Sin and Human Nature

In my sermon on Sunday I invited us to consider the central move Jesus makes in the Gospel text (Mark 10:2-16): namely, drawing us back to God's intentions from the beginning. I want to expand upon that a bit in this week's reflection.

I read books on parenting a fairly regular basis. In the one I'm reading now, the author begins with the premise (and here I'm paraphrasing) that children are bad by nature. I bristled at that starting point, not because I have difficulty imagining that children--and adults, let's be honest--behave in disastrously bad ways on a fairly regular basis, but because his account of the relationship between human nature and sin is a best imprecise and at worst, simply wrong.

Are we really bad by nature? And, if not, what is the relationship between human nature and sin? An old order for confession (the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal) invited us to pray, "We are by nature sinful and unclean" (emphasis mine). Really? By nature sinful and unclean?

The story for us as Christians begins in Genesis 1 and 2. Christians cannot fully and finally say that human nature and sin are one and the same, for God created all things (including human beings) as good. And yet we know on a very practical and intuitive level what we confess from the green Lutheran Book of Worship, that we have sinned "and cannot free ourselves."

[Note: The part of the Order for Confession in the Lutheran Book of Worship about being "in bondage" to sin is yet another topic that was hotly debated as the Lutheran Book of Worship was being assembled... but not a topic that I'm going to address today. I think it can be solved by simply saying, "We confess that we have sinned and cannot free ourselves," with the main point being that we are sinners and we cannot do something about it on our own.]

So we need to say (because God says so) that we are not sinful by nature. Being sinful is not intrinsic to what it means to be human. Our Lord Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, lived a human life without sin, the life that was intended for us from the start. He is not less than human, not 98% human or something like that. Yet he did not sin. So sin is not a necessary part of what it means to be human.

And yet we find ourselves knee-deep in the muck we call sin, and we cannot free ourselves. Sin so permeates our lives, our relationships, our world that we find ourselves stuck in it, infected by it, surrounded by it. The depth of our immersion in sin calls to mind the movie the Matrix; it is everywhere, in everything. Since the Fall in Genesis 3, there is nothing in creation untouched by sin. It is an infection deeply embedded into the entire fabric of creation. But it is also "not the way it is supposed to be," to borrow a book title.

A classical understanding of sin goes something like this: sin and evil are not realities in and of themselves; they are always "less than" what God has intended. Sin is like the rot on a piece of fruit or the rust on the car in a junkyard. Is like the infection that has made the body sick or the stink of decay. Sin has no life of its own; its ways are parasitic.

So what then are we as Christians to do? How do we take seriously Genesis 3, without letting it be the story and also take seriously Genesis 1 and 2 and Revelation 21 and 22?

I suggest that we take sin very seriously... and take God even more seriously.

Whenever I hear a new philosophical theory or psychological paradigm, my benchmark is the same: "Does this [system/thought] take sin seriously enough? Does it take God even more seriously?"

Taking sin seriously means struggling against it at every turn. Our whole lives as Christians are to be lives of repentance, turning from sin and toward God, allowing the Holy Spirit's burning fire to cleanse us from our sin and warm us with divine grace. Taking sin seriously means an ongoing internal battle against all that keeps us from walking in the Way of Jesus.

Taking God seriously means never believing Satan, because he is the father of all lies. Taking God seriously means clinging to the truth that Christ's victory over sin and death on the cross is the final world, even when evidence in the world around us seems to suggest the opposite. Taking God seriously means knowing the final chapters of the book of Revelation like we know the Lord's Prayer, and trusting in those same promises.

Or, as a wise teacher of mine once said, it goes something like this: "Hi, I'm Matt, a sinner, redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb." May that be our prayer and conviction today and always.