When I was in first or second grade, which is about seven or eight years old, I had a really good friend named Daniel. I had always wanted to go to his house to spend the night, but though he lived in the town where my school was, I lived about 20 minutes away. For my parents who worked long hours, and didn’t know Daniel’s parents, I always got a no, when I would ask them about sleeping over his house. Well one Friday, I decided to take the issue into my own hands. Instead of going home on the bus as I usually did, I walked home with Daniel. That was a great afternoon. It was a spring day, and Daniel lived by the creek in town which was running at the time. We couldn’t swim in it, because it was running too fast, but on the shore, honeysuckle flowers were in bloom. After a few hours of hanging out with Daniel, his mom began to wonder when I was going home.
That’s when I asked to spend the night, she said it would be fine with her, but she had to talk with my parents. Well let’s just say that call did not go over well. Apparently my family had been frantically searching for me for the last several hours. You know, since I didn’t arrive at home when I was supposed, and no one knew where I was. Let’s just say I wasn’t allowed to go over Daniel’s house for a long time, or anywhere else for that matter.
Now, while I was playing that afternoon, I knew what I was doing was wrong. And Daniel’s mom had asked me if my parents knew I was there, and of course I dodged the question, because I wanted to stay with my friend. I avoided being truthful because I wanted to play. I swept aside the truth that I wasn’t supposed to be at their house, because I wanted things my way. And when my mom showed up, I was quickly snapped back to the reality that I was not in control.
But it’s this idea of sweeping aside truth, because it doesn’t suit our desires, that brings us back to our fifth week in our Counterfeit Series, where we’ll continue to look about false teachings that are being embraced throughout the Christian Church. As a case in point, we are using the Progressive Church and it’s beliefs to help us better understand some of these false teachings in light of the Scripture.
In our first week, we began with understanding that we must be willing to have God root out any false teachings we ourselves have incorporated into our lives, and the best way to do that, is to know the true teachings of Scripture so that when we come upon false ones, we will know them right away.
Then in our second week, we talked about the biblical clues that we need to know that will help us identify a false teacher. These clues were: false teachers make false predictions, they call us away from the God of the Bible, their predictions sometimes might come true but they still call people away from the God of the Bible, or they will deny the physical work of Jesus in the flesh. So if even one of these clues happens in the ministry of a prophet, a pastor, or a teacher, we must reject their whole ministry. Because, even though they might have some biblical teaching, they’re sprinkling in false beliefs that are made to turn us away from the God of the Bible.
Following that, in our third week we talked about how false teachers will also diminish the use of the Scriptures. They relegate the Scriptures to a source to find God, rather than the source on which we are to build our understanding of who he is. And when the Scriptures are diminished, the twisting of Scripture to our own already held beliefs becomes easier to do.
Finally last week, we began talking about answering the question, who is God. We saw how Progressive Christianity changes God from a unique, close, and holy God, to a pantheistic being that we are basically a piece of. Progressive Christianity teachers diminish God, and elevate humanity to godhood. Yet, through the Scriptures, we saw how God is separate from his creation, desires relationship with it, and is working to bring us back to himself because he is a holy God.
From this understanding of the holiness of God, we move into the state of humanity. See one of the greatest questions we must answer as a human race is this: why is the world the way it is? Why is there pain and suffering? Why is there war and famine? Why is there hatred and malice? Is it because we’re evolving and are progressing towards a better society, or is it because we started perfect and fell into the mess we’re in? Now the historically accepted view in Christianity is that the world is in the mess it’s in, because of human sin. It’s because of humanity’s rebellion against God’s desired order, that the world experiences all the horrific things it does.
So what does Progressive Christianity teach? Dawn Hutchings writes this, “Intellectually, I may have understood that it’s long past time for Christians in the 21st century to abandon the idea that Christ died on a cross because God needed someone to balance the scale. I may have moved beyond understanding Jesus death on the cross as a sacrifice for sin. But I am only beginning to move beyond understanding the nature of humanity as something other than sinful.”(https://progressivechristianity.org/resources/moving-beyond-doctrines-of-original-sin-the-fall-and-maybe-even-the-doctrine-of-grace-so-that-we-can-embrace-our-role-in-the-evolution-of-humanity-a-sermon-on-genesis-38-15-for-pentecost/)
In his writing, “What Does Progressive Christianity Believe?”, Delwin Brown writes of God’s role being to nudge creation, as he puts it, “from less to more adequate forms and processes. . . .The call to repent and move away from self-centeredness, beyond racism, sexism, and homophobia toward economic and ecological justice is an experience of God.”
And in an interview for her book Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place, Danielle Shroyer states, “Scripture certainly talks about the universal reach of sin. But no passage or verse in scripture speaks definitively to the concept of an inborn sin nature. We can take sin seriously without going there. After all, Jesus didn’t believe in original sin, and the disciples and the early church didn’t either. What we see in scripture is a story of people sometimes behaving terribly and people sometimes behaving righteously. It’s often the same people. Some call that a sin nature. I think we simply call it human nature.” (https://religionnews.com/2017/01/13/author-jesus-didnt-believe-in-original-sin-and-neither-should-we/).
In other words, Progressive Christianity’s view on the issue of sin, is that sin isn’t a state of being that we are to be saved from, but rather something we need to grow away from. A similar belief to this idea of progressive sinlessness is found in eastern religions such as Buddhism, where the goal is to release the restraints that cause suffering in this life. In a sense, Progressive Christianity is looking for those things that would release us from what causes bad things to happen.
So let’s look at what the Bible says about the state of humanity. First, Danielle Shroyer states that the idea of original sin is nowhere in the Bible. And she’s right in so far as the terminology of “original sin” is not in the Bible. But Shroyer misunderstands the concept of original sin. See the theological concept of original sin is sometimes misunderstood as to say that when you are born you have sinned. But that’s not actually the concept. Instead, listen to how the Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms states what the concept of original sin is, “Strictly speaking original sin is the sate of alienation from God into which all humans are born…Historically, original sin was connected to the discussion about the manner in which Adam’s sin affects all humans such as through the transmission of Adam’s fallen nature or through God’s imputation (crediting) of Adam’s sin.”
In other words, the theological concept of original sin isn’t that a baby sins, but rather that every human is born into a state of separation from God because of Adam’s, or the original, sin. But is this what the Bible teaches?
The most direct verse on the subject comes in David’s 51st Psalm, in the 5th verse, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
But we, see this concept in other places of Scripture as well. In Genesis 8:21, after Noah makes an alter in worship of God at the end of the flood, listen to what happens next, “And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.’”
Then in Ecclesiastes 9:3, Solomon makes a point of speaking about the evil of children when he writes, “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. (ESV)”
If that’s not enough, when we move over to the New Testament Paul famously writes these words in Romans 7:15-20, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
So the concept of original sin, and the idea of a sin nature itself is biblically solid. We each are born into a state of sin, that has been passed to every human since the first sin of Adam. (Which, as a side note, we know that it’s not because of children that parents sin, because Adam didn’t have children when he sinned.) And so we are produced in an environment that calls us to sin, and we are inclined to do just that.
And so, when Paul writes this in Romans 3:10-12, “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”, he is stating that all of humanity falls into sin, and therefore none are sinless in front of God.
But our thought might jump to, if we are born into a state where we can sin, doesn’t this mean that God has caused us to sin? To which James, the half-brother of Jesus, writes in the first chapter of his letter these words, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
So, though we are born in a situation where sin is rampant, with the temptation to sin being all around us, and leads to more situations where we are more inclined to sin than to not, it is our own giving into temptation that brings ourselves into sin, not the fact that we are born into the situation of a sinful humanity.
So the Scriptures are clear, yes there is original sin and every human from the Adam down has participated in that sin. Therefore Paul’s words in Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” are rightfully all inclusive. And if we’re truthful with ourselves we would agree that we have sinned, we have done things in our lives that God has called evil. Things like lying, stealing, lusting, and much more. But we usually brush it off, as Shroyer did, as simply being human. But it’s more than that.
Now, if we all do have sin, we must ask the question what is the end result of sin. In Progressive Christianity, as I shared from Delwin Brown earlier, it is to, “…move away from self-centeredness, beyond racism, sexism, and homophobia toward economic and ecological justice…” So for Progressive Christianity, and beliefs like it, sin is something that we as humans move away or evolve beyond, by rejecting certain attitudes, actions, and beliefs. This is a works based religion. In beliefs like Progressive Christianity, we are the ones who are to fix the problem of sin, by simply being better.
But the Scriptures say differently. One of the most quoted verses in the Bible is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But if we continue reading, we realize the state of humanity as it is right now, “17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believe in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
And so, when Paul writes later in Ephesians 2, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (v.1-3).”
We get a realization that humanity is not progressing to a state of sinlessness, but rather we’re stuck in a state of sin. And so, the answer can’t be, just be a better human, because sin is only getting us to one place, and that’s death of the body, and eternal separation from God, starting with hell and moving into the lake of fire.
But there’s good news says the Word of God. We already read some of it in Jesus words in John 3:18, “Whoever believes in him (Jesus) is not condemned…”
And in Ephesians 2, if we kept reading there, Paul writes, “4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (4-10).”
And so, God is the one who breaks the power of sin, and it’s through Jesus. Anyone who places their trust in Jesus as Savior, which means, those who recognize their sin and separation from God; who come face-to-face with the reality that they can’t progress enough to the standard of God’s perfection because he is a holy and perfect God; if they accept Jesus’ work on the Cross, they stand before God sinless, not because of themselves, but because of Jesus.
See we have a tendency to sweep sin under the rug, because we don’t want to accept the reality that we’re lost to it. We want to be able to pull ourselves up by our own boot straps and be good enough, but the reality is, we can’t. We’ve allowed sin to take a hold on us, and now, we can’t break free. But praise God, he has given us a way to defeat sin, and become the person he created us to be. That’s through Jesus’ work on the cross, and codified by Jesus’ resurrection. And when we die and shed this dying sin filled shell, he will clothe us in a new body, that sin has not touched nor ever will.
But we have to accept it. We have to accept Jesus’ work on our behalf. And next week, we will be diving into that work, because it’s only through Jesus that sin can be dealt with in our lives and in the world.
But this week I want to challenge you with this: have you come face-to-face with your sin? Have you accepted that you are a sinner. Personally, when I share stories with you, I want you to understand that I know I am a sinner, and so, as often as I can, I share with you how I have sinned. To recognize and accept ourselves as sinners is a hard thing to do, because then we have to accept what we know to be true, we’re not perfect, we can’t fix it, and we need God to step in.
If you haven’t come to that realization that you’re a sinner, I want to challenge you to really struggle with it this week. You might not believe in God, but I would challenge you to ask him to reveal it to you.
For those of you who have come face-to-face with your sin, you might have accepted Jesus years ago, and you know you’re going to be with him eternity, that’s great! But I want to challenge you this week with, are you playing with sin? Watching that show your should’t, using that language you shouldn’t, drinking or taking that thing you shouldn’t? We who have had our sin forgiven, we don’t do the things God calls us to do because it gets us into heaven, we do the things God calls us to do because we appreciate what he has done, and want to live ever closer to his holiness. We take God’s words of, “be holy as I am holy,” very seriously. So this week, ask of God what is one area in your life that you have allowed sin to have a home, and seek the Holy Spirit to clean it out.
Let us come to the understanding of who God says we are. We might be sinners headed to a state of death and separation from our Creator, but God is reaching out to us right now for each of us to come to him. We might be saved from our sin and are now a child of God, so let us live in the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us be who God created and called us to be today. Amen.
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