Sin and Grace

We’re in a teaching series called, Elements where the past few weeks we have been exploring several different elements that are the building blocks of our faith. Or you could say, we’re looking at theological beliefs we have as Christians that help us understand why we believe what we believe. And since it’s been a couple weeks. Let me real quick do a. Recap. The first element we learned was God the Father.

One over all truth we learned was: Our heavenly father blesses us so that we might be a BLESSING to others. The second element we learned was God the Son where we asked the question, who is Jesus? And we can’t answer that question by just knowing the characteristics of a person. We know that we are in a deep commitment relationship when we can answer the question who is Jesus relationally.

One thing I want to remind us is this.. Only when we truly know someone deeply, can we answer who they are through relationship. Right? God the father blesses us so that we might be a blessing to others, but we come to know the Father by our saving relationship through His son, Jesus Christ. If your relationship to Christ is broken, then you will not come to know the father and his goodness.

John 14:7 In-Context says: 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” So we concluded, Relationship matters. To know the Father, we must know the Son. But there is a third part in this Trinity and it this…

The Holy Spirit. We learned that Jesus promised the holy Spirit. Even in the previous Scripture and context about the father that Jesus tells us in John 14..… 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. But if we look at verse 15 in that same chapter… 15 “If you love me, (Right! If you love me.. that’s a deep relationship by knowing Christ intimately.) If you love me, keep my commands.

16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Are you seeing this?

Because of our relationship to the Son, the Father knows us and then we are blessed even more greater because the Father sends to us through the Son the Holy Spirit who lives within us. And the best part is that we get to be a blessing to others because Jesus is living in us, and through us because of the Spirit. Then we learned about the Holy Scriptures. And how the scriptures is this amazing love story told by God and that we have a part in this overarching grand story from creation to revelation.

Right? God’s story is being lived out through our life. We are an amazing testimony to God’s goodness and grace. Yearning for the return of Christ, but living out our story for His glory right here and right now. But there’s an issue… we don’t always live for Christ do we? Today’s topic isn’t a fun one. Out of the 9 elements, there are two that are tough to preach and tough to listen to.

Those two are, Repentance, and sin. And both of these words are hard to talk about because they both require honesty and humility. Sin isn’t a fun topic because that means we need to reveal what doesn’t want to be revealed. Sin does not want to be revealed, and the only way to really uproot sin and for it to be revealed is by having a deep relational love for Christ.

It’s kind of like with my wife when I do something wrong. I want to tell her because I can not live hiding secretes from her. I love her… Love hides nothing. A attribute of love is honesty. Paul tells the corinthians, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” 1 Corinthians 13:6 When our love for Christ outweighs our desire to sin and to keep hold of sin and even hide sin, then and only then is sin found and uprooted from our hearts.

So, what is sin? Well, some would say that sin means missing the mark. It’s missing the mark of God’s standard. In a way, like the bow and arrow. We're missing the bullseye that we aimed for. But I’m not a fan of that definition. it’s not so much as making mistakes and errors as much as it’s falling short of God’s glory through conscious choosing of sin. If that’s true, then we need something better than just saying, sin is missing the mark because to me, that doesn’t help us relationally.

So I have two scriptures I want to share with you that I believe define what I believe sin is…. First, let’s look at this missing the mark part. The falling short part. It comes from Romans 3:23 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Now, that’s everyone. Paul writes, all have sinned. You, me, the person sitting next to you. Yes, they have sinned.

You’re a sinner sitting next to a sinner. Verse 9 even reminds us, “All people are under the power of sin.” Verse 23, all have sinned and fall short. That means we lack. We lack the glory of God. We all fall short. When we read this Scripture that all people sin, and fall short of the glory of God, that immediately should remind us that sin is a great equalizer.

That puts every person on the same level. We all have it! No matter how rich, how poor, how spiritual, how nice you dress! Or even how good you think you are. We all have sin in our lives. The second Scripture we need to couple with Romans 3:23 is Romans 1:23. “…and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Now, let me put this verse in some context.

Romans 1:23 talks about “exchanging the glory of God” for idols. Listen to what Paul writes: They knew God, but they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile, (Futile means they were fruitless in their thinking, they were ineffectual), Right? They knew about God, but they didn’t love Him. They came to church, but they weren’t engaged with worship, they read the Bible, but they never conversed with God, they listen to the sermons but they never made an effort towards real relationship with God and with others.

And since there was no relationship, they became futile, foolish in hearts, and their hearts were darkened and eventually, their hearts become hardened to grace. It’s the same story with Judas. How could someone follow Jesus, be in charge of the money of the group, but yet sell out his teacher and master and Lord? Judas betrays Jesus because he idolized money more than Jesus. Judas, became the poster child of 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” He had no true relationship. He showed us an disheartening example of what loving money and hating God can look like. So, we just learned that The Bible tells us that the early Christians would exchange the glory of God for idols. Now let me ask this important question… what do you, a modern day christian think is your favorite idol in life?

Let me help you if you’re wondering.. Let’s define Idol, “Anything in the world that successfully competes with our love for God is an idol.” So what is an idol. Is it your Work? Is it the money you have or want to have? Is it more Recreational time? Is it, you’re Family? Your wife or husband or kids. If you were to bring together all the idols that you can think of in your life and place them into this great big melting pot, what you would find is the most purist idol of all, ……

it’s ourselves. We prefer created glory over of God’s glory. We prefer the creation over God, and let’s be honest.. what is the pinnacle of God’s creation… it’s us, it’s humanity. We are created in God's image, we have been given God's exhale, the breath of life. We have been given the knowledge of good and evil. And we all have sinned and fallen short of what? The glory of God.

We have been given everything by God but there is one thing we crave more than anything else and it’s Never ours to have in this world, and that is to be glorified. John reminds us in revelation 4:11: “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” So, what is sin then?

Sin is the character of mind and heart of ourselves to prefer human glory, especially self glory over God’s glory. So Sins is the attitudes and words, and actions that are created from a fallen character of mind and heart that expects to be self glorified over glorifying God. When we lack the glory of God, we exchange our praise and adoration and affection away from God and onto idols, and more dangerously onto ourselves.

And then we find things, or other Idols in our life that bring us the most comfort. Because sins main goal is to self glorify. And to self glorify is a condition of the heart. And we’re born with it. We as Christians have two beliefs about sin. The first is original sin. Original sin is the tendency to sin and it is innate in all human being, Meaning we’re born in Sin inherited from Adam and is the consequence of the fall.

Remember Adam and Eve in the Garden? What happened? They chose themselves over God and put a crack in creation. And in the crack poured death. Romans 6 reminds us, "For the wages of sin is death, Every person in this room inherited death because of sin. It permeates throughout all of creation. Original sin is the sin inherited from the fall. The second belief is Personal sin. Personal sin is the intentional violation of a known law of God.

So what is a known law? Well let’s just look at the first one… you shall not have no other gods but me. Where do we put our affection and attention and adoration when we are in sin? We put those attributes on ourselves. We want to be self glorified. But here’s the thing about personal sin and original sin. Original sin manifests itself in the temptation of personal sin. Think of the life of King David.

David is living in peace, his men are off to war. HE sees a woman bathing, he takes her, she becomes pregnant, he tries to get her husband to come home so David doesn’t get caught in his evil act. That fails, so David has Uriah sent to his death on the front lines, Bathsheba's husband dies, David then marries her to over up his sin. Did David know all of this was wrong.

You betcha he did. That’s why he was covinergin it up. Sin is characterized by the adultery and murder, while those are known sins, the real sin is that David was not living the way he is called to lived. The adultery and murder was the Personal sin, manifesting from His original sin that David was responsible for. Original sin, what we are born with always manifest itself in our personal sin.

Because Sin is a battle of the mind, at war with our heart, and played out through our flesh. Played out through our relating to anything or anyone else. It’s played out through our desire to be above all creation and even above God himself. SO here’s the truth.. since we are talking about defining the relationship through our series, Elements….. what we realize is that…. Sin is a relational issue.

All sin is a relational issue between us and God. But The best part of the story of David is the part where the prophet Nathan confronts David and he repents. Accountability is amazingly awesome when it is received with humility and what did David do… he repented. David repented because he realized that his relationship between him and God was broken. David had Nathan, but we have someone greater. We have the Holy Spirit.

And while Sin is a great equalizer, meaning that knowing we all fall short of God’s glory, we all have sinned. Right. No one here is above that truth. We all were born with original sin, and we all have personal sin and that makes us the same. The greater equalizer than sin…. is God’s grace. Let’s go back into our Scripture in Romans chapter 3… and read a little more starting back in verse 23.

. 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (We are equal in our sin) but how does grace make things better? Look in verse 24. 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. Grace is given as a gift because of the shedding of the blood of Christ and it’s to be received by faith.

Church, listen… to have a right relationship with God begins at the cross. This is why communion is so important to us as Christians. The elements reminds us of*