As I continue this study on sin, I need to continue to showcase what happens when we take what sin is too lightly. It is absolutely clear that sin has consequences, but when sin doesn’t mean what it means, the consequences of sin follow. This is a gospel issue, and any model or idea or theology that takes ANY ASPECT of sin any differently than how the Bible treats it is a heretical position. Last week, I described several different false teachings and how they define sin, but I only scratched the surface of what that means if taken seriously. This week, I’ll showcase the consequences of such ideas.
If sin is just a mistake or imperfection, not the intentional, treasonous defiance against God, then there are several things that must follow through. First, it means there really is no absolute, perfect standard by which man is to be held accountable. This is a strike against the holiness, righteousness, and perfection of God. While there is foolishness that comes as a result of youthfulness and the sinful nature, this is not what is being addressed here. If your mom told you to clean your room and you chose not to do that, you cannot pass that off as a mistake. That is deliberate disobedience. A mistake can be a typo or a calculation error, but it cannot be intentional refusal to do what you need to do, or intentional doing what you are not supposed to do.
This view doesn’t just marginalize what the action is; this also puts the blame on God for making us bad. I hear this all the time from evolutionists: “If God created the universe, He made it bad.” This is a charge that God is an incompetent creator, and it’s the same argument that Adam used to blame Eve for his sin. He blamed God for giving Eve to him to begin with: “God, it’s your fault.” Another variation of this is, “The devil made me do it.” It appeals to the brokenness of the world as being inherent to creation from the start and to require no fault nor responsibility upon man for that which was wrong. This is an inherently severe error of every Old Earth creation model. When any person treats sin as a mere mistake or imperfection, said person is not only deflect blame off self, but they are also, intentionally or unintentionally, blaming God for making them “imperfect.” How arrogant for the pot to make demands of the potter on how he was created! Yet, when one messes with origins, this is one of the conclusions that one will make.
When sin is merely treated as a barrier between you and your blessings, sin simply becomes a mountain to climb or a task to defeat. The real challenge here is that this doctrine partly true. Sin IS a barrier between us and what comes with God. But it is a half-truth, because it makes the “blessings” the primary, not God through whom the blessing comes. In the Prosperity Gospel/Word of Faith circles, the purpose of faith is health, wealth, and prosperity – all things that make life comfortable in the here and now, and all things that are the primary categories of temptation in which this world has to offer, what Eve saw in the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and what Jesus was tempted with in the wilderness. Sin is just a barrier between man and these blessings. This makes sin really undefinable, and even more so, it makes the faith a works-based religion. Take notice that when you don’t receive your “miracle;” according to these teachings, it is because YOU lacked enough faith. You didn’t please God enough or give enough or trust God enough. It’s YOUR fault. This is devastating to so many people who have lost loved ones to sickness and disease. This is a result of not taking sin correctly and realizing we all live in a broken world and only Jesus Christ can save it.
Similar to the “mistake” or “imperfection” teachings is the Progressive Christian teachings that recoil at the notion that man is a sinner, a wretch, a worm, evil-minded, rebellious, treasonous, and anything and everything but good. So, to lighten the sting of such descriptions, the Progressives say we might be “misguided” among other things. This again puts the blame on God for the system He set up, rather than acknowledging that man is the problem. While the Old Earth Creationists don’t go as far as to declare it outright, the Progressives actually think that sin never actually separates the bond between God and man, therefore they do not and will not understand the necessity of the cross. They accuse God of “cosmic child abuse” because the Father had the Son go to the cross. They do not understand and refuse to understand the severity of sin. So, because they reject the nature of sin and the due punishment of sin, their solution is the same as the Gnostics: get more knowledge.
There are immoral people who say that sexual immorality is perfectly fine for Christians to engage in. After all, “it’s how God made them.” Therefore, for us to deny them who they were made to be, we are fighting against God. This is blasphemous. God did not make us sinful. We are sinful because we are in Adam and because we have chosen to sin. This again blames God for their choices and seeks to deny responsibility for their lifestyle. Nobody suggests that a thief is a thief by birth, nor suggests a murderer is a murderer by birth, but somehow, we think it is fine to suggest that a sexual pervert is one by birth. It’s “part of their nature.” That’s a direct result of evolutionary teachings, that man is an animal, and we act on instinct rather than morality. But it’s also true: they are “born that way” as having a sinful nature, which is why we need to be born again. This is another reason why we cannot mess around with origins. The Old Earth creationists usually don’t go to this point, but they have let THESE people in the door to the church. I hold them responsible for it. Because according to their position, whether they recognize it or not, they have no argument against this sexual perversion movement because they have rejected God’s account of creation as written.
There were others I addressed last week, but I think we get the point. It doesn’t matter who does it, what angle they use, or what argument they use; any teaching that diminishes the nature of sin also diminishes the weight of sin. By diminishing the weight of sin, there is a denial of the necessity and the work of the cross. Jude tells us there are two primary types of false teachers: those who teach an immoral thing as being moral; and those who deny our Lord Jesus Christ. If we unpack these for all they contain, anyone who teaches ANYTHING that God commands against as being “good” is on this list. Anyone who denies ANY aspect of Christ Jesus, not just who He is but what He did, is on this list that Jude says are false teachers. What does that mean? It means the pastor who says that God created via Evolution or any form of Deep Time is also teaching that death and corruption existed PRIOR to Adam (contradicting Romans 5:12) and thus the problems with this world are on God, not man. That means that man is not responsible for sin, God is, and that means that the cross does nothing, and Jesus’ death meant nothing. This is not a “secondary” issue. That’s just analyzing ONE of these false teachings regarding sin. The rest are pretty obvious, or they should be.
We cannot mess around with sin, because if we do that, we mess around with Christ, and our message and our faith are completely worthless, making us the most pitiful of all men. I’ve mentioned the cross multiple times in this post, and so we need to take this one step further and showcase how these false views of sin and false views of the weight of sin, also produces a false view of the cross and the ultimate day of judgment.
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