Tag: sin

Where is the Victory?

Bible Questions, Christianity, Current Events

Another tragedy has rocked our country and has left pundits scrambling to be heard the loudest for their cause in order to take advantage of it.  While racism and guns will be blamed – and may be part of the problem – the root of this is sin.  Racism does not exist without sin.  Gun violence does not exist without sin.  If we fix the sin problem we won’t have these tragedies any more.

And that’s the biggest problem.  Even if Christianity is wildly successful at taking people who are full of hate and filling them with the love of Jesus, all it takes is one person for such events to happen again.  But more to the point, does the church appear to be the least bit successful in reaching our culture and turning people from hate to love?  Certainly there are grand stories to be shared but overall it seems as though we are losing the battle.  And this is not just an issue in the United States.  In many places that were once predominantly Christian, it appears as though the battle has already been lost.  Grand cathedrals are no longer places of worship but are tourist attractions and markers of history of a bygone era.

From the perspective of most people, society seems to be getting worse, not better.  If that is the case, the broader question is why.  Why has the church lost ground in society?  Why has sin become so predominant everywhere we look?  And more importantly, why wasn’t sin defeated at the cross?

There are no easy answers to these questions and how a person responds to them will vary widely on the theology they’ve been taught to believe.  It wasn’t that long ago – a hundred years or so – that the predominant theology said the world would keep improving until the gospel reached everywhere and it would usher in Jesus’ Kingdom.

Now, many people believe just the opposite.  The world is getting worse and worse and it will only be fixed when Jesus returns with a sword to strike down His enemies.  Regardless of the interpretation or how literally one takes it, the book of Revelation certainly depicts a lot of calamity before peace is achieved.

This still begs the question of why though.  Why has the devil not been defeated?  It’s certainly a very hard argument to make that he is not present and active in the world today.  Where is the victory over sin and death that we were promised?  Are all of the promises of the cross only valid at the end of this age?

I don’t have all of the answers but I do have a few thoughts.  For starters, Satan has definitely been defeated already.  In our limited ability, we often depict a battle between God and Satan; I still use such metaphors myself.  That gives far too much credit to Satan and not nearly enough credit to God.  This was never a battle because that would imply that Satan ever had a chance at winning.  Satan has led a rebellion and that rebellion has been thwarted because it never stood a chance to begin with against an all-powerful God.

What we experience today is the effects of the rebellion.  The world is currently Satan’s domain.  He is the prince of this world.  To depict things in a modern context, Satan is holed up in a little house with the full force of the military outside of his door.  He currently has full reign over the things in that house but there is no way that he is getting away.  His rule is not absolute nor is it eternal.  While he holds sway over humanity now and he holds us hostage, it is only temporary and he has not usurped God’s power.

Satan has been defeated at the cross but we still see the effects of sin and death because we are incapable of viewing time from God’s perspective.  Two thousand years and counting since the time of Jesus is a very long time to us but it is the blink of an eye to God.  The rebellion has been crushed but Satan is still going to take as many people with him as he can.

We live in “the end of this age.”  Ever since Jesus ascended to heaven, every generation has had people who were convinced that He would return in their lifetime.  No matter the signs that people see, we don’t know when His return will be.  The end of the age can end tomorrow or it can stretch on for another two thousand years.  That seems unlikely to us but it certainly seemed unlikely to many in the early church who also expected Jesus’ immediate return.

The victory that we experience now is not the victory that we long for.  We long for a time when there will be no more sin or death.  We long for a time when all things will be perfect.  That is not this time.  There will be a day when that is realized however.  It has already been accomplished but it has not been put into effect yet.

We do see parts of the victory in the world around us though.  Amidst the kind of horror that we can only hope and pray we never experience, we can see Christians who respond with love and forgiveness.  This does not mean that there is not also sorrow and anger but I believe that it is only through the power of God that any kind of peace can be given in this kind of situation.

Compare the response of Christians to tragedy to that of non-Christians.  While I can’t say that it is universal, in general there is certainly a greater amount of love and forgiveness that surrounds a tragedy.  That is the victory of the cross that we experience today.  It is the ability to handle the worst of what life has to offer and still awake the next day and say “God is good.”  It doesn’t mean that a Christian is happy about the circumstances but they can still have a peace that passes understanding knowing that God still has the victory despite the evidence that sin is alive and well today.

In the end, we still long for the day when all sin is eradicated and Satan has no power over us.  While we wait, we will endure the effects of a broken world that is in rebellion against God.  But we do so knowing that it is temporary.  We will see the full effects of victory and we can experience the partial effects of it now.

Is it wrong to go to nightclubs?

Bible Questions

Whether it is a sin to go to nightclubs  falls into the broad gray area of Christianity.  We would like everything to be black and white but frankly Jesus said nothing about nightclubs or thousands of other things like rock music or the internet.  So good judgment must be used when making such decisions.

Going to nightclubs in and of itself is not wrong.  But the question must be asked why is a person going and are they going to participate in sinful activities there.  This is where it can be sinful to go to night clubs, dance halls, etc.  If the idea behind going clubbing is to meet someone and then hook up in some sort of sexually immoral way, then absolutely it is wrong.  The same goes for getting drunk and all of the other problems that leads to.

The bigger issue is a matter of perception and there isn’t a cut and dry answer.  In 1 Corinthians 8 Paul writes about food sacrificed to idols.  Some people were very much against eating such food because it had been used in an idolatrous ceremony.  Others weren’t bothered by eating this food because they did not acknowledge the idol so it meant nothing to them.  The point is that some people are going to be bothered by the idea of going to nightclubs regardless whether sinful activity takes place there or not, it gives the perception of doing wrong.  In the end each person must decide whether they are willing to sacrifice their desire to go clubbing in order to avoid a bad perception or if their conscience is free because they aren’t participating in sinful activities and it is other people who need to get over their perception.

What is the Unpardonable or Unforgivable Sin?

Bible Questions

There is a lot of confusion over the term unpardonable sin.  The phrase does not actually appear in the Bible but it is implied in Matthew 12:31-32.

“And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

While grace and forgiveness are found throughout the Bible, we can’t simply ignore this passage in light of what the Bible says about forgiveness elsewhere.  We know that there are no contradictions in the Bible so we must work hard to discern what this statement by Jesus means.

To start, we should note the context of Jesus’ statement.  He was performing miracles and casting out demons.  The Pharisees accused Jesus of performing miracles with the power of Satan.  Attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan is what Jesus calls blasphemy against the Spirit.

Jesus makes it clear that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven” which is in line with everything else that the Bible teaches.  Jesus includes a “but” along with His statement though.  He says that anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

Some say that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is simply hypothetical because there is no sin that a person can commit that is unforgiveable.  But let’s assume that Jesus is not speaking hypothetically and that this is a real sin that people commit.  This is not an accidental sin or even one that is intentionally committed.  Instead what Jesus is addressing is a matter of someone’s heart being so hard that they refuse to even acknowledge the work of God and instead attribute it to Satan.

Some Christians believe that salvation can be lost and others believe that there is eternal security.  This passage does not address either belief however.  This is not a sin that a Christian will commit.  While Christians are still capable of lots of terrible sins, their hearts will never become so hard as to call the work of the Holy Spirit Satanic.

It is worth noting that Jesus says “will not be forgiven” rather than “cannot be forgiven.”  It is perhaps key to our understanding of this passage and to our understanding of God’s forgiveness.  It seems arbitrary that God would choose to hold one sin as unforgiveable in light of all of the other terrible things that a person can do.  But when we look at this as a matter of the heart it makes sense.  A person who is so far gone as to blaspheme the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven because they will never seek forgiveness.  It is not that God’s grace is incapable of forgiving the person.  Instead it is a sign that the person has no interest in forgiveness.  The next verse gives us an indication of this.

“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.”  The fruit of the Spirit will be evident in the life of a Christian.  Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the fruit of a life that is so far from God that the person will never seek forgiveness.

So the unforgiveable sin comes down to a matter of human will and not the ability of God.  God is still capable of forgiving any and all sins.  The Pharisees that Jesus is addressing have hearts that are so hard that they will never seek God in repentance however.  This is not a sin that a Christian can or would commit.  In fact only the most non-Christians will never be so far removed from God to commit this sin.