sin (composed for church newsletter)

Perhaps it’s the impending arrival of Reformation Sunday later this month, or perhaps it’s simply the reality of the growing stack of papers and assignments that I really should be grading faster than I am (and the lessons that I should be planning), but one of my favorite subjects is right at the front of my mind this October:

Sin!

Seriously.

Sin is, of course, bad.  It causes harm; it results in hurt; it limits our capacity to be God’s hands and feet in this world.

That said: raise your hand if you’re completely without sin!

(If you aren’t sitting on your hands right now, think a little harder.)

The truth is that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  We all screw up.  We speak the words of Confession and Forgiveness and then we grumble five minutes later when something that annoys us happens.  We take God’s wonderful gift into our bodies during Communion and then we go home and procrastinate, or yell at the cat, or think ill of our fellow neighbor—the one with the lawn sign for the candidate we (sinfully) believe represents evil incarnate.

None of these things is exactly ax murder, right?  We are good people.  We do good things.  And we do—I’m not poking fun in the least.  The unsettling reality, however, is that Jesus reminded us that intention is sin just as action is sin, that we should attend to the logs in our own eyes before we turn to the specks (or even the old-growth timber) we see in others’. 

Martin Luther recognized this, and it nearly drove him nuts.  He tried and he tried, and he simply could not free himself of sin.  Perhaps some of you can imagine how frustrating that would be.  I’m sure we all go through our perfectionist periods when we try, and we try, and we try… and then realize we’re mentally slandering another, or coveting someone’s beautiful new car, or staring at someone cute while we play with our wedding ring, or telling a lie—or feeling excessive pride in our righteousness!   

Sin is sin is sin.  We assign sin to different categories in our culture because it is necessary to maintain order and live harmoniously in community.  Murder is punished more severely than assault; thinking about how much you’d like to hit someone is different than actually doing it.  Our unforgiving culture might have pilloried Jimmy Carter way back when for “committing adultery in [his] heart,” but most of us would consider that far less problematic than if he’d really been running around on Rosalynn.

Jesus’ words seem to indicate, however, that God does not make that distinction—and yet God sent his Son to die for us anyway!  We are forgiven despite our inability ever to rid ourselves wholly of sin.  At least, that’s the truth Martin Luther clung to once he read the words of grace he found in Romans, in Ephesians and elsewhere.  And it’s a truth I find deeply, deeply comforting.

We aren’t perfect.

We can’t be perfect. 

We are charged to do our best—see the verses from Ephesians that follow.   Our actions should be the manifestation of our thanksgiving for the grace we have been given.  Salvation doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing our best to live by the rules God has given us.  But we are saved.  We are loved—no matter what.  We can cling with steadfast hope to the promises of the Resurrection.

What a gift!

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.—Ephesians 2:8-10