students of jesus

Sin is ravaging the church today, but the old ways of talking about sin clearly do not help us. We have to find new ways of talking about it. Could this be true—the degree to which we choose to vilify the sins of others is the degree to which we feel compelled to hide our own? That’s a formula for alienation without and cancer within.

Our need is great: God’s people, who the Bible describes as “holy and beloved,” and “a royal priesthood,” are suffering the effects of sin. In North America church-going Christians are shipwrecked on the same shoals of those who do not claim to walk with God. Sin—my sin—is all the more devastating among we who claim freedom in Christ. The church, God’s future bride, and the “pillar and support of the truth” is unable to attain her divinely appointed destiny because the effects of sin are not only personal, but also corporate.

These three: the personal costs of sin, the corporate weakness caused by sin, and the loss of our destiny, each cry out for our attention:

The Personal Costs of Sin

Sin isn’t about breaking the rules: it’s about breaking relationship. Consider Adam and Eve: their sin did not cause God to stay away from the Garden. Our first parents hid from the Creator. They tried to hide their nakedness from one another. What was broken was their ability to relate to God, not God’s ability to relate to them. What was broken was their ability to see the beauty of God’s work in their spouse. Sin does, indeed, cause separation, but we are the ones running, and we’re running from the one who knows us best and loves us most; we are running from each other.

Corporate Weakness Caused by Sin

When the community of faith ignores its own sin the entire congregation is weakened. There was a time when Christian community life evoked a sense of awe among its own people: we saw the presence of God in one another and loved one another because God we could see God’s favor on every person gathered. (Take a moment to see the glory of the early church, depicted in Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:31-35.)

We are not limited to Bible times to see the possibilities God’s people. When Rome was in decline, Celtic Christians burned bright a thousand miles away. The friends of Saint Francis were a joyful loving community while Europe was in darkness. The Moravian and Wesleyan communities testify to the beauty of holiness. Even our own personal experiences offer glimpses of the order and peace when God’s people dwell together in unity. Sadly, the consequences of sin go beyond the me-me my-my choices we make. Personal sin erodes the strength of the church.

Loss of Our Destiny

Finally, our message and mission as God’s people are lost when we ignore the dreadful cost of sin. Do we need to elaborate? What glory does a church gain by calling out the sins of others while ignoring the sin within? We criticize those outside the church and turn a blind eye to our own practices. We rank sin and (unsurprisingly) consider the sins of unbelievers worse than our own. We cry out against the sexual habits of others while our own sexuality falls far short of God’s good intentions. We condemn the greed of others while we build ever-bigger church silos. Examples abound: the world doesn’t care whether the church is missional or attractional if they smell the same scent of death among us.

Old Sin, New Ways

If we dare talk about sin we must do so personally first. And second. If we demonstrate the joys and blessings of obedience our talk of sin becomes sound counsel: “Here is God’s best intention for you—anything else falls short of the quality of life for which you were born.”

There is beauty in holiness, adorned in the humility of a people who know they are forgiven. This is the beauty of Heaven, where God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. That starts with me. The world desperately needs the aroma of the bread of life, not the harsh stink of criticism and judgment. Imagine the savor and beauty of a holy people. Perhaps we could start a conversation about sin by envisioning the abundant life Jesus offers?