What Does The Bible Mean By "Sin"?
Bible Study
Hope For Tomorrow
What Jesus Would Say Today
Object:
I fall back dazzled at beholding myself, all rosy red, at having, I myself, caused the sun to rise.
-- Edmund Rostand (Chanticleer)
* * *
Without guilt there is no conscience, and without conscience there is no civilization.
-- Mona Charen
* * *
All men fall into sin. But sinning, he is not forever lost, hapless and helpless, who can make amends and has not set his face against repentance.
-- Sophocles (Antigone)
What Does The Bible Mean By "Sin"?
"Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence. But by the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free."
-- Romans 3:23-24
Mark Twain once observed that "the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." That's about what has happened to the word "sin" in America. The word has been depreciated to refer to little flaws in our personalities and conduct. A movie was popular years ago with the title, Sing, You Sinners, and a perfume hit the market with the name, "My Sin." We have all seen magazine cartoons depicting some disreputable-looking man carrying a placard telling us to repent of our sins, always with a comic punch line. Even we clergy have contributed with stories like the one about the church with a sign reading: "Tired of sin? Come right in," on the front of which some wag had written with lipstick: "If not, call 321-6640" (frankly, I've told that one myself).
* * *
Jesus didn't use the word "sin" very often, but apparently he applied the word to anyone who did one or both of two things: knowingly to act against the word of God, or knowingly to hurt someone else unnecessarily.
* * *
Reading the New Testament, however, informs one that while "sin" may have become a lightning-bug word to us, it was a lightning word to Jesus. For him, the idea of sin did not refer to the little foibles of humanity. We all have those and I think you'll agree that it would not have been fair of God to create us the way we are, with all our sensitivities, the accident of birth with its resultant emotional programming, and the basic fact that we are all imperfect human beings, then condemn us for being what we are. We all have some not entirely lovable characteristics, and while those who share life with us might be delighted if we could get rid of them, we are what we are. One of literature's best role models is Popeye, who frankly declared, "I yam what I yam and thass all that I yam."
I just returned from a bookstore where the clerk asked for identification when I presented my Visa card to pay for a $4.95 book. It irritated me. I was superficially polite about it, but I felt that I am not accustomed to being investigated when I make a purchase. I know, I know. There are people who use charge cards fraudulently and the merchant has no way of knowing whether I'm honest or not. No matter, it still irritates me. I know I'm honest and it makes me feel that I somehow look suspicious. I also get angry at people who drive the exact speed limit in the passing lane, and at people who let their dogs bark. In most cases I act decently, and perhaps my anger indicates a certain deficiency of character. I know this. I want to have more character than that, but every time these things happen I still have the same angry feelings. I trust the reader not to think too ill of me. Besides, I suspect the reader has his or her own list of little private peeves as well. It is, after all, an imperfect world and we are imperfect people.
I suppose we might include a -- let's call it -- subcategory of misdoing which I will call Just Plain Stupidity. I must admit to being a frequent practitioner of this myself, but the best recent example I read about took place at a Wal-Mart store up in New Brunswick where a sale was announced of 48 Tickle-Me Elmo dolls, the toy of choice for Christmas. The news report stated that "when the doors opened, 300 customers rushed in and an employee lowering the dolls from top shelves was hit by the crush. The employee was treated for bruises at a hospital and released." Despite the injuries, I'd have to charge some overzealous parents with something other than sin. Call it JPS. "Sin" describes something deeper than all of this.
Sin, as the word is used in the Gospels, refers to a fundamental state of self-centeredness which leads us to act contrary to what we know and believe to be right. The "knowing" is important. Headhunters in Africa were raised to believe that cutting off an enemy's head is an honorable sign of manhood. It's certainly not a desirable habit from my point of view, and it's admirable that some courageous Christians are willing to risk life and limb to carry a better word to those people. But headhunting would only be sinful if the hunters were to discover how wrong and hurtful their conduct is.
Jesus didn't use the word "sin" very often, but apparently he applied the word to anyone who did one or both of two things: knowingly to act against the word of God, or knowingly to hurt someone else unnecessarily. Although by far the main emphasis in the teaching of Jesus is on love and forgiveness, there are times when we can see that breaking God's will, or hurting others (actually, the two are nearly the same), can bring big trouble. In the Sermon on The Mount, for example, Jesus sounded very adamant when he said: "So if your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away! It is much better for you to lose a part of your body than to have your whole body thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:29). Now before some guilt-ridden reader dashes off to the kitchen for a knife, let's again understand that Jesus was speaking in hyperbole -- exaggeration. He was addressing people he cared about, trying to warn them clearly of the dangers of wrongful, hurtful conduct. But while we need not take Jesus' talk about hell literally, we do need to understand that doing serious wrong will not be taken lightly by God.
* * *
"No bad man is really free."
-- Epictetus
* * *
Sin was an even more serious matter to Saint Paul. He had a less optimistic view of human nature than did Jesus. "Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence" (Romans 3:23). Paul was convinced that inasmuch as all of us are self-centered in one way or another, and inasmuch as there is no hope at all that we can overcome this tendency in ourselves, our situation is ultimately hopeless without some higher power lifting us out of our sinful state -- saving us. For Paul, that saving power was to be found in Jesus Christ.
Again, what is sin? It is anything we do that defies and betrays what we have learned is right and good. If we call ourselves Christians, we will have learned that we are on this earth to treat each other with respect and love, to refrain from letting those little foibles I mentioned earlier inflict misery on anyone else. We are to affirm the equality of all persons upon this earth, equality under God at least. This doesn't overlook legitimate distinctions based on how we treat others. I'm not suggesting that a teacher or a carpenter are no better than a drug dealer. But we do need to understand that God loves all three equally, and therefore, while I have a right to judge and (if I should happen to be a legally appointed authority) punish the wrongdoer at law, I am not to hate him nor treat him as though he had no value as a human being.
For many of us, this a very difficult injunction. It may be easy enough in the abstract to forgive the wrongdoer. It's not so easy if it happens to you or someone you know. Frankly, I don't always find myself able to practice what I just wrote above. When I read of a vicious crime I find it difficult to feel much love for the offender. I am still struggling with the issue of capital punishment because all my biblical knowledge tells me I should oppose it, while my gut instinct in a few cases has been to favor execution for the murderer. An acquaintance of mine was recently murdered in a particularly brutal way. Part of me wants to leave the forgiving to Jesus. I sometimes feel that the only people who should be allowed to demonstrate against capital punishment the night of an execution should be people who have lost a loved one to a murderer. I'm probably wrong though, since Jesus taught that we are to try to forgive and the real sin is not even to try.
Recently, in Indianapolis, a young man delivering pizza was murdered by a teenager high on drugs. The poor man had not resisted. It was out and out murder. I think most of us would have been more than sympathetic with the father of the murdered young man if he had been filled with hatred for the killer. A recent newspaper article told how instead the father made contact with the father of the boy who had killed his son. They became friends. Together, they are now working to bring some kind of healing to the inner-city neighborhood where the crime took place. The father is not filled with hatred. He forgave, and more than that, he is trying to do something to prevent similar crimes. That is what Jesus was calling for. I don't know that father, but I have to believe he fought -- and won -- a painful inner battle to end up as he has. That's the opposite of sin, and it's what we Christians are called to try to do.
What about the person who lives a law-abiding life, who tries to be decent to everyone and wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone? Is that person still sinful? Is it fair to lump such a person together with the self-centered woman who gossips and breaks confidences about her friends, or the father who abuses his children, or the liar and the thief, or the unfaithful spouse? Of course not. Certainly in human terms some people are morally better than others. How could we encourage kindness and moral excellence if we weren't able to make that kind of distinction? Jesus urged us to be good people. The biblical idea of sin does not overlook such distinctions. But it does point out that fundamentally all of us are in one way or another self-centered -- sinful.
One seminary professor I knew used the example of a fellow who came home drunk one night. He parked his car in the middle of the street, staggered up to his front porch, swore at his own inability to unlock his door, finally succeeded in that, then fell on his face on his living room floor. Meanwhile, across the street, a neighbor was sitting on his porch watching all of this. He turned to his wife and said, "There's Sam drunk again. I'm glad I'm not that kind of man, the shameful old goat."
The professor, anticipating that we students would declare the second neighbor to be the good guy, told us to read Luke, the eighteenth chapter, verses ten through fourteen. There we read that Jesus told about two men who went into a temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. Tax collecting is an honest vocation these days, but in Jesus' time a tax collector was a collaborator with the Roman occupation forces, a social undesirable. The Pharisee, a man who scrupulously obeyed all Jewish laws and tried to live a blameless life, looked at the tax collector out of the corner of his eye and prayed: "I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there."
Meanwhile, the tax collector, head bowed, prayed: "God, have pity on me, a sinner." Jesus then said, "The tax collector, and not the Pharisee, was in the right." In other words, one of the worst sins, according to Jesus, is self-righteousness. Being judgmental of others. All the ethical excellence of that Pharisee did not offset his self-righteousness, whereas the tax collector was honest about himself and sorry for his faults. See the point? Being good is only really good if it doesn't lead us to believe ourselves to be better than others, what Mark Twain called being "good in the worst sense of the word." We may obey every ethical rule we know: kindness, generosity, scrupulous honesty; still, if it leads us therefore to feel that we are superior to others who do not live up to our standards, then we are sinful. There lie the seeds of prejudice. Jesus would have absolutely no sympathy with the idea that one race is better than another, that one ethically acceptable vocation is better than another, that distinctions based on education, or religious choice, or financial status, or physical appearance are in any way justified. Such beliefs, if they lead to a feeling of superiority, no matter how carefully we may conceal them from others, are sinful. Wrongdoing is a sin, but so is self-righteous judgmentalism. That includes preachers who condemn other denominations and religions.
We also mustn't overlook sins of omission. One of our prayers for worship reads: "We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things we ought to have done...." Even though we may manage to avoid doing things we know to be wrong, who among us can claim that we have not failed to do small kindnesses which might have made someone else's life a little better? I sadly remember a call I received several years ago from a psychiatrist, asking me to visit a member of a church I had served in earlier years. He said that she was going through a very difficult time, she had fond memories of my ministry, and I was the one person she felt she could talk to. I got busy, failed to contact the woman, and, to make a long story short, I never did. I still feel terrible every time I think about that. There have been other failures too. All of us can, I suppose, remember our failures of one kind or another. There is some comfort in the realization that we could drive ourselves nuts trying to do everything that comes to mind, and we can't do it all. But some of those failures are, indeed, sins of omission.
If all of this is true -- and the New Testament insists it is -- the reader can see that all of us are sinners of one kind or another. And sin, remember, in Jesus' mind, is our willingness to violate God's will and is therefore very much a lightning word. If sin has a negative consequence in the final scheme of things, then I, for one, am in big trouble, but so is everyone else. However, Jesus offered us hope, the promise of forgiveness. But there is a qualification to that promise. We can't go on as we are with no recognition of our condition and no effort at all to, as a current expression has it, clean up our act. Put it this way: sin is an attitude within us. It takes different forms in different people. For some, it may actually lead to crime. For others, it may take the form of deceit, hurtful conduct toward others, or just plain selfishness. For still others, it may be a quite subtle private feeling of judgment, or superiority. Excepting crime, I imagine all of us do some of each. As a Christian, I am to be painfully honest in recognizing my own sin and am to make every effort to do better. I can't be perfect. Try as I will, I'll frequently give in to some of those temptations. I'll do well to remember that Jesus once said: "Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do" (Matthew 7:21); but I'm convinced that God doesn't require me to succeed, he requires me to try. So, second best, I can try to make amends, make restitution if necessary, and most important of all, open myself up to the power of God to do what I am unable to do for myself -- change me. I'm like a drowning man, spiritually. I can take the hand of my rescuer. How? Paul told us: "If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved. For it is by our faith that we are put right with God ... This includes everyone" (Romans 10:9). So, if Jesus could speak to us today, I believe he would say: "You need not be depressed or fearful of your ultimate fate, providing you are willing to trust God for divine forgiveness. Your job is to recognize and acknowledge your sinfulness, and to make the changes necessary to overcome your sinful tendencies as much as you can. If your efforts are sincere, God will do the rest. Just be the best person you can. Try to do what one Old Testament prophet asked of his people: 'Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God' " (Micah 6:8).
Questions For Discussion
1. What are some examples of self-righteousness?
2. What can one do after the harm is done?
3. What should my attitude be toward the person who says hurtful things about me?
4. Define "sin" in your own words.
5. Do you think it possible to live a sinless life?
-- Edmund Rostand (Chanticleer)
* * *
Without guilt there is no conscience, and without conscience there is no civilization.
-- Mona Charen
* * *
All men fall into sin. But sinning, he is not forever lost, hapless and helpless, who can make amends and has not set his face against repentance.
-- Sophocles (Antigone)
What Does The Bible Mean By "Sin"?
"Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence. But by the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free."
-- Romans 3:23-24
Mark Twain once observed that "the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." That's about what has happened to the word "sin" in America. The word has been depreciated to refer to little flaws in our personalities and conduct. A movie was popular years ago with the title, Sing, You Sinners, and a perfume hit the market with the name, "My Sin." We have all seen magazine cartoons depicting some disreputable-looking man carrying a placard telling us to repent of our sins, always with a comic punch line. Even we clergy have contributed with stories like the one about the church with a sign reading: "Tired of sin? Come right in," on the front of which some wag had written with lipstick: "If not, call 321-6640" (frankly, I've told that one myself).
* * *
Jesus didn't use the word "sin" very often, but apparently he applied the word to anyone who did one or both of two things: knowingly to act against the word of God, or knowingly to hurt someone else unnecessarily.
* * *
Reading the New Testament, however, informs one that while "sin" may have become a lightning-bug word to us, it was a lightning word to Jesus. For him, the idea of sin did not refer to the little foibles of humanity. We all have those and I think you'll agree that it would not have been fair of God to create us the way we are, with all our sensitivities, the accident of birth with its resultant emotional programming, and the basic fact that we are all imperfect human beings, then condemn us for being what we are. We all have some not entirely lovable characteristics, and while those who share life with us might be delighted if we could get rid of them, we are what we are. One of literature's best role models is Popeye, who frankly declared, "I yam what I yam and thass all that I yam."
I just returned from a bookstore where the clerk asked for identification when I presented my Visa card to pay for a $4.95 book. It irritated me. I was superficially polite about it, but I felt that I am not accustomed to being investigated when I make a purchase. I know, I know. There are people who use charge cards fraudulently and the merchant has no way of knowing whether I'm honest or not. No matter, it still irritates me. I know I'm honest and it makes me feel that I somehow look suspicious. I also get angry at people who drive the exact speed limit in the passing lane, and at people who let their dogs bark. In most cases I act decently, and perhaps my anger indicates a certain deficiency of character. I know this. I want to have more character than that, but every time these things happen I still have the same angry feelings. I trust the reader not to think too ill of me. Besides, I suspect the reader has his or her own list of little private peeves as well. It is, after all, an imperfect world and we are imperfect people.
I suppose we might include a -- let's call it -- subcategory of misdoing which I will call Just Plain Stupidity. I must admit to being a frequent practitioner of this myself, but the best recent example I read about took place at a Wal-Mart store up in New Brunswick where a sale was announced of 48 Tickle-Me Elmo dolls, the toy of choice for Christmas. The news report stated that "when the doors opened, 300 customers rushed in and an employee lowering the dolls from top shelves was hit by the crush. The employee was treated for bruises at a hospital and released." Despite the injuries, I'd have to charge some overzealous parents with something other than sin. Call it JPS. "Sin" describes something deeper than all of this.
Sin, as the word is used in the Gospels, refers to a fundamental state of self-centeredness which leads us to act contrary to what we know and believe to be right. The "knowing" is important. Headhunters in Africa were raised to believe that cutting off an enemy's head is an honorable sign of manhood. It's certainly not a desirable habit from my point of view, and it's admirable that some courageous Christians are willing to risk life and limb to carry a better word to those people. But headhunting would only be sinful if the hunters were to discover how wrong and hurtful their conduct is.
Jesus didn't use the word "sin" very often, but apparently he applied the word to anyone who did one or both of two things: knowingly to act against the word of God, or knowingly to hurt someone else unnecessarily. Although by far the main emphasis in the teaching of Jesus is on love and forgiveness, there are times when we can see that breaking God's will, or hurting others (actually, the two are nearly the same), can bring big trouble. In the Sermon on The Mount, for example, Jesus sounded very adamant when he said: "So if your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away! It is much better for you to lose a part of your body than to have your whole body thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:29). Now before some guilt-ridden reader dashes off to the kitchen for a knife, let's again understand that Jesus was speaking in hyperbole -- exaggeration. He was addressing people he cared about, trying to warn them clearly of the dangers of wrongful, hurtful conduct. But while we need not take Jesus' talk about hell literally, we do need to understand that doing serious wrong will not be taken lightly by God.
* * *
"No bad man is really free."
-- Epictetus
* * *
Sin was an even more serious matter to Saint Paul. He had a less optimistic view of human nature than did Jesus. "Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence" (Romans 3:23). Paul was convinced that inasmuch as all of us are self-centered in one way or another, and inasmuch as there is no hope at all that we can overcome this tendency in ourselves, our situation is ultimately hopeless without some higher power lifting us out of our sinful state -- saving us. For Paul, that saving power was to be found in Jesus Christ.
Again, what is sin? It is anything we do that defies and betrays what we have learned is right and good. If we call ourselves Christians, we will have learned that we are on this earth to treat each other with respect and love, to refrain from letting those little foibles I mentioned earlier inflict misery on anyone else. We are to affirm the equality of all persons upon this earth, equality under God at least. This doesn't overlook legitimate distinctions based on how we treat others. I'm not suggesting that a teacher or a carpenter are no better than a drug dealer. But we do need to understand that God loves all three equally, and therefore, while I have a right to judge and (if I should happen to be a legally appointed authority) punish the wrongdoer at law, I am not to hate him nor treat him as though he had no value as a human being.
For many of us, this a very difficult injunction. It may be easy enough in the abstract to forgive the wrongdoer. It's not so easy if it happens to you or someone you know. Frankly, I don't always find myself able to practice what I just wrote above. When I read of a vicious crime I find it difficult to feel much love for the offender. I am still struggling with the issue of capital punishment because all my biblical knowledge tells me I should oppose it, while my gut instinct in a few cases has been to favor execution for the murderer. An acquaintance of mine was recently murdered in a particularly brutal way. Part of me wants to leave the forgiving to Jesus. I sometimes feel that the only people who should be allowed to demonstrate against capital punishment the night of an execution should be people who have lost a loved one to a murderer. I'm probably wrong though, since Jesus taught that we are to try to forgive and the real sin is not even to try.
Recently, in Indianapolis, a young man delivering pizza was murdered by a teenager high on drugs. The poor man had not resisted. It was out and out murder. I think most of us would have been more than sympathetic with the father of the murdered young man if he had been filled with hatred for the killer. A recent newspaper article told how instead the father made contact with the father of the boy who had killed his son. They became friends. Together, they are now working to bring some kind of healing to the inner-city neighborhood where the crime took place. The father is not filled with hatred. He forgave, and more than that, he is trying to do something to prevent similar crimes. That is what Jesus was calling for. I don't know that father, but I have to believe he fought -- and won -- a painful inner battle to end up as he has. That's the opposite of sin, and it's what we Christians are called to try to do.
What about the person who lives a law-abiding life, who tries to be decent to everyone and wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone? Is that person still sinful? Is it fair to lump such a person together with the self-centered woman who gossips and breaks confidences about her friends, or the father who abuses his children, or the liar and the thief, or the unfaithful spouse? Of course not. Certainly in human terms some people are morally better than others. How could we encourage kindness and moral excellence if we weren't able to make that kind of distinction? Jesus urged us to be good people. The biblical idea of sin does not overlook such distinctions. But it does point out that fundamentally all of us are in one way or another self-centered -- sinful.
One seminary professor I knew used the example of a fellow who came home drunk one night. He parked his car in the middle of the street, staggered up to his front porch, swore at his own inability to unlock his door, finally succeeded in that, then fell on his face on his living room floor. Meanwhile, across the street, a neighbor was sitting on his porch watching all of this. He turned to his wife and said, "There's Sam drunk again. I'm glad I'm not that kind of man, the shameful old goat."
The professor, anticipating that we students would declare the second neighbor to be the good guy, told us to read Luke, the eighteenth chapter, verses ten through fourteen. There we read that Jesus told about two men who went into a temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. Tax collecting is an honest vocation these days, but in Jesus' time a tax collector was a collaborator with the Roman occupation forces, a social undesirable. The Pharisee, a man who scrupulously obeyed all Jewish laws and tried to live a blameless life, looked at the tax collector out of the corner of his eye and prayed: "I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there."
Meanwhile, the tax collector, head bowed, prayed: "God, have pity on me, a sinner." Jesus then said, "The tax collector, and not the Pharisee, was in the right." In other words, one of the worst sins, according to Jesus, is self-righteousness. Being judgmental of others. All the ethical excellence of that Pharisee did not offset his self-righteousness, whereas the tax collector was honest about himself and sorry for his faults. See the point? Being good is only really good if it doesn't lead us to believe ourselves to be better than others, what Mark Twain called being "good in the worst sense of the word." We may obey every ethical rule we know: kindness, generosity, scrupulous honesty; still, if it leads us therefore to feel that we are superior to others who do not live up to our standards, then we are sinful. There lie the seeds of prejudice. Jesus would have absolutely no sympathy with the idea that one race is better than another, that one ethically acceptable vocation is better than another, that distinctions based on education, or religious choice, or financial status, or physical appearance are in any way justified. Such beliefs, if they lead to a feeling of superiority, no matter how carefully we may conceal them from others, are sinful. Wrongdoing is a sin, but so is self-righteous judgmentalism. That includes preachers who condemn other denominations and religions.
We also mustn't overlook sins of omission. One of our prayers for worship reads: "We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things we ought to have done...." Even though we may manage to avoid doing things we know to be wrong, who among us can claim that we have not failed to do small kindnesses which might have made someone else's life a little better? I sadly remember a call I received several years ago from a psychiatrist, asking me to visit a member of a church I had served in earlier years. He said that she was going through a very difficult time, she had fond memories of my ministry, and I was the one person she felt she could talk to. I got busy, failed to contact the woman, and, to make a long story short, I never did. I still feel terrible every time I think about that. There have been other failures too. All of us can, I suppose, remember our failures of one kind or another. There is some comfort in the realization that we could drive ourselves nuts trying to do everything that comes to mind, and we can't do it all. But some of those failures are, indeed, sins of omission.
If all of this is true -- and the New Testament insists it is -- the reader can see that all of us are sinners of one kind or another. And sin, remember, in Jesus' mind, is our willingness to violate God's will and is therefore very much a lightning word. If sin has a negative consequence in the final scheme of things, then I, for one, am in big trouble, but so is everyone else. However, Jesus offered us hope, the promise of forgiveness. But there is a qualification to that promise. We can't go on as we are with no recognition of our condition and no effort at all to, as a current expression has it, clean up our act. Put it this way: sin is an attitude within us. It takes different forms in different people. For some, it may actually lead to crime. For others, it may take the form of deceit, hurtful conduct toward others, or just plain selfishness. For still others, it may be a quite subtle private feeling of judgment, or superiority. Excepting crime, I imagine all of us do some of each. As a Christian, I am to be painfully honest in recognizing my own sin and am to make every effort to do better. I can't be perfect. Try as I will, I'll frequently give in to some of those temptations. I'll do well to remember that Jesus once said: "Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do" (Matthew 7:21); but I'm convinced that God doesn't require me to succeed, he requires me to try. So, second best, I can try to make amends, make restitution if necessary, and most important of all, open myself up to the power of God to do what I am unable to do for myself -- change me. I'm like a drowning man, spiritually. I can take the hand of my rescuer. How? Paul told us: "If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved. For it is by our faith that we are put right with God ... This includes everyone" (Romans 10:9). So, if Jesus could speak to us today, I believe he would say: "You need not be depressed or fearful of your ultimate fate, providing you are willing to trust God for divine forgiveness. Your job is to recognize and acknowledge your sinfulness, and to make the changes necessary to overcome your sinful tendencies as much as you can. If your efforts are sincere, God will do the rest. Just be the best person you can. Try to do what one Old Testament prophet asked of his people: 'Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God' " (Micah 6:8).
Questions For Discussion
1. What are some examples of self-righteousness?
2. What can one do after the harm is done?
3. What should my attitude be toward the person who says hurtful things about me?
4. Define "sin" in your own words.
5. Do you think it possible to live a sinless life?
