The Reality of Our Sin

The portrait that we get in the scriptures of man in his fallen condition is that sin penetrates massively to the whole of the fallen person. In other words, sin is not a simple external blemish, but it is something that goes to the very core. of our being. We've said this week that the world, those in the world, are struggling with an identity crisis. They don't know who they are.

An RC Sprawl has spent time considering the reality that each of us is made in the image of God. But there is another reality that we cannot ignore. one that people seek to downplay. that we are also sinners. It's good to have you with us today for this Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Just as everyone has dignity because they're made in the image of God, Outside of Christ, Everyone. Is under the wrath of God. Because of sin.

So we cannot answer the question, who am I? Who are we as humans? without dealing with the topic of sin.

Well, here's Dr. Sproul from his series, A Shattered Image. on the reality of our sin. There's one word I think that crystallizes the essence of the Christian faith. begin this session by calling your attention to that word.

And it is the word. Grace. In fact, one of the great mottos of the Protestant Reformation was this Latin phrase: sola. Garage. By grace alone Now, this phrase wasn't invented by the 16th century reformers, but has its roots.

in the theology of Saint Augustine. who incorporated this phrase to call attention to this central concept. Of the essence of Christianity, that our redemption in the presence of God is. Bye. Grace, sola.

Alone. that the only possible way A human being can ever find themselves reconciled in the presence of God. is by virtue of grace.

Now that concept is so central to the teaching of Scriptures, you would think that by now to even mention it would be an insult to people's intelligence because it's so, so elementary. And yet, if there is any dimension of Christian theology that I think has become obscured. In the 20th century, it is this core notion. of Grace. I've already mentioned in the process of this series that one of the most important series that I regard in Lignier's catalogue of education is that one that focuses on the holiness of God.

And I've said on many, many occasions that two things That every human being just absolutely has to come to understand is one. The holiness of God. And two, The sinfulness of man. Those seemed to be the two poles of thinking That we have done everything in our power to obscure. We simply don't want to face them.

And they go together. If we understand who God is, if we catch the slightest glimpse of His majesty, of His purity, of His holiness, then we are instantly aware. of the extent of our own corruption. And then we'll fly to grace because we will recognize that there's no possible way that we can ever stand before God apart from grace. The prophet Habakkuk.

was upset. During one period in Jewish history, Because as he looked around himself, he saw the enemies of the people of God triumphing. He saw the wicked prospering and the righteous suffering. In a word, ladies and gentlemen, he saw manifest injustice. And his complaint was the complaint we all utter from time to time: that's not fair.

And he raised this lament, saying, Where is God in all of this? How can a holy God, a righteous God, a just God, allow these injustices to go on unchecked? And here's how he states he. His lament, and I want you to listen to it carefully.

So it comes from the first chapter of the book of Habakkuk. O Lord, are you not? From everlasting. My God, my Holy One, we will not die. O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment.

O Rock, you have ordained them to punish. And then he goes on to say, Your eyes are too pure. to look upon evil. Your eyes are too pure. To even look at evil, God, you are so holy.

that you can't stand even a cursory glance. At anything that is impure, that anything that is unholy. And so he goes on to say you can't tolerate wrong. Let me just back off of this passage for a second and say This is anything but characteristic of our human situation. We can.

tolerate what is wrong. In fact, we can't survive unless we learn how to tolerate what is wrong because if we don't tolerate what is wrong we can't tolerate each other. And we can't tolerate ourselves. And have you ever asked this question? How do you live with them?

Or how do you live with yourself? In order for me to live with myself as a sinner, I have to learn how to tolerate.

something that is evil. If my eyes were too holy then to behold iniquity, I'd have to shut my eyes to speak to you here in this studio because what I'm seeing before me is a group of people who are fallen. And what you see standing before you is a man Who has? besmirched the image of God. And so Habakkuk goes on to say then, why do you tolerate the treacherous?

Why are you silent? While the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves. Habakkuk couldn't fathom. How God could endure. And be patient with human Evil.

We can't tolerate. Any thinking. of being upset about human evil. I mean, we become antagonistic toward the idea of a God who is so holy that he might turn his back. from looking at something or someone.

That is sinful. And yet that is the dilemma the scriptures set before us. We have a holy God whose image we bear. Our fundamental responsibility as human beings is to mirror and reflect who his character is, and yet we are not holy.

So now, though we're made in the image of God, that which is so basic to our humanity that it becomes part of the definition of man is that man is a sinner. You've heard this expression repeatedly, no one is perfect. Or to err is human. And to forgive is divine.

Now you've heard that comment, haven't you? When we say to err is human, to forgive is divine, we again go back to the idea. Erare humanum est, which means to err is human. We've heard that little phrase so many times that we begin to see that the idea to err is human, what is unspoken, what is assumed when we make the comment is, well, to err is human, so it's perfectly what?

Okay to err, because what could possibly be more human than to make a mistake? And we have grown. at ease in Zion here and comfortable with the fact that we are disobedient. To err is human, and to err comes under the judgment of God. When we sin, we want to describe our sinful activity in terms of a mistake.

As if that sort of softens or mitigates The guilt involved, because we don't think it's wrong for a child to add two and two and come up with five. We know the answer is wrong, but we don't spank them and say, You bad boy. You know, you made five instead of four out of two and two. That's we think of mistakes as being simply. Part of the human condition, we can't help it.

To er. is human. Which is to say, it's okay. It's like, how many times have you heard people say this? You know, everybody's entitled to one mistake.

You heard that? You said it. We live in a country of entitlements where we have our inalienable rights. And one of those inalienable rights that we assume now has been given to us by our Creator is the inalienable right to make a mistake. Everybody's entitled to what?

My question for you is this. From whence cometh that entitlement? Where did God ever say?

Well, you're allowed to sin once. I'm not going to be happy if you sin twice. And if you sin three times, you're really in trouble, but everybody gets one. Did God ever say that? No.

You're not entitled to one mistake. But even if you were. How long ago? Did you use it up? I mean, we use.

We are so accustomed to our fallenness. to our corruption. That yes, our moral sensibilities are offended when we see somebody involved. in gross and heinous criminal activity.

Somebody who's a serial murderer who goes out and butchers people. Then all of a sudden we have a moral protest that we're feeling vehemently. But the normal everyday casual disobedience to God. doesn't bother us. Because To err.

is human. And to forgive is divine.

Now, again, the second part of that comment: to err is human, to forgive is divine, suggests. It must be God's nature to do what? To forgive. We sin God forgives to errors human To forgive divine. And again, the unspoken implication is: if he doesn't forgive, if he withholds that forgiveness, then there's something wrong with his very deity.

because it is to be the nature of God to forgive. Dear friends, it is not. necessary to the essence of deity. To forget. Forgiveness is Grace And we define grace as undeserved.

or unmerited favor. But what I'm trying to get at today are some of the theories that have been expounded. to explain What it means for man to have fallen. How is sin to be understood? In our anthropology, what factor does it play?

Is sin something that we look at the human species and we say, well, Here is a creature called man, and we'll use that circle to represent man. Is sin something? Accidental or tangential. to our humanness.

Now when I say accidental, I don't mean accidentally. Accidental in the sense of a tree falling in the woods and happening to fall on somebody's head. But rather, I'm speaking philosophically now. In the ancient Aristotelian categories, anything that was an object or a substance was understood to have both. an essence, what it really is, and are there things, qualities that are accidental, that is on the periphery, that may or may not accompany the thing?

Here's Bob Ingram sitting here in front of me and he has a mustache.

Now is that mustache essential? Two. His humanity, if he shaves that mustache, will he be less than a man? He may think so. And so he'll guard it with his life.

And Maria Favreau, so let's take a vote. If he shaves his mustache, would he still be Bob Ingram? Yeah, we would say that the mustache, though it adorns him beautifully, is not essential to Ingram. It's accidental. Even though it's on purpose.

Okay. But what we mean by accidental is that it is On the periphery of it.

Now, my question is: is sin in our humanity? Accidental. or essential.

Now, here's where I have to play with your heads a little bit and say, yes and no. Sin is not essential. to humanity as such. Unless we believe that God made man, Sinful. at the beginning.

If sin is absolutely essential to our humanity, then that would mean Jesus was What? Either sinful Or if he was sinless, he would not be. Human, he would not be a man because to her is human, and if Jesus didn't err, he wouldn't be human.

So we don't mean that sin is essential in the sense that it is an absolute precondition, a prerequisite for humanity. Adam had no sin when he was created. He was still human. Jesus had no sin during his life. He was still human.

You will have no sin if and when you get to heaven. And you will still be human.

So sin is not essential in the sense of necessary for a person's being human. But neither do we want to say that sin is merely something. Tangential. accidental or on the surface. of our humanity.

Rather, the portrait that we get in the scriptures of man in his fallen condition is that sin. penetrates massively to the whole of the fallen person. In other words, sin is not a simple external blemish. But it is something that goes to the very core. of our being.

Now, the tendency in philosophy and the tendency in our daily lives. Is to minimize as much as possible this human condition of sinfulness. I remember. When I was in seminary, And I had to learn about various theories. of sin.

The things that I would hear. Most often in the seminary to explain human sin included three. One, two. Sin was defined as finitude. Two Sin was defined as inauthentic.

Existence? The existential failure. And three, it was seen as a psychological Distortion. I'm not going to go into all of these, but let's look at the top one because this is the one that we hear most frequently to explain why it is that human beings sin. To be finite means that we are creatures.

There is a limit. an extent to our powers and to our beings. God is infinite. Meaning that he is eternal in time and he's boundless in space and so on. But for Infinitude goes with Anything that is created, anything that is created.

is weaker than that which creates it. The Creator exists by his own power. You can't exist by your own power. You are dependent, derived, contingent. Fragile.

It's part of just being a creature. What happens in philosophy and theological things? is that evil is regarded as being necessary a necessary component Affinitude. See? Found this in 19th century liberal philosophy.

We find it in Paul Tillich's existential theology in the 20th century, where we sin because we are finite. Let me just give a brief exposition of that in one of the most important Treatments of it in philosophical history, and that's with the philosopher Leibniz. Have you ever heard of Leibniz?

Some of you have heard of Leibniz, the rational philosopher who's famous for producing a very intriguing theodicy. A theodicy. Is a rational attempt to justify God or to exonerate God. for the presence of evil in the world. It's like the philosophers say, I am going to be God's defense attorney.

Everybody's mad at God because this world is ruined. It's marred, it's blemished, his principal creation. Man is the most corrupt of all.

Now, what's wrong with a God who has botched the job so severely? We're going to try to defend God and shift the blame from God. to some other place where it belongs. And Leibniz came to this theory. He said there are three kinds of evil in the world.

There's moral evil. which we understand we call it sin. There is physical evil. which we understand physical evil would be disease. Or a calamity that befalls us because of the wind or the fire and the storm, what we call an act of God.

Earthquake swallows us up. That's physical evil. And then thirdly, Leibniz spoke of what he called metaphysical evil. Metaphysical evil. Metaphysical evil Meaning.

That to be finite is less great Then being infinite. And To be finite is to be metaphysically imperfect. Only that which is infinite would be metaphysically perfect.

So anything that is created is by its very nature finite. And then he goes on and says that moral evil flows out of physical evil. And or Metaphysical evil.

So, that what's wrong with the world is simply that the world is finite.

Now, do you remember Voltaire's writing the little book Candide? How many of you studied Candide? Remember Dr. Pangloss and he had this sanguine view of the world. There had been a terrible earthquake in Lisbon that had taken countless lives.

And at the time, some of the Portuguese people were singing que sera, sera, you know, what will be will be. This is the hand of God. Other people were shaking their fist against heaven, saying, how could a good and righteous God allow this terrible national calamity to take place? And so there were philosophers like Leibniz who were trying to answer that question. And Voltaire was poking fun at him.

Dr. Pangloss in Candide is simply the fictional representation of the philosopher Leibniz. because Leiden had said this The only way God can make people is to make them finite. The only kind of a world. God could ever create.

is a finite world. Because even God Couldn't, I want you to think now, even God couldn't possibly create another God. Why couldn't God create? Another God, a second God. It's kind of easy, isn't it?

Because the second God Would be a creature. It would have been dependent upon the first God for its very existence. It would be finite, dependent, and derived. There can only be one self-existent eternal God. You can't have two of them where the second one is created by the first one.

The second one is disqualified by the very word creation. Because it's finite. Leibniz says the only way God could create man, the only way he could create a world, is to create a finite. And so bottom line is this. God has done The best he could possibly do.

This is the best of all possible worlds. And that was the message. Of Dr. Pangloss in Candate, this is the best of all possible worlds. Remember Pascal?

Pascal says I can conceive of a better one. You can conceive of a better world than the world you're living in now. It's not the best of all possible worlds. But the biggest problem was finitude. is that this explanation For man's fallenness and man's sinfulness places the blame for sin ultimately where?

On God. And it absolves all of us. from any kind of responsibility. This is the ultimate moral kapan. Whereby I say, Not that the devil made me do it.

But even worse than that, the Creator made me do it because he made me finite. And to err is human. And now, since I'm just being human, God is obligated to forgive me. Ladies and gentlemen. We are fallen, and we are finite.

And we do everything in our power that we can. Two. destroy any authenticity there may be to our existence. And yes, we have psychological disturbances and so on, and chemical imbalances, all of which may contribute to mitigating circumstances to our behavior. But the problem.

with man's being. in the image of God. is that we transgress his law. God will never judge us for being finite. But he will justly judge us.

For being disobedient. God will justly judge us for being disobedient. That's a truth the world needs to hear.

so that by God's grace they would flee to Christ for forgiveness. And you can hear more about the forgiveness that is available for sinners. at Renewing Your Mind.org slash gospel. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was R. C.

Sproll from his series, A Shattered Image. Yeah. Knowing what it means to be human is hotly contested today. And so to help you, we are making two resources from Doctor Sprawl available. when you donate before midnight tomorrow at Renewing Your Mind dot org, or when you call us at 800-435-4343, we'll give you lifetime streaming access to today's series and its study guide, Plus will send you his book, The Hunger for Significance, Seeing the Image of God in Man.

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Thank you. What is the Lord's Day? What is the Sabbath? Are they the same? Joining us tomorrow is the Chairman of Ligner Ministries, W.

Robert Godfrey, to consider how the New Testament answers those questions.

So be sure to join us Friday. Kia on Renewing Your Mind.