Kingdom Holiness and Sin

In the newest Relevant Magazine (type in p. 62), I have a piece on sin. Some of the points I make are that there is a widespread apathy about sin because we’ve embraced a God who is so gracious and loving that God has become avuncular, or a God who will ignore our sins. Another point I make is that sin wounds, always wounds, and it wounds because it eats away at our character and our capacity to love and to become holy.

But this raises the question of how we define sin, and for many sin is defined in narrowly legalistic categories. Sin is offense against one of God’s many, many laws. Sin then becomes a kind of checklist — did I do this one or did I not? Trot out the laws, all 613 of them, and see how we measure up. Or, take the big ones — the Ten Commandments — and test myself on how I am doing.

There can be no doubt that sin can be defined legally because there’s a legal dimension to how sin is understood in the Bible. But there’s so much more, and I would contend a legal definition of sin reduces sin to manageable proportions. Sin is robust in the Bible. It is personal, deeply personal — and that is why Jesus had to reinstate Peter.

I’m convinced we don’t read Genesis 3 carefully enough; I’m convinced we don’t see the inner fabric of the Ten Commandments well enough; and I’m convinced we don’t understand the gospel focus on Jesus as Messiah (King) and Lord. So, let me give a whirl at this on this site. What I’m arguing is that sin is in its essence usurpation. Sin makes us usurpers; as usurpers we sin. Sin is about our desire, an aching desire, to be God ourselves.

In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve wanted to be God. In the first two commandments we are taught to make God truly God because the essential command is to live before God as the one true God. And in the Gospels we learn that Jesus is the face of God whom we are to follow.

Hence, as can be found on nearly every page of One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow , the Christian life is about following Jesus, and following Jesus is “kingdom holiness.” This call became concrete reality on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, particularly Capernaum (to the left). We reduce sin to manageable proportions when we reduce the “Christian life” to “accepting Jesus” (not carefully understanding even what “accepting” means) and when we fail to see the massive focus of Jesus on “following him.” Sin, in other words, is the failure to follow Jesus — and following Jesus is about the first two commandments because it is about making God truly God in our life, and following Jesus is ultimately what Adam and Eve faced in the Garden of Eden: either do what God calls us to do or not.

Sin is about usurping, and for us Christians that usurping takes on a powerful christological shape in the NT: it’s about Jesus, it’s about following him. When we choose not to follow Jesus, we choose to become usurpers.

Sin is not reduceable to a checklist. It’s too deadly serious for that.