Sin, Lies and Believing the Truth

Tim Chester, You Can Change

Sinful acts always have their origin in some form of unbelief. Behind every sin is a lie. The root of all our behavior and emotions is the heart—what it trusts and what it treasures. . . . [Our] problem is futile thinking, darkened understanding, and ignorant hearts. This is the cause of indulgence, impurity, and lust. We sin because we believe the lie that we are better off without God, that his rule is oppressive, that we will be free without him, that sin offers more than God (73-74).

This is a radical view of sin. It means many of our negative emotions are sinful because they’re symptoms of unbelief—the greatest sin and the root sin (75).

Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians

There is simply no other way to compete with the forebodings of my conscience, the condemnings of my heart, and the lies of the world and the Devil than to overwhelm such things with daily rehearsings of the gospel (14; emphasis added).

Psalm 62:11-12

One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done.

Aaron Orendorff

In the wake of the powerfully redemptive tone of Psalm 62:11-12a, the close of v. 12 appears at first somewhat disconcerting. To begin with, David opens v. 11 by stating, quite straightforwardly, that when it comes to God there are two basic truths that outshine everything else; two fundamental, divine realities that are absolutely foundational to who God is and what He does: (1) God is strong and (2) God is love. Nothing could be more reassuring and worship inducing (particularly to sinful, hurting people) than those two facts. However (even with these two truths firmly in mind), given my own personal history, the last thing I’d want is for God to then move on to “rewarding” me “according to what [I have] done.” These two thoughts—God’s strong love and just recompense—appear (especially when measured against the brokenness and evil of my own life) at definite odds.

In addition to this particular tension, we read throughout the Psalter statements that likewise seem far to the contrary of the seemingly natural interpretation of v. 12’s close. Statements like, “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you” (Ps. 143:2), and even more plainly, “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (103:10). Neither of these texts (nor the numerous others like them) sit well with a God who simply “gives us what we deserve.” The close of v. 12, then, cannot simply mean that God is (though at times strong and loving) at the end of the day a God of pure and strict justice, devoid of grace and mercy.

Instead, when placed in context, David is pleading with God to deliver him from his enemies. He is asking for God to vindicate him because (in this instance) he is truly in the right. Part of that vindication is rooted in the belief that God is a God of justice, just as he is a God of strength and love. David is not asserting his inherent status as a more righteous human being than those standing against him; even less is he pitting his life record against God’s perfect standard. He is simply pleading with God to save him from the false and wicked men “attacking” him and speaking lies (62:3). In the face of dire circumstance, David looks to God. He entrusts himself to “him who judges justly” (1 Pet. 2:23).

Far from undercutting God’s strength and love, his justice supports them. The truths to which vv. 11-12 point (and likewise the “lies” which they confront) are profound.

If we believe God is weak (and, by implication, not strong), then we will be full of fear and doubtful as to whether or not He can help us. If God is weak, then we will be compelled to “take control” of our situation, to fend for ourselves, and to protect what’s ours (whether that be relationships, property, reputations, or even our emotions).

Similarly, if we believe that God is not loving, then we simply will not trust him to take care of us. Not only will we doubt whether or not He can help us; we’ll even doubt whether or not He’s willing to help us. If God is not fundamentally loving, then we will be compelled to either find other sources of love (dark, shallow, ultimately unsatisfying sources) or to prove ourselves to Him and earn his love.

On the other hand, because God is strong, I can trust that nothing that happens to me is outside of His control; nothing is bigger than Him. Because God is strong, I can admit that I am weak and rest in His care, protection, and sovereignty. I don’t need to be in control because God already is.

Similarly, because God is loving, I don’t have to prove myself or earn His affection. He loves me in spite of who I am and has demonstrated His love most powerfully through His Son. Because God is loving, I can trust that He wants to take care of me, will never abandon me, or leave me to fed for myself. I don’t have to search for love or earn it, but can rest in the love that already is.

Participating in the Sin-Suffering Way of Jesus

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

The servant [in Isaiah 52:13—53:12] serves God. That goes without saying. But the distinctive thing that comes into focus . . . is that the servant serves God by serving the sinner, by taking the sinner’s place, taking the consequences of sin, doing for the sinner what he or she is helpless to do for himself, herself.

This is the gospel way to deal with what is wrong with the world, deal with this multifaceted sin-cancer that is mutilating and disabling us. . . . [W]hether the wrong is intentional or inadvertent, the servant neither avoids it in revulsion nor attacks it by force of words or arms. Instead, the servant embraces, accepts, suffers in the sense of submitting to the conditions and accepting the consequences (177).

[W]hile the suffering and death of Jesus is definitive and complete, there is more—and the more has to do with our participation in what Jesus accomplishes in his suffering and death. . . . The overall pervading concern of the text is that every follower of the gospel shall embrace the identity of servant in the very terms in which the Prophet of Exile presents it . . . . Much as we try to get out of it or find a way around it, there is simply no following Jesus that does not involve suffering and rejection and death. No exceptions (178).

The uniqueness that is Jesus does not exclude us from participation in his servant ways. We can—we must—participate in Jesus’ work the way Jesus did it and does it and only in the way Jesus did and does it, obedient and joyful servants as we follow our servant Savior who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45) (179).

Sin is not redeemed by scrubbing it out of existence but by taking it in as a sacrifice that makes “many to be accounted righteous.” This is obviously what Jesus did. We, of course, are not Jesus; we cannot do this in and of ourselves. But we can participate in what Jesus does with the sins of the world, the sins in the church, the sins in our family, as he takes and suffers them. We can enter the way of Jesus’ cross and becomes participants in Jesus’ reconciliation of the world. Salvation is not escape from what is wrong but a deep, reconciling embrace of all that is wrong.

This is a radical shift from condemning sin and sinners—an ugly business at best. We no longer stand around as amused or disapproving spectators of the sins or troubles of others but become fellow sufferers and participants in the sacrificial life of Jesus (184).

Aaron Orendorff

Dealing with the sins of others is messy work. The points of contact where another person’s sin overlaps with our own disheveled lives often feel like war-zones. It makes little difference whether we’re the one’s actually being sinned against or if we’re simply “collateral damage.” Pain is still pain. Dealing with sin—in whatever form—defiles and deconstructs. The wages of sin is death (inescapably).

In those moments, what we want (or rather I should say: what I want, what I desperately want) is to simply do away with it, to condemn it—sin and sinner alike—to escape it, to “scrub it out” and wash my hands of the whole affair. It’s always easier to just avoid the business of other people’s sin, to check-out, to distance ourselves from the mess, create a fortress and hunker down.

The way of the gospel, however, will not allow this. The way of the gospel calls us not to condemn sin but to bear it. To enter in, with eyes wide-open to the pain and dirt of their trouble. The gospel calls us to give our lives away—our emotions, financial security, reputations, health—as an act of saying, “I believe in Jesus. I believe in his way. I will suffer your sin, not reject it; I will suffer it with you as he suffered for me.”

The degree to which we suffer the sins of others is the degree to which we have understood how Jesus suffered for ours.

Sin, Forgiveness and Confession

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

Praying with David, who knew a good deal about sin, we soon learn that the remedy for sin is not the extermination of sin, not long training in not-sinning, not a rigorous program conditioning us in a pavlovian revulsion to sin. The only effective remedy for sin is the forgiveness of sin—and only God can forgive sin. If we refuse to deal with God, we are left dealing with sin by means of punishment or moral education or concocting some strategy of denial. None seem to make much of dent in the sin business. No. The way, the only way, is to get in on God’s forgiveness. And we do that by confession (91).

Confession is a way out of the puny, self-deceiving, mulish contrivances we attempt in order to manage sin on our own. Confession is entrance into the vast world of forgiveness, encompassed with God’s deliverance and steadfast love (92).

An Immersion in [Imperfect] Humanity

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

There is not the slightest effort given in the biblical story to make David admirable in any moral or spiritual sense. And yet there is the assumption in all of this that flawed and faithless and failed as he is, he is representative—not a warning against be behavior but a witness, inadvertent as it was, to the normalcy, yes, the inevitability of imperfection (82).

The life of David is a labyrinth of ambiguities, not unlike our own. What we admire about David does not cancel out what we abhor, and what we abhor does not cancel out what we admire. David is not a model for imitation; David is not a candidate for a pedestal. The David story is an immersion in humanity, no different from the humanity conditioned by our culture and flawed by our sins. The story of David is a not a story of what God wants us to be but a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us. David’s story is told with so much detail so that we will have spread out before us exactly what goes on in a thoroughly lived human life in which God is shaping a life of salvation (88).

Sin and Why We Lie

This afternoon I spent some time with a friend looking at Isaiah 14:11-15, a passage that, although addressed (historically speaking) to the king of Babylon, has been found by many to be indirectly aimed at Satan as a paradigm for sin. The passage reads:

Your pomp is brought down to Sheol [the grave], the sound of your harps; maggots are laid as a bed beneath you, and worms are your covers. How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit.

The point being made (regardless of who the passage is ultimately about) is this: sin (in its essence) is elevating something that isn’t God (in this case, ourselves) to the place of God. Tim Keller, using idolatry as an organizing principle, puts it like this: “Sin is taking a good thing and making it ultimate.” Like the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14, our great sin is trying to be god for ourselves—trying to be the sovereign king or queen of our own private kingdoms.

So, if that’s what sin is, then why do we sin?

The basic answer is simple: we sin because we’ve stopped trusting and relying on God to be God and have started to play the role ourselves. As an example, let’s take something as seemingly mundane as lying.

Why do we lie?

All lying is done as an attempt to protect ourselves from other people knowing the truth about who we really are. In other words, we lie to keep people from discovering—from actually seeing—the “real” us. We do this in one of two ways. Either we lie to hid something about us that really is true (something that if other people knew would cause them to think less of us) or we lie to create something about us that’s false (something that if other people believed would cause them to think more highly of us). On the one side, we lie to keep our reputation afloat; on the other, we lie to elevate it. In both instances what we’re doing is trying to control the way other people see us, think about us and regard us.

This means that every external, mouth-lie grows out of an internal, heart-choice that says: “What other people think of me is more important than what God thinks of me. I like them more than I like God. I need their approval more than I need God. I depend on their love and security more than I depend on God’s.”

The antidote for lying then (as with all sin) isn’t to simply buckle-down and just tell the truth. No. The real antidote for lying is to believe that God is God, to trust that what the Creator and King of the universe says about us is what really matters. And to believe that, in union with Christ, what he says about us isn’t rooted in who we are but in who Jesus is.

Two Sides to Pride

The Valley of Vision, “Shortcomings”

My sin is to look on my faults and be discouraged,
or to look on my good and be puffed up (85).

Aaron Orendorff

There are two sides to the sin called pride. On the one hand, there is blatant and overt pride: the belief that we are fundamentally “better than.” This sort of pride is easily identified; it is pride as we know it; pride in its most recognizable form; scarlet letter pride with an emblazoned, capital “P” painted across its chest.

But there is another form of pride that is much more subtle, much more insidious. While overt pride flourishes in the light, its underside hides in the dark. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tellingly calls this sin “pride in reverse.” Not that it is the opposite of pride (i.e., un-pride), but rather that it is pride run off in another direction. The motive and power are still the same, but its shape is different.

Reverse-pride wallows. It revels in self-pity. It moans of embarrassment and shame. Reverse-pride often feels like justice—particularly if we’re in the wrong or if we’ve legitimately messed-up—but it does nothing to bring us closer to God or other people. Reverse-pride is built on the assumption that I am the center of the world, that if I fail, the world will fail (or at least the small part of the world I’m desperately trying to rule and control).

Humility (that which is legitimately “un-pride”) begins not by degrading or devaluing ourselves, but by recognizing who we actually are: we are not God. God is God and the world (even our petty corner of it) is His, not ours. Humility aims to forget itself by refocusing its attention on God as God. It delights to see God made much of (whether through us or not). Humility brings freedom from the crushing self-centered weight of both success (“better than”) and failure.

Ananias and Sappira

Acts 4:34—5:5

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it.

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Vol. 1)

The account of Ananias and Sappira . . . is disturbing on several grounds. . . . Four observations focus the issue:

First, revival does not guarantee the absence of sin in a community. . . .

Second, the issue is not so much the disposition of the money that Ananias and Sappira obtained when they sold a piece of property as the lie they told. . . . It was this claim to sanctity and self-denial, this pretense of generosity and piety, that was so offensive. Left unchecked, it might well multiply. It would certainly place into positions of honor people whose conduct did not deserve it. But worse, it was a blatant lie against the Holy Spirit—as if the Spirit of God could not know the truth, or would not care. . . .

Third, another element of the issue was conspiracy. . . .

Fourth, in times of genuine revival, judgment may be more immediate than in times of decay (July 18).

Dynamics of Spiritual Life - Sin

Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal (pg. 88-9)

The structure of sin in the human personality is something far more complicated than the isolated acts and thoughts of deliberate disobedience commonly designated by the word. In its biblical definition, sin cannot be limited to isolated instances or patters of wrong doing; it is something much more akin to the psychological term complex: an organic network of compulsive attitudes, beliefs and behavior deeply rooted in our alienation from God. Sin originated in the darkening of the human mind and heart as man turned from the truth about God to embrace a lie about him and consequently a whole universe of lies about his creation. Sinful thoughts, words and deeds flow forth from this darkened heart automatically and compulsively, as water from a polluted fountain.

Augustine divided the trunk of the flesh into two main branches, pride (self-aggrandizement) and sensuality (self-indulgence), which in their interaction together might be held to generate most other forms of sin. Luther, however, perceived that the main root of the flesh behind pride and sensuality was unbelief; and his analysis takes in some forms of sin which are apparently ‘selfless’ and altruistic, like ethical behavior of atheistic humans. In any case, the characteristic bent of the flesh is toward independence from God, his truth and his will, as if man himself were God. Therefore the flesh might be called a ‘God complex.’ Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr and Tillich are not wrong, however, in suggesting that anxiety is at the root of much sinful behavior, since the unconscious awareness of our independence from God and an unrelieved consciousness of guilt creates a profound insecurity in the unbeliever or the Christian who is not walking in light. This insecurity generates a kind of compensatory egoism, self-oriented but somewhat different from serious pride. Thus much of what is called pride is actually not godlike self-admiration, but masked inferiority, insecurity and deep self-loathing.

Luther was right: the root behind all other manifestations of sin is compulsive unbelief – our voluntary darkness concerning God, ourselves, his relationship to the fallen world and his redemptive purposes. For this reason the entrance and growth of new spiritual life involves the shattering of our sphere of darkness by repentant faith in redemptive truth. If the Fall occurred through the embracing of lies, the recovery process of salvation must center on faith in truth, reversing this condition…The truth used by the Holy Spirit to bring about this deliverance is the biblical teaching which reveals to us our need, God’s character and the elements of redemptive truth concerning Jesus Christ. This truth is the central core of the dynamics of continuous renewal.