursue God. The waves of communication have become open once again. The second barrier is one we humans create after the origonal barrier has been removed. It is created by our sin and the bigger we make it the less and less we are able to communicate with God and interact with Him. Its like as we sin we clog up the ways we would interact with God with filth and muck. This second barrier is removed through the process of Sanctification and it is into this process that I believe falls the use of divinely given tools such as guilt, shame, penance ect.
Everything must be in balance and to blow the use of guilt out of proprotion is to use it for human purposes and not for the glorification of God. Often as Christians we sin and we ignore the sin because God has forgiven it, which He has and but we just wade through it for our Sunday morning church service then we return to create some more sin. Picture a man who wants to get to the end of a tunnel and instead of clearing out all the debris to make the tunnel passable he tries to squeeze his way through. This is a picture of a man who will not look at his sin. The boulders blocking his path to God are His sin and the fact that they are forgiven doesn't lessen the fact that they exist and he continues to make them bigger as he squirms and fights his way to the end of the tunnel. Often time he will give up and content himself with just being closer to the end of the tunnel then he was a month before. So guilt is what enables us to know our sin. To experience it on a deeper level and to understand the utter detestablness(I know thats not a word) of it, so that we can learn to hate our sin just as God hates the sinners "Psalms 5:5". In Proverbs 20:30 the use of the rod is advised as helpful to the soul. I think guilt is one of God's "rods" which he uses to teach us how to more ably follow him.
So basically I think their is more to live then salvation. The fact that Jesus saved us and forgave our sins does not take away the sin itself it makes us no longer held accountable to it. For me, the fact that someone else took what I owed makes me much more willing to serve that individual. So just because my salvation is guaranteed the fact that I still do things that bring tears to the of God makes me burn with shame more so then if my sin was put on my charge instead of His.
Please post your comments, I'm anticipating some disagreement. I hope at the very least this will have provoked some of you to think over things which are not the norm.
I thought it was really good. I've always wondered along the same line of that just never looked in depth into it. Made me think for sure, I think it really goes to show how much God loves us, how many of us (theoretically) would face the death penalty for a friend, or even and enemy that murdered someone?
ReplyDeleteAnyway great thoughts :D
Interesting analogies. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteI really like this. You definitely have some good thoughts on it, and I think the picture of the guy in the tunnel really helped me to see why it's necessary to fight sin. We often just think that because Jesus has died for us we're good to go. We sometimes forget that sin still needs to be fought. Not all the time.. but sometimes :)
ReplyDeletethanks for posting it :)
Eh. I'll give you what you want Caleb, a nice old-fashioned disagreement. lol.
ReplyDeleteAs I get older and deal more and more with the daily problems of sin, I have come to the point where I feel like this whole Christianity is not such a simple matter. I would agree with you in the sense that there's more to Christianity than just salvation, but I think that you can't even separate salvation from sanctification and just living as a Christian. I think that being a Christian is much more holistic than Western Christians tend to make it out to be, because they tend to compartmentalize. You can't separate 'salvation' from 'sanctification' and 'being saved' from 'acting like a Christian.' They are one and the same thing. We make theoretical distinctions, but I don't think those theoretical distinctions translate into practical distinctions.
So, in terms of sin, I think of it more as trying to become more righteous and to walk closer to God instead of trying to become less sinful, if that makes sense. Sometimes I think if we try to move huge chunks of sin in the tunnel of our life, we get tired out and tend to give up, like you said. But I think sometimes the answer isn't dwelling on the sin, but what's on the other side of the sin. Sometimes we just have to squeeze through a crack and not try to shift the boulder, if that makes sense. And sometimes we have to wait for someone stronger than us to remove the roadblock; God or a fellow Christian. Sometimes I think sin takes patience with ourselves and faith that God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness by the blood of Jesus Christ his Son.
So. Yeah. My thoughts.
Well thanks guys, Mandie Josh and Hannah I'm glad you all got some interesting thoughts as a result of the post.
ReplyDeleteCaleb a good old fashioned disagreement would suit me well. I haven't had many of them since you left, at least not many fun ones. Fortunately I think our differences are not so drastic that they can not be reconciled. I agree that Christianity is rarely simple. I assure you it was no simple process that brought me to my viewpoint. However I think you might have misinterpreted the purpose of my post. What I was trying to show was that guilt and shame are legitimate tools God uses after we sin to assist us, their purposes being to help us in not committing that same sin again. I dont disagree with you that our goal must be to grow more and more like Christ. If our purpose is to grow less sinful thats a much more selfish motive then the alternative. I also would agree that trying to fight the sin would kill us. We can never fight the sin but we can do more to understand it. God fights it, He's the one who forgives us but we are the ones who when we understand it are going to be so aghast at its ugliness that we'd never be willing to partake in it again. So if the dog knew exactly what vomit was he would not return to it and I think guilt is the tool God uses to help us know what our sin is enabling us to not to go swimming in it again after we have been washed.
Hope that helps clarify.
Hey Caleb, this is one of your Louisiana cousins. I wanted to let you know that (from what I gather from your post) St. Augustine agrees with you on the point you make about guilt. Last semester we studied his "On the Spirit and the Letter" and in it, one of the things he talks about is the role of the Law and the commandments in man's salvation. He says that the Law was given to Moses so that we might be aware of how we believers ought live. When we see, however, that we cannot do the works of the Law, we are prompted to look to God for help. Thus the "Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom. 5:20) Thus the commandments were given to show that we do not live as we ought and makes us aware of our guilt.
ReplyDeleteAs to your other point, that we ought not to live in sin merely because it makes us feel guilty, I must provide some opposition. I am not in any way encouraging anyone to sin, but given your premise that a christian cannot lose his salvation, why should he not sin? For, if it cannot take away from our eternal happiness, then the only thing that it can harm is our happiness here on earth. But a Christian is not concerned about the goods of this world and in fact we have a great testimony of martyrs who tell us that earthly goods are fleeting and have no value compared to those to come. So why would it matter if we were a little less happy here on earth?
I could say more, but this comment is running rather long. I will anxiously await your response. (Please note again that I do not hold that sin does not harm the Christian. I am merely arguing using your given premises.)
thanks Jesse, I wouldn't forget who you are lol, we played town in my basement and you organized a hostile takeover while I was in prison.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. If I said that we ought not to sin because we feel guilty then I wrote what I did not mean. What I should have said is, "guilt is the tool by which we know we are in the wrong and that we are acting not in accordance with God's law."
I think the question you posed is a good one, assuming of course I've interpreted it correctly. Here is what I think you asked, "Why, if a Christian's eternal happiness is guaranteed would a Christian be motivated to correct their sin?" Here is why I think we ought to want to correct our sin. First and foremost because God doesn't like it. Just because He forgives us does not mean the sin doesn't displease Him. Just because Christ came to earth and died so we could be free of sin doesn't lessen God's hatred for sin. We still ought to correct our sin because our desire and goal as Christians ought to be to please God and if it is anything else then I think that, that Christian has fallen into selfishness, the using God to serve their own means mentality. Also while I agree that serving God many not be the most "fun" lifestyle it is without a doubt that most satisfying.
I think you made an important point Caleb, one that I just want to clarify. We should not be motivated to live as a Christian because we fear going to hell. John says that there is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. Our motivation as Christians is positive, not negative. So regardless of whether we can or can't lose our salvation, fear should not be our motive for doing things or not doing things.
ReplyDelete