Sin – a taboo subject?

A younger friend of mine and her family are trying to find their way into church life. “The trouble with the church we’ve been going to,” she complains, “is that they keep talking about sin. It frightens my daughter.”

These days, the world’s easy-going view of sin gives the word an aura of enticement and daring. It is the name chosen by at least one nightclub in the UK. Another friend refers to a tasty treat that is laden with calories as “sinful squares”. A person who dabbles in a bit of sin is credited with a sense of adventure, imagination, fulfilment.

In the Bible, however, sin wears a much more repugnant and disturbing aspect. It isn’t even just limited to the odd acts of swearing or stealing or lust. It is nothing less than a way of life that we inherit at birth and that makes us all fall short of God’s standards. A word frequently used for it in the New Testament originally meant “missing the mark”. In archery terms, sin is any behaviour that fails to hit the bull’s-eye. In God’s version of an archery competition, simply getting your arrow to hit the target is no better than missing it altogether. Since He is a perfect God, nothing less than a bull’s-eye will do. He will not be pleased simply because there is a bit of good in us mixed in with the bad. A perfect God cannot even look on what is flawed.

Scared? If someone really is frightened of the consequences of sin, that’s surely a good thing. It will drive them to put their trust in the One who carried the sins of the world and is the bringer of forgiveness, the Lord Jesus Christ. When they do this, an amazing transformation occurs, even though they don’t suddenly become perfect and indeed never will in this life. Christians throughout the ages have viewed it like this: when we receive Christ as Lord and Saviour, God looks away from our blemishes and towards Him. He made on the cross a faultless self-offering to atone for our sin.

But to go into denial about the way sin clings to us is to court disaster. According to the Bible it turns us into self-deceived dupes who know nothing of God’s truth – even though we would pride ourselves on never telling lies. Worse still, it is effectively calling God a liar.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:5-10 ESV

Agreed, making people feel guilty all the time is no help to anybody. Jesus certainly didn’t aim to do that. For most people, most of the time, He was a joy to be around. He was and is our Hope. But it would be infinitely dangerous to leave anyone thinking that sin is no worse than the world makes it out to be.

After all is said and done ... sin must be bad if it caused the Son of God to surrender His life!