Sin and Error Pining

In College Church this semester we are talking about some of the essentials to the faith.  Last week we talked about creation and this week we will be talking about sin and its effect on creation.  As I have been doing my prep work for the sermon this week, I am reminded of the song lyric from my favorite Christmas song O Holy Night that says:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Until He appeared and the soul felt its worth

Because I wanted to be sure I had a clear understanding of the word pining here I went and looked it up and decided I should post it for you:

pine ² (pn)

v.pined, pin·ing, pines

v.intr.

1. To feel a lingering, often nostalgic desire.

2. To wither or waste away from longing or grief: pined away and died.

v.tr.Archaic

To grieve or mourn for.

n.Archaic

Intense longing or grief.

Now, I am specifically interested in the more archaic definitions here especially as this song was written by Adolphe Adam in 1847.  So what we have here is a lyric that basically states that the world lay mourning its sin until the advent of Jesus.  It goes onto say that in His coming,  the soul finds its worth.  I can’t help but wonder how many people out there are struggling with the whole sin and error pining thing and are unable to find forgiveness, healing, redemption, or reconciliation because they have not acknowledged that the soul finds its worth…truthfully its very identity in Christ.

Just a thought…perhaps more to come.

 

Pringles…

I love Pringles.  Lately, I have been going through stacks of them much faster than I know is healthy, but I just can’t help myself.  They are just so tasty I can’t keep from eating them knowing full well that to eat a whole can in one sitting is beyond unhealthy. As we speak…I am sitting with two empty cans of Pringles on my desk from several days a go and am no that far from a third empty can.  So knowing that it is unhealthy, why do I do it.  if I am honest, it is because I care about the here and now and not the future. I am concerned with the yumminess now and not the clogged arteries later.  This is much like Paul’s letter to the Romans 7 where he discusses sin:

⁷What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” ⁸But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. ⁹Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. ¹⁰I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. ¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. ¹³Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

That is definitely how I feel after I have downed a can of Pringles knowing full well that I shouldn’t have.  But never fear…there is hope!!!!

Romans 8 tells us this:

¹Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ²because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Such good news for the sinner and Pringle eater.

Send Me on My Way…

I was listening to the Rusted Root song Send Me on My Way this morning and it got me to thinking about this passage in Isaiah.

Isaiah 6:1-9a

¹ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

⁶ Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

⁹ He said, “Go and tell this people:

I know the song has nothing to do with this story about Isaiah, but I couldn’t help but think about  “Here I am.  Send me!”  in verse 8.  In this passage Isaiah’ sins are atoned for and his response is to answer God’s call.  I wonder how many of us respond to the forgiveness and atonement of our sins as Isaiah has here.  I know there have many time is my life where I have chosen to respond by saying “Not me God, send someone else.

In verse 9 God directs Isaiah to “Go and tell this people:” and then gives Isaiah a message to deliver in the following verses.  Each of us that have responded to the call to follow after Jesus have been given a message to deliver…we have been sent out to bear witness to the risen Christ Jesus.  Have you responded to that call by saying “Here I am.  Send Me” as Isaiah responded to his call, or have you responded by saying “Not me Lord, send someone else.”

Our message may be different from Isaiah’s, but God has sent each of us on our way to share the Gospel.  May we all respond with faithfulness as Isaiah did before us.

Oh…and in case you are unfamiliar with the Send Me on My Way song.  Here is the video.

Jesus died for the bad guys too…

I was taking my kids to pre-school this morning and my son Colm suggested we play a game.  I asked him what he would like to play and he said we should all take turns saying something about Jesus.  He started by saying that Jesus lived in his heart and on my turn, I said that Jesus died on the cross for us.  Colm responded by saying, “Jesus died for the bad guys too”.  I am amazed at the insight of my kids sometimes.  He understands at 4 years of age a concept that most adults never seem to be able to grasp a hold of.  I was exceptionally proud in that moment.

Colm understands that Jesus didn’t come so that good people could somehow earn their way to Heaven by doing enough good things to outweigh the bad things that are done.  Jesus came because each of us is in need of a Savior.  Nobody can ever be good enough to earn their way into Heaven.  Jesus died for each one of us…even who the world would deem the worst of us. The truth is, we are all broken and in need of Jesus no matter how bad we think we are…or how bad others think we are.  Scripture tells us that we all fall short of God’s glory.   It means what it says…all of us fall short.  Colm understands something profound…may we all have the same insight that he does…that each of us needs Jesus.

Beautiful Scandalous Night…

I have been thinking a lot lately about the meaning of the Cross.  I know we are several weeks past Easter, but for some reason the Cross weighs heavily on mind of late.  Just today, I was listening to some songs from The Choir and came across the song Beautiful Scandalous Night. I did a search for the video and here it is:

As I think about the cross, the more I realize I can’t wrap my mind around the wonder and magnitude of the event.  I can’t fully comprehend how Jesus’ death on the cross pays for the wages of my sin…I cannot imagine what it must have felt like for Him to be in full communion with God and then in His own words be forsaken by God.  What must the weight of the falleness of all creation have felt like?  Its incomprehensible…and while I can’t fully understand the mechanics of it all…I do know why He did it…because He loves.

Superbia…

I was reading a blog last week that I have just started following by Steve Liscum. Check out his blog here at http://steveliscum.wordpress.com/.  In one of his recent blogs he asked the question, “can someone tell me why we try to earn God’s grace?”  Its a pretty challenging question, and one I think the church should spend some time trying to find some answers to.  Anyhow, I spent some time this week thinking about this question and I came across this passage in Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

The root of all sin is pride, superbia  (the Latin word for pride).  I want to be my own law, I have a right to myself, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death.  The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God.

I think Bonhoeffer’s words make some sense in considering this question.  If it is true that we want to be as God as Bonhoeffer asserts…and as I would assert as well, because of our sin/pride then the reason we try to earn grace is because we think we can give grace  to ourselves by working hard enough to be good to earn God’s favor.  Our culture teaches us that all we need to do is work hard and we will achieve whatever dreams we have.  If our culture teaches this, it is no wonder this mind set has seeped into our churches.  Our pride tells us that if we work hard at this thing called Christianity God will reward us with His grace, but the scandal of the Gospel and of Jesus is that no amount of work will earn us that grace.  It is freely given.  What a serious blow to our pride that is.  That means that anyone can have that grace, despite their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or bank account size.  That means that we are all on equal footing before the LORD.  Most people’s pride won’t allow for that so we continue to create for a system that allows us to earn grace, because that means certain people will be kept out while others who did all the right things will be in.

Pride is a dangerous thing.  Let us all humble ourselves before God and each other and grab hold of the Good News of Jesus Christ which tells us that we are all sinners in need of saving and reconciliation to our God.  That grace offered in and through Jesus Christ is free to all and requires no work from us.

Breaking through to Community…

Confession is not only good for the soul, it is also good for the community.  Bonhoeffer explains the value of confession to the community in Life Together.

In Confession, the break through to community takes place.  Sin demands to have a man by himself.  It withdraws him from the community.  The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous his isolation.  Sin wants to remain unknown.

To be in community is to be known to some degree and our sin rages against this.  Our sin isolates us from those we would be in community because it want us to create walls and build barriers to keep who we really our secret and in so doing keeps us from every having to change our behavior.  The Gospel demands something entirely from us.  It seeks confession and full disclosure.  It shuns the idea of hiding, preferring  instead vulnerability and authenticity.  The Gospel provides us with a choice: to continue to live in sin and therefore isolation or to choose full disclosure and community.  Our natural inclination is to fear confession and vulnerability.  Its frightening to imagine placing our trust in another, but in order to build a stronger life together, we must find the courage to confess to the Father in and through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We must also find the courage to confess to one another so that we remove ourselves from isolation and into relationship and accountability.  No easy task for any of us, but nothing Jesus asks of us is ever easy…its just right.

Not the Way It's Supposed to Be…

A quick survey of the world around us would show us that things are a bit…broken.  Cornelius Plantinga Jr. wrote a book called Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. In the opening chapter of the book he references the movie Grand Canyon to make a profound point about the world around us:

In the film Grand Canyon, an immigration attorney breaks out of a traffic jam and attempts to bypass it.  His route takes him along streets that seem progressively darker and more deserted,  The the predictable Bonfire of the Vanities nightmare: his expensive car stalls on one of those alarming streets whose teenage guardians favor expensive guns and sneakers.  The attorney does manage to phone for a tow truck, but before it arrives, five young street toughs surround  his disabled car and threaten him with considerable bodily harm.  Then, just in time, the tow truck shows up  and its driver – an earnest genial man – begins to hook up the disabled car.  The toughs protest: the truck driver is interrupting their meal.  So the truck driver  takes the leader of the group aside and attempts a five – sentence introduction to metaphysics: “Man”, he says, “the world ain’t supposed to work like this.  Maybe you don’t know that, but this ain’t the way its supposed to be.  I am supposed to be able to do my job without askin’ you if I can.  And that dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you rippin’ him off.  Everthing’s supposed to be different than what it is here.”

How many of us have wondered down progressively dark streets in our own lives only to realize we are alone in the dark and in real trouble because we were looking for an easier way out?  How many of us have said the same words or at least thought those same words spoken by the tow truck driver.  The world we live in is more than just a little broken.  Plantinga goes on to discuss in his book the affect of sin on humanity, the world, and all of creation for that matter.  If you are looking for a good book on the power and influence of sin, then check out his book. I highly recommend it.  Plantinga will challenge you to think about sin as more than just a wrong action.  He will challenge you to think about sin as  condition of the soul. I would also recommend checking out the movie Grand Canyon as well.  Both are strong investigations into the human condition.