Today’s question, the 2nd
one in our 3 week sermon series “Questions from the Pews” is this: “Why sin is so easy and being a Christian
so hard?”
There
is a lot packed into this singular question.
What is sin? For example, are we
talking little s—foibles and folly, or big S, a controlling power?
What does it mean to be a human
being? Are we inclined to evil, made that way, corrupted, or what?
What does it mean, as well, to be a
Christian? Are we talking about being polite—“That was a right Christian thing you did today.” Or about community
values, or about a relationship with Christ?
But,
before I venture too far off into the weeds with all this, I’ll give a simple
answer to the question “Why is sin so easy
and being a Christian so hard?”
Sin is easy because we’re mortals / infected by Sin.
Being Christian is both impossible and easy.
Prayer
Sin is easy because we’re mortals
infected
by Sin.
We’re
mortal.
This
has two very practical implications. 1. We’re afraid of death. 2. We have a
limited understanding of the world around us.
We’re
afraid of death—not always
obviously, but so much of what we do is a denial of this firm reality.
Everything from…
societal obsession with youth culture
to the way we talk euphemistically
about funerals
to the general disregard we show for
those generations who will live after we ourselves are dead.
The
shadow of death that looms over our lives clouds our judgment, and makes us
more closed fisted than we ought to be, more concerned about self and
self-preservation than is sane for a species such as our own.
Death,
also, is the ultimate blinder.
Our limited nature
—that we can only experience and know
so much
—makes all of our choices unsteady
and ambiguous.
Our viewpoint, both as individuals
and as a species, is so limited that when the Unlimited One showed up,
when Jesus showed up,
we crucified him.
We were unable to recognize the one
who recognized us from before we were born, from before creation was created!
It is as Jesus says from the cross, “They know not what they do.”
We’re infected by sin.
Sin
isn’t simply individual accidents,
or bad habits,
or even sins plural,
instead it is a force, a power that
controls us
—Sin,
singular
with a capital S.
As
Paul writes in Romans, Sin has captured us, and not only us, but the Law
itself. The Law of God, a good thing, is used to a bad end.
So too we, good and beautiful
creatures created in the image of God, are used to a bad end.
Think of it:
Cowardice overshoots
courage and becomes rashness.
Selfishness
overshoots love and becomes enabling.
Paul
describes this situation we’re in as being captured,
being sold into slavery,
so we can’t do the very thing we wish
to do, because our vile master, Sin, has control over us.
Or,
thinking of a more up-to-date description
—Sin is an addiction we can not
break.
Or
as I like to think of it, Sin is an infection
—a disease that has overcome us all,
a cancer that has transformed good
cells into destructive ones
—using the best as the worst.
Our individual sinful actions are
simply symptoms of the wider disease,
a contagion raging through the whole
world to such an extent that we don’t even notice we’re all infected.
A parasite plugged into each one of
us that will not let go.
Why
can’t I quit sin, because it’s inside of me
… just as an infected person can’t
simply stop infecting, because it is inside of them. More than that, it has
infected the whole earth and holds it in its sway.
Yes,
Sin is easy because we’re mortals, blinded and made stingy by death.
Yes,
Sin is easy because we’re infected by Sin, captured and surrounded by its
power.
Being
Christian is both impossible and easy.
If
being Christian is about being good,
about healing ourselves from the infection
of sin,
of freeing ourselves from the slaver
sin,
or becoming a dry drunk by not acting
on our addictions and at the same time not dealing with the underlying problems
—treating symptoms but not diseases
—then Christianity is impossible.
If
being a Christian is an action, a disposition, something we do and we are…
synonymous with nice,
or clean,
or some other virtue,
some symptom of church attendance or
something
—the little c christian to balance
out the little s-plural sins,
then it is impossible,
for we can neither will ourselves to
be Christ-like,
nor push past sin,
nor barrel-roll away from death.
But,
if being Christian is about God acting for us, then it is not impossible, nor
even hard, it is easy.
Think of Samson who we encountered
last week—a schmuck among schmucks, yet God was faithful, being a person of
faith was easy because God stuck with him.
Or
look at Paul in Romans… he reaches a breaking point—the impossibility of this
life of sin we live:
“I delight in the Law of God—but I make war
against myself!
“I
battle sin on the outside, but am already captured by sin on the inside!
“Who
will save a wretch like me?
“Who
can rescue one such as me? I, in whom death dwells?”
To
which he responds with this glorious affirmation, “Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord.”
He
throws his hands up in despair at the impossibility of it all, but then flips
his palms up in a posture of praise!
It was that simple,
that easy
—Christ Jesus did it for him.
In
the face of death,
the curdling of our generosity,
Christ opens his hands to all from
the cross.
In
the face of death and the way it blinds us,
Christ intercedes with his father,
“They don’t know what they’re doing, forgive them!”
Enslaved
by Sin,
Christ pays our debt and frees us.
Addicted
to Sin,
Christ walks with us and digs deep,
dealing with symptom and disease.
Infected
by Sin,
Christ destroys that parasite and
frees us to be who we are.
A+A
