Sin and forgiveness
Sin isn’t a popular idea these days, but then I wonder if it ever was? I’ve heard it described as an outdated idea based on the assumption that the gods only helped us if we were good to them. I see what such an argument is based on but it always seems to me to be the kind of argument you might make to cover up the fact that you are doing something you know is wrong. I have tried living with the idea that there is no such thing as sin – that it is just a matter of choice but then some choices I made caused problems and I could see that they were wrong – sometimes they hurt others and this made it worse. I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that there is no such thing as sin.
Perhaps it would be wise to try and define what sin is here. I think sin is when we do something that is wrong – intentional or unintentional. In particular sin is when we do something that is wrong in God’s eyes. I’m not going to enter the discussion about the existence of God or what law is here – my blog entries would get even longer if I tried to take every argument through it’s full range of discussion. I’m assuming God exists.
Now I could complain that God is wrong to think certain things are sin but ultimately it is up to God to decide what is right or wrong. If God is the ultimate being then I must concede that he knows better than I do.
So there are clever tricks of the mind that might let me off the hook (philosophically speaking) but somehow that doesn’t stop the fact that I know deep down that some things are just plain wrong and I shouldn’t do them. To deny this is just to deny the obvious and kid yourself that something is not wrong for the sake of trying to get a good nights sleep.
But Jesus wanted to talk more about forgiveness than sin. The message that Jesus brought was one of the loving forgiveness (Christians like to use the word grace here) of God.
The way to deal with sin is not to ignore it in the hopes somehow it will go away, or to deny it’s existence in an attempt to reason it away, or to make jokes about it in the hopes that laughing will somehow mean it doesn’t matter, but it’s to accept God’s solution in Jesus Christ.
“Your sins are forgiven” – Jesus
