SIN, REPENTANCE AND RELATIONSHIPS

March 11, 2007 Adult Teaching

by Louise Stahnke

1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

The scriptures that Jim used in worship this morning, I Corinthians 10:1-13 and Luke 13:1-9 focus on sin and our Lord’s call to us to turn from it. Jesus is very clear. If we want to know the Life that He gives, we need to work to be free of sin. If we don’t, we will lose the Life that He gives, because God is holy. Yes, our Lord through his death does provide for the forgiveness for our sins, and this is a huge gift. But that forgiveness does not give us license to continue doing what we know is wrong.

Jewish law provided a great many ways for people to be right with God. Some of these became rituals, as is hand washing in a certain way. Jesus took issue with this, upsetting the Pharisees by not doing what was prescribed by law. We don’t do ritual hand washing now, but we are not so different from the Pharisees in other ways. We have developed our own “rituals”, designed to make us “clean”, presentable to God.

What things can we think of that we use for this? What are the rituals you tend to choose to try to “make it right” when you’ve upset or hurt your spouse or close friends? Do they work to solve the problem? (being present at worship. Confessing faults but not changing …..)

In Mark, chapter 7, Jesus is teaching about what it is that makes a person unclean, and it is not the failure to do the rituals prescribed by Jewish law. The things that come out of our hearts, which I understand to mean “self,” are the problems. For our immature selves, who want to resist the Lord’s total transformation of us, lead us to a wide variety of behaviors that are in fact sin. Immorality, which I understand to be any kind of sexual behavior that is not within marriage as God designed it to be, is usually at the top of our lists when we think of sin. I don’t think God ranks “sins” as we do. Because we are taught that all forms of unrepented, unforgiven sins will lead to erosion of the Life the Lord wants us to have. So Jesus keeps going on his list: theft, murder, adultery, greed, dishonesty, jealousy, slander (or speaking against others in harmful ways), and pride are included. In Revelations we are warned against complaining against God as the Hebrews did in the desert. Even if some of us escape the “bigger” sins listed here, we all get nailed by at least some of them. We’d like to think that if we avoid immorality, theft and murder, we can get by with a little dishonesty, jealousy and pride.

Here’s another one—what is the difference between making evaluations of another person’s actions and judging them? The first is a needed skill. What makes it different from the second?

Being judgmental of others is wrong. First of all, do we really presume that we have “all the facts’, all the knowledge of our brother or sister in Christ, that we can accurately discern what is the truth about their motives, or what they were really thinking and feeling? Only God can judge in fairness, which is why Jesus told us specifically to not judge others. Actually, I think we lack “all the information” about ourselves as well. Yet we tend to judge ourselves in condemning ways. This is not what God wants us to be doing. He, in his full knowledge, love, grace and mercy, sees our sins, knows it is sin, and wants to enable us to truly turn from it.

Yet we as Christians seem to be especially prone to judging others, especially other Christians. Are they “doing it right”?

Do they have the “right theology”? We so often measure each other by our own limited understandings. We let walls grow between us. As we do so, we erode the unity that the Lord intended His Body here on earth would have. Personally, I think Satan has great fun using debates in Christian theology. Much damage has been done to the church as a whole by disagreements over the issues that we as individuals and groups have decided are more important than unity--the unity that Christ prayed for us to have shortly before He died for us. I am not saying that a person may believe anything they choose and rightly claim to be Christian. Our beliefs need to be in line with the Bible’s teachings. I am saying that we do well to focus our energies more on drawing close to the person of Jesus. As we grow in knowing His love for us, the Holy Spirit is quite capable of helping clarify our thinking on given issues. If we do not have a deep knowledge of Christ’s love for us as an individual, scriptural issues can easily become distorted. We will find the unity we seek as His Body as we keep our focus on our personal relationships with Christ.

I understand sin to be anything action or thought or attitude on our part that separates us from our intended relationships with God and the people in our lives. This is what happened in Eden. The greed of Adam and Eve led them to wanting more than the Father had already given them. Greed led to disobedience, disobedience led to separation from that wonderful closeness with God that He had intended. God created us for relationship. And He created us to live in honest open relationship with each other. If we make a habit of sinning in a given way, we soon enough become separated from God and other people we love in our lives. We also become separated from our true self as well, hardly knowing the truth about who we are.

I’ve been reading lately about how addictions will affect our lives. We can be addicted to many things, including sugar, food in general, overwork which leaves us disconnected from our families and God because we are “too busy”, alcohol or drugs, or a wide variety of sexually oriented behaviors.

It is easy to see that a full blown “bad” addiction like to drugs or adulterous affairs will clearly bring destruction of the relationships the Lord has given us.

But what about “smaller” addictions? How do they work to destroy important relationships as well? (eating to cover up pain can keep us from doing the work of connecting with God ….)

Compulsions of any kind lead us to repeating a given behavior in a way that can grow and seems to swallow us up, leaving us without the internal freedom to correct the things we know are not right. These are sin as well and can lead to either losing the real life that Christ offers us, or to never really finding that life. When we are hooked in an addiction or a compulsion, we are guilty usually of trying to find our own solutions to our unhealed pain. There is nothing wrong with seeking freedom from that pain. The problem is we are trying to do it by ourselves, and only God can really bring us this freedom And He definitely wants to. If we find it difficult to believe that God really and deeply desires to help us, we do not understand enough of the heart of God. This is the God who created us to need relationships, with himself and others. He rejoices greatly when we stop trying to find our own, individual solutions to pain and turn back to Him.

When we are aware of our sins, we have choices in how to respond. What are some of these? (repentance, ignoring the problem, minimizing the problem, remorse without change…)

Is there a relationship between our habits of sin and our personal pain?

How do they impact each other?

What are ways we like to choose to deal with our pain?

Do they work?

Often we have to be really hurting before we are willing to ask for help from God and each other.

What makes us wait so long?

Can we really trust that God and others want to help us?

If we know deeply the Lord’s love for us, is it easier to be free of nagging sins?

(pride goes when I know how much I am loved. I don’t have to tell myself I’m “really something special” if I know that the Lord of the universe has always known me to be very special.)

Community with its emphasis on relationships can help us walk free of sins, including addictions and compulsions of any kind. But community can only help us IF we will work at being deeply honest in our relationships with each other.

(community ….if……honest and vulnerable).

There can be significant help found in being in a one on one accountability relationship. Sometimes it is important for a broader circle to know our struggles and help us walk thru them with the Lord’s help. If the sins that you struggle with tend to reoccur at all, even after you have brought them to God and asked forgiveness, I encourage you to find one or more people in the Body here to share this with you. It is easy to fool ourselves and, in our pride, keep our struggles secret.

God has created us to have relationships that are honest, nurturing and trusting--relationships where each of us can both receive and give life. These kinds of relationships are core in this eternal life that Jesus has gifted us with.

They take work. They take effort. They are definitely worth it.

see related meditation, Joyful Repentance.