The Study Corner    

Sin is bad. I know I sound like a preschooler explaining sin, but so many people seem to miss the mark on sin that I felt I should get back to the basics. This post is not about sin per-say, but about how we sin in responding to sin. As a sinner, I know I’ve fallen short, but I also know that sometimes I sin when I’m responding to my sin and trying to repent of my sin. I will provide a very short, and nowhere near complete, list of some common sinful responses to sin. Not only will this help you avoid some of the most common pitfalls in responding to your own sin, but will also help you recognize brothers and sisters in Christ who are using the same tactics to dodge their own sin. We can’t love our fellow Christians if we are unwilling to help them in love. (I will discuss Biblical discipline and shepherding in another post.)

1. We minimize our sin. We like to say, “Oh well, at least I didn’t kill someone like that other person.” We like to make it seem that as long as there is someone else out there sinning worse than we are that we are fine and get ourselves out of our guilty feelings.
2. We legitimize our sin. We believe our sin is different from anyone else’s. We may even try to say that since God, in His gracious nature, used it for His grace and purposes, that it was good that we sinned in that way. This is a despicable lie to us, and a horrible affront to the grace of God. We are trying to use His grace to justify our sin as a good thing, not the evil it truly is.
3. We shift the blame. This is the oldest response to sin in the book. Literally. Adam and Eve did this right off the bat. Eve blamed Satan and Adam blamed Eve and God since he made her. We can see how well that excuse worked in Genesis 3.
4. We rationalize our sin. We try to rationalize some extenuating circumstances usually by wearing down listeners by speaking profusely. Trying to convince the listener with their perspectives, motives, and the conditions surrounding their sin. We try to convince others to sympathize with us so as to compel them to excuse our sin.
5. We distract from our sin. We try to backpedal with the someone misunderstood us, or we were just joking, or the person who brought it up was just being mean and jealous excuses.
6. We partially confess our sin. In pride, we only tell part of our sin when we should simply, clearly, honestly, and completely tell all that we have done. Remember, God knows what you have done, don’t act dishonestly with the one from whom your grace flows.
7. We limit the regret of our sin. This is what Paul refers to as “worldly grief” (2 Cor 7:10).  We don’t truly put our sin to death, we only regret the consequences, or effects, of it not the actual sin.

This should give you a bit to chew on. We are to love sinners. To be able to love sinners we absolutely must take their sin seriously, the same way God does. If we don’t we rob ourselves, and every other sinner, the divine dignity which God grants to us as His image bearers. This may be best summed up by Plantinga, “We ought to pay evildoers, including ourselves, of the ‘intolerable compliment’ of taking them seriously as moral agents, of holding them accountable for their wrongdoing. This is a mark of our respect for their dignity and weight as human beings.” Sin is a corruption of us, we were not meant for it. To allow ourselves or other sinners to respond to our sin by sinning further is unloving and even cruel towards us and God.

The temptation is to look for elements of human sovereignty in our deliverance, to theorize ways to hold God responsible for our mistakes, and to hope that there might not be some degree of truth in Satan’s claim that man can be “as God” (Genesis 3:5). We have to mature in the faith and become familiar with Scripture before we begin to overcome this temptation in our lives.

[bibleblock]Ephesians 2:8-9[/bibleblock]