The problem with sin is not “because God said so.” Sin is a cancerous force which seeks to destroy all that is good, true and beautiful, leaving the wreckage of alienation and death in the wake of its violence.

In his Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Jonathan Edwards describes one of the signs of a true work of the Holy Spirit in that it causes people to hate sin. So I decided to set my hand to writing some prayers related to the subject. The starting point for my reflections was Genesis 1, the account of God’s original creation. Here human beings are given their initial and original commission to “rule the earth,” (Gen. 1:28) in other words, to be the agents of God’s gracious and life-giving presence on earth. Further, in chapter 2 (verse 15), the human beings are called to “cultivate and keep (i.e. guard, protect)” the Garden of Eden. Here their task is to foster the life that God intended for his creation, to preserve its integrity, and guard it from all harm.

For me, this is the starting place when thinking about sin. I will occasionally run into people who only think sin is wrong because “God said so,” as if God started from absolutely nothing and arbitrarily came up with a list of “good things” and “bad things” to subject us to. Then sin mostly becomes about abstract accounting systems in heaven – how well I have done at doing the good list and keeping away from the bad list and the respective tally that God is keeping. This obsession with “accounting in heaven” is a haunting specter over some places in American evangelical Christianity. The result is people who are much more concerned over their “status” as a “good girl” or “bad boy” than whether their actions lovingly cause life to flourish or instead cause damage and destruction to people.

It further degenerates to a delusional belief that once you ask God to forgive you for your sin, all things are “just-as-if-you-never-sinned.” This near-heresy is essentially a fundamental denial that our actions have real consequences and that there is even something wrong with sin. It is indeed gloriously true that God can and will forgive us when we ask and seek to amend our lives. But the reason we need forgiveness in the first place is because our actions have consequences – what we do really matters. Sin is not wrong because God said so – it is against nature and inherently destructive. Every sin grates against the purposes of love, life, joy and freedom for which God brought forth his creation. Every sin causes hurt and havoc in the lives of real people on planet earth, which does not magically vanish with an apology. When we sin, we cease to be the agents of God’s life-giving presence and rule on earth and rather operate in collusion with counter-forces which produce death, violence, hatred and alienation. God takes this personally, not primarily because we don’t “do what he says,” but because in his immeasurably vast love for us, he is personally affected when we are hurt by others’ sin, when his desire for love, joy and freedom in life are undermined. He is full of compassion and feels the pain of those who are injured (cf. Ps. 34:18; 145:8-9; Isa. 63:9). It is from this depth of love that God is virulent and assiduous in his opposition to Sin and Evil.

It has become my conviction that I need a more powerful motivation for life than my status as a “good boy” and abstract accounting systems in heaven. God has called us as humans to be the representatives of his gracious rule on earth. He has called us to love the life he created and so foster its growth and protect its integrity. He invites us to understand sin as it really is – not simply something on a “bad list,” but the antithesis and nemesis of everything good, true and beautiful, a cancerous presence which progressively produces increasing death. As our hearts are filled with the love God has for his creation, as we participate in his compassionate longing for the full flowering of life on earth, as we rise into our role as those bearing God’s image and his gracious life-giving rulership, our actions take on new weight and our decisions come into new light. Hating sin is not about being a “good boy or girl.” It is about treasuring the life God has created and loves.

Majestic Lord, you possess within yourself the pinnacle of goodness, truth and beauty, and grant all creatures to share in that same splendor: Enthrall us with this radiance and fill your church with a tenacious distaste for all sin, that as you restore the lost splendor of your creation, by the gracious nurture of your Holy Spirit, we would with great determination disavow every thought, word and deed seeking to perpetuate the bondage of Death and the tyranny of Night, whose sway is already fading in the dawn of your resurrection life, through Jesus the Messiah, your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

O God: the heavens of heavens are yours, but the earth you have given to humanity: grant to your Church an inexhaustible love of life, that hating all which compromises the integrity of your creation and fails to foster that society of love for which you called us into being, we would walk before you in holiness and righteousness all our days, treasuring the good, true and beautiful, stewarding your creation as faithful agents of your royal power, through Jesus the Messiah, Your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit in glory everlasting.

Lord God, whose heart overflows with the purest delight: help us see and understand the insidious nature of sin, which in the end only steals, kills and destroys, that, hating all which destroys life, and loving that which restores, we might find holiness to be the very fountain of joy, welling up to eternal life, through Jesus the Messiah your Son, our Lord…

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Last time, I wrote about the “new exodus,” describing it as a way of speaking of the ending of the Jewish exile while investing it with the epochal significance of replacing the Exodus as the defining event in Israel’s history and their revelation of God. I then described reasons for believing that theologically, the Jewish people did not understand the exile to have ended when the exiles in Babylon physically returned to their homeland in 538 B.C. Understanding this brings a dynamic twist in understanding the NT and the person and message of Jesus. Before we look at how interpreting the New Testament is affected by these realities, it is important to add another dimension.

A significant theme which recurs throughout the later OT writings is the link between the ending of exile and the forgiveness of sins. The classic introduction of this theme is in Isaiah 40 where (if you do something funny to account for the peculiar placement of Isaiah 35) Isaiah’s in-depth exposition of New Exodus kicks off:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her

that she has served her term,
that her iniquity has been pardoned…

Notice the two couplets that I have marked off by leaving space between them. This is to illustrate the extremely common and primary feature of Hebrew poetry called parallelism. We commonly think of poetry as rhyming the sounds of words. This however, is not at all how Hebrew poetry functions. Instead of rhyming words, they would rhyme thoughts. This came in two primary forms (although technically one could tease out various additional nuances). The first is synonymous parallelism, where the two lines of poetry express synonymous thoughts, i.e. their meaning are essentially the same. Examples of such would include:

O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD,
Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. (Psalm 95:1)

I will extol You, my God, O King,
And I will bless Your name forever and ever. (Psalm 145:1)

One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts. (Psalm 145:4)

The LORD of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold (Ps. 46:11)

The wilderness and the desert will be glad,
And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom (Isaiah 35:1)

Behold, the Lord GOD will come with might,
With His arm ruling for Him (Isaiah 40:10)

The point in all these and many other verses is not that each line is communicating a new and distinct idea. Rather it is a poetic way of saying the same thing. Where this becomes critical is that seeing parallelism can often indicate to us two concepts that the author is holding closely together in a semi-synonymous (though not necessarily precise – remember this is poetry) relationship.

The other major form of parallelism is antonymous parallelism, in which the two lines of the couplet express the opposite idea. This form of parallelism is much less common than the former.

The LORD keeps all who love Him,
But all the wicked He will destroy. (Psalm 145:20)

For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:6)

They will find gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away. (Is. 35:10) – an interesting case, not precisely synonymous or antonymous parallelism, it is expressing the same idea in opposite ways

The purpose of this digression on Hebrew poetry is to show how meaningful it is when the Isianic text brings into parallel the notion of the ending of exile (she has served her term) and the forgiveness of sin (her iniquity has been pardoned). In other words, the author is bringing into a poetically synonymous relationship, the twin notions of the end of Israel’s exile and the forgiveness of their sins. How can these two seemingly disparate themes be related? One has to do with their historical circumstances, the other with their relationship with God. One concerns “horizontal” relationships, the other “vertical.” The one is temporary, the other eternal. Let me explain how I think this works.

The book of Deuteronomy is essentially the covenant charter of the people of Israel. It explains at length the relationship between God and Israel. In chapter 28, blessings are described, which are for Israel if they keep the covenant, while curses are described for Israel if they do not keep the covenant. Interestingly, these blessings and curses are not for individuals, but are for the nation as a whole with regards to corporate obedience or corporate disobedience (an extremely foreign concept for twenty-first century individualism-assaulted denizens). The result of obedience is that God “will establish you as a holy people” and consequently, they will be blessed and prosper, specifically with regard to the surrounding nations of political adversaries. However, if as a nation they do not follow the covenant, they are told that “the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth” and that “The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships.” In other words, God’s deliverance of the people from the Egyptian captivity (the exodus) will be reversed by virtue of their corporate disobedience. Chapter thirty also promises that if while in captivity in foreign nations, if they will return to the Lord, he will bring them out of captivity, restore them to the land and bless them abundantly. In summary the result of corporate disobedience is exile and the result of corporate repentance is return from exile.

What we see from Deuteronomy is that the concept of sin and exile are intricately related. Sin is understood in essentially a causal relationship with going into exile. The reason why the captives addressed in Isaiah 40 are in exile is because of their corporate sin. These sins are delineated in much of the pre-exilic prophetic literature and the historical books.

What is critical to grasp here is that sin and forgiveness are not primarily viewed from an individualistic or existentialist perspective. The concern in Isaiah 40 is not “how one feels” when relating to God (i.e., feeling forgiven or feeling shame). Neither is the concern the accumulation of merits and demerits, nor the eternal fate of individuals (i.e., heaven or hell). Rather, the concern is typically Jewish: it is historical, national, geographical, political and related to the future of life on earth. When these people were awaiting the “forgiveness of sins,” they were not anticipating a spiritual experience whereby their guilt-anxiety complex was assuaged. They were not expecting a declaration from heaven announcing their forgiveness or status of righteousness. They certainly we not even dreaming of being assured of escaping the earth for an eternal heavenly abode. They were looking forward the ending of the exile, freedom from foreign powers, the restoration of the nation and the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises in which the entire earth would be renewed. According to Deuteronomy, they would know they were forgiveness, not by the warm-fuzzies, but because they had been brought back to their land and restored as a people. In this passage the forgiveness of sins is not individualistic, internal or “spiritual.” Rather it is corporate, historical, national, geographical, ecological and political. For the exile to end means that Israel has been forgiven of their sins. If the exile has not ended, the logical interpretation is that they have not yet been forgiven and the “wrath of God” still remains over them.

This perspective helps to makes sense of some other “baffling” passages. I always used to get tripped out over verses like these:

Psalm 103:9 – He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever.

Psalm 85:4-6 – Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?

Psalm 79:5 – How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?

Micah 7.18-20 – Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency. He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors from the days of old.

I would think, “don’t the Israelites understand that we’re saved by faith? All you have to do is ask God to forgive you and he will.” I would change the words of these Psalms around when praying and singing them. Instead of saying “you will not always accuse, nor will you keep your anger forever,” I would say something like “you do not always accuse, you do not stay angry forever.” I didn’t make any sense that one would have to plead with God for him to forgive you. That sounded like Medieval penance theology.

These verses (and MANY others) only doesn’t make sense when a modern notion of “justification by faith” and the radical individualization of sin and forgiveness is applied to these passages (See my posts on “Reading the Bible in the Right Direction” for more on this). There is certainly a personal concept of sin in the Scripture but it is not the only way sin is treated and in many passages it is not primary. The verses given above, however, are patently not about the individual assurance of forgiveness. That was not the primary concern of the Israelites in captivity. We don’t see in the Scripture a spirituality of “well, we’re in captivity and slavery, but at least we have the inner assurance of God’s forgiveness so we are content.” That kind of forgiveness was not on their radar. For them, to be forgiven meant to be restored in the full sense of the word, as we see in Ps. 85:4 (restore us again). This is not an issue of “pre-cross/post-cross” as I’ve sometimes heard it described (as if only after Jesus died on the cross can we be forgiven immediately, before then we had to beg and do penance). The context of these passages make clear to us what they are about without bringing in an artificial theological framework that is foreign to the texts. The context of Psalm 85:4-6 is immediately in relation to the notion of the captivity of Israel in exile. The context of Psalm 103 immediately preceding the quote above is all about Moses and the exodus and a quotation from Moses’ encounter with God on Mt. Sinai. Psalm 79 is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as the Babylonian exile was inaugurated. The passage from Micah seven explicitly correlates forgiveness of sin to faithfulness of the covenant with Abraham (i.e., the land).

As I will develop further in my next post, the notions of the ending of exile and the forgiveness of sins are intricately linked in these and many other passages. Understanding this helps restore a more authentically Jewish (and less of a Medieval European) biblical perspective and sheds (in my opinion), radical new light on the both the OT and the NT, especially the life, message and mission of Jesus and the theology of sin, forgiveness and justification in Paul.

One way it immediately helps us, is it beckons us to break out of the morose and obsessive inwardly-bent introspective posture that we can develop when all we think about is dealing with our personal sin and the corollary confusion that the focal point of Christianity is to aid you in dealing with your guilt-anxiety complex. I hate to break it to you, but there is more to Christianity than you and your personal sin! God has a much more expansive and exciting vision for the world and the future than for you to neurotically manage your besetting sins. Of course, dealing with sin and our own insidious propensity towards hatred and violence is incredibly significant, but it can only be done when we are fully engaged with God’s bigger picture for the human race and the future of life on earth. It will necessitate getting our eyes off of ourselves, perhaps at first for only moments at a time, but more and more we will lift our gaze and begin to see the wide and open space of freedom and life God is inviting us to.

Wow. I’m kind of getting excited and am feeling this already-too-long post burgeoning into more than can fit here. More on this to come…

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An excerpt from “Saved By His Life” - a new paper I am working on:

Since the Protestant Reformation, “justification by faith” has been the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae—the article by which the church stands or falls. Stressing the significance of this doctrine, Martin Luther once said,

“[Justification is] the chief article of Christian doctrine. To him  who understands how great its usefulness and majesty are, everything else will seem slight and turn to nothing. For what is Peter? What is Paul? What is an angel from heaven? What are all creatures in comparison with the article of justification? For if we know this article, we are in the clearest light; if we do not know it, we dwell in the densest darkness. Therefore if you see this article impugned or imperiled, do not hesitate to resist Peter or an angel from heaven; for it cannot be sufficiently extolled.”

Though a significant point of controversy between Catholic and Protestants since the 16th century, in recent years, the meaning of this “chief article” has been a matter of significant discussion even amongst Protestants. What does it mean to be justified? What is the problem that necessitates justification? How is justification achieved? How does it become effective in an individual’s life? What does it accomplish?

An oversimplified and clichéd response, but nevertheless moderately reflective of what a common evangelical believer would profess, might be as follows: The problem necessitating justification is that humans are in rebellion against God as expressed in sin. Because God is righteous, sin by nature provokes the wrath of God, before which, no human can stand. Justification is achieved by Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross, whereby he bears the wrath of God for us and makes propitiation for us before God. This becomes effective in an individual’s life by repenting of and forsaking one’s rebellion and by believing in God. This accomplishes the forgiveness of one’s sin and acceptance before God, thus enabling one to go to heaven upon death and to spend eternity with God.

This summary, expressed in “gospel” presentations and systematic theologies, broadly and vaguely depicts what is with what is more precisely called the penal-substitutionary model of atonement. When this description of the “what” and “how” of justification is represented as the sole or primary understanding of justification, many peculiarities in Paul are “unearthed” which do not seem to correspond to this logic. Paul seems to have a broader understanding of the problem of the human condition than simply being “rebellion against the honor of God.” He talks about “futile thinking” and “foolish hearts” (Rom. 1:21), disordered passions (Rom. 1:24), lacking “knowledge of God” (Rom. 1:28), being “under a curse” (Gal. 3:10,13), being “in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world” (Gal. 4:3), being dead (Eph. 2:1), being “foreigners and strangers” (Eph. 2:19), and being under the “dominion of darkness” (Col. 1:13). He sees the work of God in the Messiah, not only in court-room images, but also in military, familial, relational, political, biological and architectural images. This work does not simply accomplish forgiveness for us, but through the cross we have been “delivered from the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4), rescued “from the dominion of darkness” and brought into “the kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). Furthermore, several cryptic yet explicit passages describe how Jesus was “raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25) and that we are “saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10).

In such, we are not merely forgiven, but are given participation in a cosmic redemption, which is often the climax of Paul’s discussions of “individual salvation”. In Romans, the “righteousness of God” that is revealed in the gospel ultimately builds to the time when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). In 2 Corinthians 5, the non-reckoning of sin is intimately linked with the arrival of the New Creation. Paul’s discussion in Ephesians about being “chosen before the foundations of the world,” and “adopted to sonship” in Jesus by whom we have “redemption through his blood” all leads to the eternal purpose of God “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under The Messiah” (Eph. 1:10). In Colossians 1, the purpose of the Messiah’s work on the cross is to “reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

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A friend recently asked me whether I align myself more with the “theology of the cross” or the “theology of glory.” Not really understanding what he meant by either of those terms, I asked for a clarification. The “theology of the cross,” as he explained it, is an understanding of our life now, primarily understood in terms of dying to the flesh, to sin, etc. Our lives now are primarily cruciform in shape and our main task is to be conformed to the Messiah in the likeness of His death, while being conformed to the likeness of His resurrection awaits us in the age to come. The “theology of glory,” as he explained it, would emphasize the present tense dimensions of the power of the resurrection in which the cross mostly lies behind us as the once-and-for-all payment for and defeat of sin. Our lives now are primarily to live in the victory of the resurrection and move “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18) and “from strength to strength” (Ps. 84:7).

I seem to think that both approaches have shortcomings which if taken to far could quickly become altogether different from that to which the biblical texts witness. The deficiencies of the “theology of glory” are readily recognized by a postmodern society strongly reacting to centuries of oppression, power games and imperialistic rhetoric, in addition to whenever residue of such is seen surfacing in contemporary society. My fear is that a “theology of glory,” which from my (albeit limited) perspective translates to a “praxis of victory” may leave the weak, broken, suffering and afflicted behind, with a momentary wonder as to why they don’t “get it together,” “move on,” “walk in faith,” “live in victory,” etc. As I’ve run into this approach over the years, there seems to be little understanding of human pain, little expression of compassion, and general confusion as to why their instructions do not “fix” people.

While I believe that such a “theology of glory” could in fact be dangerous to the people of God, I do not believe a thorough-going “theology of the cross” leaves us in a much better place. Where all we do is conform to the Messiah’s death, there seems to be little or no expectation of or room for the startling newness of what Christ has already accomplished. The dramatic thrust of New Testament eschatology, where the future of God’s righteousness and justice rushes forward in the justification of the people of God becomes little more than the “forgiveness of sin” conceived in abstract categories. The justification of life in the Messiah is “not merely a gift that has been made manifest, but means also the power of the Giver which is at work in the life of the believer.” Justification, far from being mere relief to our guilt-anxiety complexes, is the beginning of return from humanity’s long exile of sin and death. In this dynamic work of God, we know can indeed “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:5) because “if anyone is the Messiah, the New Creation has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17). The future of God for the world has rushed forward into the present by Jesus the Messiah and is not to be interpreted merely in judicial or moralistic terms.

My fear is that a “theology of the cross” may too readily reconcile with sin, death, suffering and injustice, understanding it to be part of being conformed to the cross, while inadvertently being a shield from the deeper pain of wrestling with the contradictions between what God has promised and present reality as it exists and more difficult still, who God is as He says in His word and who we believe in by faith, and what present reality as it exists shows us God to be like. Far from accepting suffering and death the woman or man “who is justified begins to suffer under the contradiction of this world with which he [sic] has a bodily solidarity, for he must in obedience seek the divine righteousness in his body, on earth and in all creatures” (Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 206). In light of the cross and the resurrection, our suffering is not an acceptance of all things that are, but a suffering in and against the realities of the fallen world in anticipation of God’s righteousness covering the earth when He comes.

Paul says in Romans 3:21, “But NOW…the righteousness of God has been made manifest,” that is God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises, the righteousness of God that will set all things right in the age to come is made manifest NOW. The “but now” indicates the presence of the future even in the midst what by all other indicators is still “the present evil age” (cf. Gal 1:4). This echoes what he said earlier in the letter to the Romans, that he is not ashamed of the gospel (see earlier entry “the Gospel of God” for clarification as to what I mean by this term) – why? – because it is in itself the power of God that brings salvation. The gospel, the declaration that Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Lord of the world, in itself, is the dynamic power that brings salvation—not security for my soul to float off to heaven when I die—but the restoration of all things, righteousness, peace, joy. life and freedom on the earth in fellowship with God when He comes here to reign forever. The proclamation is the power that brings those realities into the present tense, not in wishful thinking but in the sense that we can truly say “the reign (kingdom) of God is in your midst (Luke 17:21).

What I think may be coming out in what I am saying, is that, in my opinion, the problem with the theology and praxis of “glory” and “the cross” are at heart Christological. How do the crucifixion and resurrection relate, not only in our personal lives, but in the person of Jesus himself? To this question I will proceed in my next entry.

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