All Have Sinned

The Severity of Our Sin

A Lack Luster Easter

Coming off an Easter service, I have a bad taste in my mouth. It is not because of a distaste for the holiday, or because I do not observe it. No, it is primarily due to the preaching that presided over the service, and the lack of severity given to our sin in this Easter sermon. Our offence to God was reduced to merely "acts of sin" and morality teaching. The depth of our sin was reduced to a mere breaking of rules God has set in place for us. This is a gross misunderstanding of reprobation, and our offenses toward God.

I was truly unnerved by the entire sermon, as my wife would confirm, and it is not my practice to criticize a pastor's sermon. To prepare and give a sermon is quite difficult, but this is more than a poorly prepared sermon, it is a major problem I have witnessed among the majority of Christianity where I live, and often times in the popular Christian culture. We need to understand the depth of our sin, as humanity, before we can fully appreciate the work of Christ on the Cross.

Sin is our nature

The passage used as the base text ( not that any other text was necessarily referenced) came out of James 4:17. The passage is as follows: "Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him this is sin" (NASB). This, for this pastor, became the definition of sin itself, omission of the "right choice" is our sin problem. My choosing to steal a pencil in the sixth grade is why God, Jesus, descended into humanity and take up the cross? This is why he became sin, was for my omission to do the right thing? This does not seem like the need for a substitutionary death.

The issue goes much deeper than just surface actions, sins of wrong doing or immoral living. Those are merely symptoms of the problem at hand. This issue of sin is much deeper, it is a nature problem, a soul issue. Our problems stems out of our very nature to be turned against God, to have no desire for the things of God and we certainly do not pursue him (Rom. 3:10-12). This is in fact where we begin with God, we have fallen from him as a result of the fall described in Genesis.

Need for a savior

Now that it is established that our sin is much deeper than just an immoral action of omission. We now can begin to understand the need for a savior. It is precisely because we do not pursue God, nor do we have that ability because as Romans 3 tells us, no one does good. This puts us into a deficit with God, and we need to be able to atone for our offenses and general legal standing of guilt. How do we do this when we in our very nature, an attribute ingrained in us, causes us to stray far from him. This is the reason for the cross.

We need intercession. We need a mediator between us and God. The offense of our sin is so severe that the only price that may be satisfactory is death. We see this at the fall when God removes the immortality of man, condemning us to death (Gen. 3:19). We also see, in the Old Testament, that the institution of sacrificial death is the only means by which forgiveness takes place, this is done with animal sacrifice. Yet, the sacrifice of an animal was not sufficient and needed to be done continually for cleansing of sin.

It was necessary, to completely satisfy the penalty for our sins, man in the flesh would be sacrificed, put to death. But man alone can not forgive the sins of mankind, he himself is broken in sin. And God could not allow any to be forgiven without a sacrifice, and God alone is the only who can forgive sin. Also it should be mentioned, that God desired to give mercy because it is part of his nature. Therefore, it was necessary for God to become flesh (Jesus) and consisting of two natures: fully God and fully man. It was necessary for him to go to the cross, because as God he could forgive sin (the nature of our being) and as a man could be the substitutionary sacrifice to satisfy God's wrath against sin. It is in this work of Christ that the Apostle Paul can say, that in Christ, our debts have been satisfied in Christ (Col. 2:13-14).

Jesus is Much Bigger

The saving grace of Jesus Christ is more vast than we sometimes understand. We often take it for granted, and we forget that his sacrifice was so that we may have a right standing before God. His obedience on the cross was far more significant than to simply forgive me of stealing, fighting or taking his name in vain. While these are sins in action, the atonement was for so much more than just the symptoms of a disease. As Christians we mustn't forget this fact, without Christ we have no legal standing before God and are ourselves condemned to death.