Sin.
33October 2, 2012 by Cole Ryan
“If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” 1 John 1:8-9
The church dosen’t need anymore feel good, comfortable messages. If you are brought to Christ through a sermon that made you feel good about yourself – you were never really saved because you never really thought that you needed saving. Pastors should begin to preach more on sin. Why? So that people will seek Jesus knowing that they need saving and that Jesus is their savior. If you don’t think you need saving than what is the point of Jesus? The cross has no meaning if not for sin. The church needs to start preaching on sin, and judgment, and brokenness again – because right now people are coming to Jesus thinking they’re fine when in reality they just desperately need Him. Churches try to make everyone feel good for the sake of filling seats, making money, and bringing people to a fake salvation. If your pastor doesn’t preach about sin because he is concerned he might offend someone, than he cares more about attendance and his own image than he does about telling the truth. We need to know that we’re broken so that we will repent and look to Jesus for help. It isn’t fear mongering, it is the truth. We are filthy, broken, dirty rags because of sin (Isaiah 64:6). We deserve hell because of sin. We need a savior because of sin. Sin needs to be taught.
“…many young Christians—a passionate faith, a focus on Jesus, a love for grace, and a hatred for anything phony or self-righteous. The weaknesses of my generation (and younger)—not enough talk of repentance and sanctification, a tendency to underestimate the importance of obedience in the Christian life, a one-dimensional view of grace, little awareness that our heavenly Father might ever discipline his children or be grieved by their continued transgression, and a penchant for sloganeering instead of careful nuance.” Kevin DeYoung
If you think lightly of sin you’ll think lightly of the Savior.
Amen brother… Now that’s preaching the word!
absolutely right.
GREAT post! Redemption does not happen apart from repentance. And I absolutely love the quote from Kevin DeYoung! Where’s it from?
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/13/does-jesus-hate-religion-kinda-sorta-not-really/
Thanks!
Thank you; this is what we need to blow out in our sin-ridden time.
Wonderful post and thanks for posting it. Agree with all you say! God Bless, SR
I don’t have an opinion but you’re on the right track.
Great outspokenness. Glad you are willing to speak, we must clearly define and condemn SIN; however, we must not forget Grace and Faith. I was raised in a denominational church that focused on sin and the necessity of staying away from it, and that caused me to live for many years in condemnation and insecurity in Christ. It wasn’t until I discovered the Grace and Faith in Scripture that I was able to move forward and upward in my relationship with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. God bless you in your ministry, but don’t stagnate in your focus on Sin.
amen!
I live in the south… grew up in the mid-west… there is a church on every corner, but a Church is hard to find…
the feel-good sermons will retain the self-righteous and provide a stage for the mask-wearers; but it is detrimental to the people sincerely looking for help and seeking God.. because they will not find guidance nor a law for living in these churches… and a sincere person no matter how sinful will always see through the masks of the insincere.
this fault does not only drive people away from church and presents the idea that Christianity is a cult-like following with no real foundation or truth…
but it takes more than a good sermon… the fix requires that fellowship where we share our struggles we help and strengthen each other to combat those struggles.
we need the small groups to back up the sermons and apply the sermons to our real world trials with temptation to assist us and remind us to trust God and look to Him for our daily decisions.
I live in Ukraine. Churches are at every corner, but Christ is hardly found. Amen! Let’s pray for all who does not know Christ yet, and are confused by religion. In Christ’s name.
This is so inspiring, keep it up my brother in Christ!
Hello Cole, I’m Jason, nice to meet you. :) I noticed your excellent recommendations and thought I would give you a couple recommendations of my own. A book that has changed my life happens to be free to read online (even though the print edition has sold over a million copies!!), here’s the link:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab
And I noticed you were daring enough to recommend podcasts as well, so here is the one I recommend for you:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/reasonable-faith-podcast/latest
And lastly, I don’t want to leave you without a video recommendation, so here you go:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/media/video/ondemand
I hope these recommendations richly bless your ministry. :)
Hello Cole. I admire your passion and your zeal. As someone who is in the process of converting to Orthodox Christianity, I probably have a somewhat different perspective (assuming you are Protestant).
I think you are correct to say that the consequences of sin need to be taught. And all the cute slogans and the tacit philosophy that obedience to God will result in earthly wealth are some of the things that have majorly grossed me out about the contemporary (western) Christian church. So, amen to everything you said about that.
Nevertheless, I think the best model for reaching/rescuing people is how Christ did it — and according to the Gospels, He wasn’t really going around yelling at people about how terrible they were. He was, like, hanging out with them and eating with them and healing them and telling them stories that made them think about their lives. Because even though people screw up all the time, He stilI thinks we’re pretty great — because He made us in His image. This is a fundamental divergence of viewpoint between Eastern and Western Christianity.
Don’t get me wrong — Jesus wasn’t a wimp — His position was unwavering. But it was tempered with boundless love and compassion, and in my considerable experience with churches, that part often goes missing from sermons about sin.
And “fake salvation” ? Careful. Only God can see into people’s hearts.
Brother, you just helped me to realize something. I grew up in Ukraine, in the Orthodox tradition, but only in the U.S. I heard the call of the Lord and accepted Him. I see that the Lord calls us sort of though different radio waves. Someone likes rock, someone pop, and we stick with something that powerfully speaks to us. Truly only God knows our hearts. And I assume He greatly cares about our searching process, who we are, where we come from, in other words, every person can be broken with a different tool. Orthodox church was a great turn off for me. What I saw is numerous rituals, and somehow I felt that behind all of them the main point is lost. And I remember thinking back then, if I’d ever consider to commit to christianity it would be a protestant part of it (see as a not born again person, I thought that commitment does the trick :), I did not know that I will undergo a major change on all levels!). But once I accepted Christ, through complete realization of my brokenness and desire to change, something weird happened. See, I slowly start seeing the beauty in Orthodox christianity. It’s not fake and superficial to me any more! But it was possible only through the prism of Christ. See, brother, I think all of us are looking for certain common things: truth, clarity, simplicity. And we find it in different ways. I also realize now that we draw conclusions about denominations in some respect through our personal experiences, and these experiences can never provide us with an exhaustive perspective. Orthodox, Protestant, doesn’t matter, my brother, if you keep Christ in mind and read the bible. Previously I did not realize that the bible speaks for itself! It really explains itself if you are willing, and if God is willing to open His word for you (and you should absolutely pray for it!). Just like in my experience, God used numerous churches and experiences to get you somewhere, that unique spot for you that He foreknown before all began. So we both should cherish our paths and trust Him. Because, really, I believe whatever road we take, IF we follow Christ, we will end up in the predestined spot for us. And it is the best spot to be! Trust in Him, He is way bigger than our thoughts and decisions. With love, in Christ.
Thank you for this post. You make some good points. Seeing the imago dei in people is the key.
Cole, you are right…we need to realize our helpless state without Christ. We must have a sincere, humble heart when we look at our sinful nature, and then ask God, through Christ, to forgive us and lead us.
Sin is, and always has, created so much pain and heartache in this word…and in the lives of those who live in that sinful nature. Your straight forward message is a righteous one, and I hope it reaches many people in His name!
Haha, right on. Faith isn’t a road made out of rainbows, sunshine and happiness, every day I battle with my guilt and repentence in order to become a better human being. I have belonged to many churches, and have often noticed that a lot of my young peers were like thieves in the night about sin: not sorry about the consequences of their actions, only sorry they got caught! Anyway, it’s refreshing to see someone so honest blogging about religion, I enjoyed this post very much :)
Love it!
Hi Cole,
I like what you have to say on your blog! I couldn’t agree with you more about preaching on sin. Its a truth that is desperately needed. We’ve been noticing it and saying the same thing about the lack of preaching on sin ourselves. None of us like offending people, but as you say we are following a God who was crucified. “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted.” Proverbs 29:25
God bless :)
The church must preach about sin and the deep need of all men to repent. The role of the pastor is to preach the whole counsel of God so preaching on sin yes and grace and discipleship and Holy Spirit and…the list goes on and on. There is much work to be done. Let us pray for our pastors that they would be given the grace to rightly divide the Word of truth the calling is a great burden.
I am absolutely amazed that as I am currently working through and writing a piece on sin, that you have just published something very much in line with how my piece is going. I’m actually working on a small series on the doctrine of sin. The church has lost a robust doctrine of sin. We are told that we’re sinners, but we really don’t believe it. I think people don’t believe they are sinners because they don’t appropriately understand what sin is! It is not enough to tell the world that they are sinners, but to convince them beyond the point of doubt. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on the doctrine. The doctrine of Grace is as only as powerful as our doctrine of sin is terrible.
Great post and good comments. Sin is certainly a large and important topic. I like to quote the Apostle Paul and his vastly overlooked observation. “Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that SIN THROUGH THE COMMANDMENT MIGHT BECOME EXCEEDINGLY SINFUL.Romans 7:13 NKJ.
Sorry about caps. Far too many of us have not had this experience. That is that our sins might be to us exceedingly sinful to us and that we would actually feel the grieving of the person of the Holy Spirit.
Amen
Certainly none of us can throw the first stone with a clear conscience. There are greater and smaller sinners, of course. The danger of preaching sin is not reaching all believers with precisely what constitutes sin in the eyes of God, as separate from society (the sins overlap, but the secular punishment for the sins shared is very much different from the religious punishments). If all are not reached, they will connect sin with personal-catastrophe-as-punishment-from-God (illness, abuse, random catastrophical events) or they WILL begin to doubt God listens to their prayers or else draw the conclusion that God is not all-powerful. These three alternatives are mutually exclusive, and we have seen this pattern over and over in history. In essence, failure to specify exactly what constitutes sin to all will result in either suffering a guilty conscience needlessly or losing faith. Preachers must be clear and united on this. It’s absolutely vital.
Hi Cole…………I’ve read several of your posts ad Believe that your voice is one that is needed and that the Lord is using and will continue to use in a powerful way. Blessings to you and be encouraged to obey all that He tells you to do……………Shalom…………Kim
Nice one. I appreciate your passion in theological perspective.
I believe that you are delivering an old covenant message. pre-christ jews made sacrifices annually to “atone” for their sins, cleansing them for a year. Christ came as the ultimate sacrifice, providing redemption and restoration, negating the need for subsequent atonement. That said, upon receiving the gospel message, the Bible also states that Jesus came so that you might live life “more abundantly”. You cannot live an abundant life if you are diminishing yourself, claiming yourself to be an unworthy sinner daily; the curse of the Law is that from which you have been redeemed. Now saved, your true calling is to evangelize, and bring in others. Now, just who do you think you could convince to become a christian if you drag around, down in the mouth, self-castigating, claiming that God has nothing good in store for you or others? Thereby, sure, talk about fire & brimstone and eternal damnation to the “unsaved”. But, now that you saved me, tell me about the intended benefits of leading a quality christian life (and its not just “going to heaven when you die”). Enjoy your day. :)
It was refreshing for me to read this. Thanks.
Cole, great post! You hit the nail on the head. The problem with true Christianity today is a result of the politically correct nonsense of society. God forbid we tell the truth, lest we offend someone. Try and teach a Christian about his sin and you are blamed for being condemning. Well, unfortunately. when you sin, you are condemned — unless, of course, you lay your sins at the foot of the cross. I just left a church because the Pastor did not want to ruffle any feathers and exposed a sin that has infected many in the church. He feared losing attendance, which adds up to money. Well, I believe if he would have exposed the sin he would have been blessed.
Good stuff.
Sin is just the beginning, else they will become like the seed that sprouted up quickly on rocky ground, but had not roots so it rotted away. The other part is that we must TURN AWAY from sin and GO and preach the gospel to nations. Inherent in this is that persecution will be a reality that we must face. As it is said: salvation may be free but it isn’t cheap.