The Truth About Sin - Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Today's program begins an in-depth study of the root of rebellion in the human race. Here's part one of The Truth About Sin. That which God intended for the first man and woman, God purposed for all of mankind.

And that is simply this, that man would live in submission to God, having all of his needs met, his life full of joy and peace and confidence and assurance, and man fulfilling God's purpose for his life. But something drastic happened. And whatever it was that happened, according to the Scripture, the Bible says that Adam and Eve lost everything that God had provided for them. And as a result of that, all of us have suffered. And we live in a society where sin is more and more open. And as the body of Christ becomes weaker and weaker, the whole spirit of sin is becoming bolder and bolder and more bold. That is, there's something happening in our society. Would you not agree that 20 years ago or 25 years ago, there's some things that you and I would have branded as absolute sin against God? That today we say, well, I guess that's just the way things are. The truth is that sin has gained the upper hand, and as the body of Christ has become more and more fearful to stand, more and more apathetic, the very nature of sin itself is that it rises when there is no resistance.

And we're living in a society where the resistance to that which is evil is becoming less and less, and therefore evil is taking over. Well, sin, my friend, is not something to laugh about, for there's not one verse of Scripture in this Bible where God ever says anything about laughing about sin, joking about it, or saying anything frivolous about it. And I want to show you in Romans chapter five, if you'll turn there for a moment to verse twelve. I want to give you a moment to find that verse because I want you to hear what he's saying. Verse twelve of Romans chapter five. Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin, that is, it accompanied sin, it followed sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Now, what I want to talk about in this message is this simple theme. What is the truth about sin? Well, I could give you lots of illustrations of how people have sinned against God and what happened to them, and most people's response to that would be, well, that's just what happened to them. That was their tough luck.

That was an exception. They just had a hard time. I want us to understand what God says about sin. I want us to understand what the principles are, not simply what somebody's experienced, but what does God say about the nature of sin?

So I want to begin with its origin. Where did sin begin? Sin did not begin in the Garden of Eden. Sin began in heaven.

In Ezekiel and in Isaiah, God tells us very clearly that a very powerful angel with a very responsible position made a decision, and this was Satan's decision. Because in this confession of Satan, here is the heart and core of all sin. Sin, in essence, is the spirit of independence. I will do what I choose to do in spite of what God says. I will act the way I want to act. I will get my needs met when and where and however I want to in spite of what God thinks. And so here is the first confession of sin.

Here is where it all began. I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High.

That is the reason Satan is a fallen angel, because he chose to act independent of God, to be equal with God or superior to God. All sin begins today where it began in heaven with Satan when you and I say, I will. I will meet my needs. I will do what I choose. I will be free of all restraints.

I will do what I please to do. That's where sin began. Now think about this. Adam and Eve had it all. There was not anything their heart desired that God had not already provided. But instead of waiting upon God and choosing His way, Eve acted independently of God, chose to gain knowledge independent of God, to satisfy her appetite independent of God, and to satisfy her desire for beauty independent of God.

And what happened? She lost it all. The nature of sin is this. Act independently of God and ultimately lose it all.

Now the world doesn't believe that. Eve, for example, offered to Adam and Adam sinned. And so we have Satan falling in heaven, Satan in the Garden of Eden, Satan tempting Eve, and then Eve offering to Adam. And when Adam sinned against God, something happened to God's whole big plan for humanity. And what is it that happened? Well, that's what Romans chapter 5 and verse 12 is all about, because it is the most descriptive and comprehensive view of the whole problem of sin.

Listen. Therefore, just as through one man, who is that man, Adam, sin, that is the very principle of sin, entered into the world and death through sin. And so death spread to all men because all have sinned.

Here's what happened. When Adam, who was the father of the whole human race, now let me explain what I mean by that. Today, your children were before they were born in you. Before you were born, you were in your parents. If we traced our origin back far enough, we'd have to trace it all the way back to Adam because in Adam, who was the father of the whole human race, the whole human race was there potentially. And as Adam and Eve gave birth to children, and their children and their children all the way up to today, all of us were in our parents. So that all of the whole human race was ultimately in Adam.

When you poison the head fountain of the stream, all the rest of the water is poisoned. So that today the whole human race has been poisoned by sin. You can trace it all the way back to Adam.

And the problem is all of us have had that problem. And that is we came into the world with the nature bent away from God, sinning is natural and normal for the unbeliever. That's where it all originated. But what is the nature of this thing we call sin? We joke about it. We laugh about it. We accept it as a way of life. We tolerate things in our lives that we know absolutely are against God. Well, sin is rebellion against God. Well, which sin? Well, all sin. If God says a thing is sin, it's sin. And for us to indulge in that in any fashion to get our needs met for any motivation is an act of rebellion against God.

God said it. I know you said it, but no matter what the sin may be, whether it is stealing, lying, cheating, murder, adultery, or gossip, it doesn't make any difference what it is. It is still sinning against God.

It is acting in rebellion against God. Now, we wonder why the church is weak. We wonder why God's people aren't on the move and things aren't happening in our society the way we want to. Is it because of Satan or is it because we've tolerated so much sin in our life that the power that comes through purity is absent?

Because we've joked about it. We rationalize it. But the Bible says that sin is rebellion against God. Now, I want you to turn, if you will, to 1 John chapter 1 for a moment. And let's distinguish something here. In 1 John chapter 1, most of us know what verse 9 says, but I want us to read verses 8, 9, and 10, because these three verses are very important.

And I want you to see a distinction here between something. Verse 8 says, if we say that we have no what? S-I-N, sin. If we say that we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our what? S-I-N-S, sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, S-I-N-N-E-D, we're deceiving ourselves, the truth is not in us. He says we're making God a liar. Now, notice what he says in verse 8. If we say we have no sin, the unbeliever has an old sin nature with which he or she was born.

There it is. It is the culprit. It is the root that springs forth all of this fruit, these different manifestations, these different types of fruits, which may be any type of sin that a person commits. But the root problem is not S-I-N-S, but S-I-N for the unbeliever and old sin nature that is the problem.

Now, here's what I want you to see. There are people who are able to stop committing certain acts of sin who are not even believers. I've met people who decided they were going to stop their drinking without God and they stopped. They did have the determination and the will to stop drinking even though they're unsaved.

And that could be true in many areas. But here's the one thing they're absolutely helpless in dealing with. They may be able to deal with A-S-I-N, A-manifestation, an expression of fruit, but they're absolutely totally helpless in dealing with the old sin nature, which is the culprit. And so they may deal with it for a while and then something begins to happen. Or they may stop some sins, S-I-N-S, for a lifetime if it's something that disturbs them enough. But they've still not dealt with the culprit, with the whole issue of independence from God, which is the old sin nature. Now, when a person becomes a believer, something happens. I want you to turn, if you will, to 2 Peter chapter 1. When you and I were saved, a lot of things happened to us that we never even felt. In fact, we didn't even know it happened.

Nobody told us maybe and therefore it was years before we discovered what happened. When you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, 2 Peter chapter 1 says, God did something about your nature. Verse 4, for by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises.

Why? In order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, God's nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. When you became a believer, what happened? The Lord Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, came into your life and you will never be what you are.

Your nature can never be the same. Now you've become a partaker of divine nature. What makes you a believer is the fact that you are indwelt by the very nature of God. Now does that mean that there is nothing of sin left in you? Paul called it in the seventh chapter of Romans, the principle of sin still remaining.

How do you define the principle of sin? It is not the same old nature that you were born with because you have been now born again by the Spirit of God into the body of Christ. Now you are indwelt by the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ that you can never be what you are.

Somebody says, but what about, and we name all these people who've lived a certain way, and then what happened to them? Most of them weren't saved. I'm not saying that you can't sin against God and still be saved, but the truth is there are many people who say they're saved who are just as lost as they can be. They've been to church, baptized, poured, sprinkled on, you name it, they've done it.

They're just as lost as they can be. They confessed some sin, stopped doing some things, but have never dealt with a real basic problem, which is the old sin nature. You've got to be redeemed. You must be born again. You must become a partaker of the divine nature. That's what separates us from the unbeliever. We have the nature of God within us. That's what is the source of the desire to be obedient to God and walk holy before Him. Paul said it's an old sin principle. He didn't define it, so therefore don't ask me to, except that all of us know, those of us who know we're redeemed and saved by the grace of God, there is within us at times something we have to wrestle with.

What is it? He says the principle of sin within me. Paul says I want to do this and I find myself doing this. So because we live in a world that is ungodly, amidst the power, satanic powers that are ungodly, and still there remains, as long as we're in this fleshly body, a principle of sin which now we have the power through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, now we have the power to overcome sin. Before that we could not. We could make some changes, but we couldn't overcome the power of sin in our life. And so even though a person may stop doing several things, sin still dominates their life. Because you see, they don't stop these things because they love God. They stop them because the doctor said, hey, you're going to die in six months if you don't stop this. That's motivation. And so they're able to stop a few things or one or two things in life.

But they've never dealt with a basic problem which is the problem of S-I-N. This is why, my lost friend, you can clean up a lot of things in your life. But if you don't deal with the old sin nature, which you cannot deal with, God must deal with that in his redemption through his blood in the new birth.

You're just as lost as you'll ever be and will always be that way. Because you see, it's not acts of sin that makes a person lost. They come in the world with a nature, been against God, independent of God. And what Peter is referring to here is this new nature we have. What Paul is referring to here is he is explaining for us the truth about sin, that is it came through Adam.

We all came into the world with it and unless we're redeemed with the grace of God and born again, we will be enslaved by the nature of sin and stand before God, having to give an account for life wasted because we refuse the grace of God and the goodness of God and the forgiveness of God. Now, when you and I look at the nature of sin, it's very evident in the Scripture several things. First of all, the Bible says that sin blinds us. Does he not say in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, for example, the lost person, the natural man, does not understand the things of God. He's blind.

He can't see them. Because he has an old sin nature, you don't expect him to be able to discern and perceive and understand what only the Spirit of God can reveal when he's rejected the Spirit of God. The lost man spends his life, the lost woman spends her life trying to regain personally everything Adam and Eve lost for us in the Garden of Eden.

They had it all and lost it. And so man rejecting God's way independently, determined to do it his own way, is trying in his own power to gain the peace, the joy, the happiness, the experience, the possession, the status, you name it, all that has been lost, he's trying to gain in his own power. And I want to tell you, it is an absolutely hopeless, futile experience.

You cannot gain it. Man's blind. And so he goes on in his endless search, trying to gain, trying to possess, trying to climb the ladder, wanting recognition, everything, trying to do what? Fulfill something inside of him, I heard, that drives them and drives them and drives them.

What is it? It is the Spirit of God reaching into that life and convicting and trying to make aware that their need is of God. And turning that off, they try that much harder, that much more determined to make life complete. You can't complete something when God and God alone holds the final piece of the puzzle. And everything man attempts is going to be futile.

And he's blind, so he just goes on. It is the blood of Jesus that takes care of the penalty of my sins. It is the person of Jesus that enables me to live above the power of the principle of sin that still indwells the believer and gives us a hard time.

The blood took care of my S-I-N-S. It took the person of Jesus united to Him, indwelling the Holy Spirit to enable us to overcome the indwelling principle of sin with which we have to wrestle every single day of our life. Thank you for listening to The Truth About Sin. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.