Sinful

Genesis 3:1-6; Romans 7:15-25a; John 1:29-31

Last week we looked at the word “Our” and how God created us, loves us and wants to have a personal relationship with each of us.  With that knowledge we now look at the word “sinful.”

How is it – if we are created by God – we are also sinful?  The Psalmist in Psalm 8:3-5 writes:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

God did create us in His image only we are not exactly like God – we are a “little lower” and yet He crowned us with glory and honor.

As we read this morning in the book of Genesis, it all began with Adam and Eve.  It is all their fault…or at least that’s what we claim.  Adam and Eve were the first to act on the gift God gave them of free will.  Free will – although it is a gift of having a mind and the ability to make our own choices, it also seems to be what leads us to sin.  It seems to simply be in our DNA. It is in this free will that, like Adam and Eve, we too often act in disobedience to God and that is what sin is – disobeying God.  Too often when we hear the word “sin” we think of murder, stealing, adultery, or idol worship, but in reality sin is simply, disobeying God.

Adam and Eve disobeyed because they were convinced by the serpent that “their eyes would be opened and [that they would] be like God, knowing good and evil.”  They disobeyed because they were seeking to be more like God.  They didn’t want to be less than God – they wanted to be equal to God.

I want to stop here for a moment and ask you and myself, how much do we want to be equal to God?  Now be careful in answering too quickly.  Haven’t you ever said or at least thought,

“I wish I knew why God allowed this or that to happen.”

“I wish I knew the future so I could make this decision in the present.”

We may not think of it as wanting to be equal to God but isn’t it the same idea?  And what about the times we have tried to tell God what to do in a situation?

I think God must get a real chuckle when we do that.  God’s Will is always the best but we seem to think our ideas and what we want would be better.

You see, our bent to sinning is simply a part of who we are.  We disobey because we think we know better or that God simply has it wrong.  Our sin isn’t always about the big stuff, sometimes it is simply not obeying God.

We heard Romans 7:15-25 from our NRSV Bible this morning.  Paul’s message on his own sinful life in this chapter is so important to us and yet it was a bit confusing.  I once again turned to Eugene Peterson paraphrase of the Bible to find a simpler reading of this passage.

Romans 7:15-25 (The Message)

 ^14-16I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all,

I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

 ^17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

 ^21-23It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

 ²⁴I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

Verse 25 though brings the Good News to all of us who are sinful:

 ²⁵The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

God has known forever that humanity has a bent to sin.  God saw it in Adam and Eve and in all us ever since, that is why He knew He had to do something extreme if we were to ever be with Him for eternity.

We know full well that God went to the extreme by sending His Son, Jesus, to be, as John the Baptist declared, “Here is Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

Are we sinful?  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Yes – we are all sinful.  God gave us free will and through that we too often make wrong choices out of our own humanness.  We allow what we want to be more important than what God wants.  We act on our own selfishness and thus we are led to sin.  This is though not the end of the story, we have been given grace – grace that is greater than all our sin.

We have to be careful here though.  As Paul speaks of in Romans 5-6, just because we have been offered grace should we continue to sin?  No, of course not.  It would be easy wouldn’t it?

I mean, if we just relied on grace to pull us out of everything – we would not live for God but we would live for ourselves – always sinning.

Agree with me or not…if humans were allowed to go with the easiest way we would be living completely in sin but it is what we are pulled towards.  Living in the grace of Jesus Christ is about choosing to live with, in, and for God.  It is about submitting ourselves to God’s authority and not always getting our own way.

Sinfulness is in our DNA but it isn’t the way we have to choose.  We can choose to live in Grace but we need to understand that that will mean constantly fighting against our inner pull to sin.  It will mean consciously and purposefully choosing to obey God in all we do and say.

On earth we can never be what we really want to be.  We want to be pleasing to God in all we do and say but here on earth, in these human bodies, we are prone to sin and it is frustrating at times.  This is what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 5:2 “While we are here on earth, we sigh because we want to live in that heavenly home.”

Understanding and admitting our sinfulness, is necessary for us to understand our need for grace.  It is through our humility that we realize that we cannot find what we seek on our own but ONLY through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ.

As I have said before, Lent is a time for us to reflect on ourselves and to see ourselves as we really are.  Today we are faced by the reality that we are sinful people.  This isn’t fun to admit but it is a reality.  The Good News though continues to be that Christ Redeemed Our Sinful Souls.