The CRCA
B.C.15 – What’s so original about sin?
Word of Salvation - August 2018
B.C.15 – What’s so original about sin?
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp
Bible readings: Psalm 51 & Romans 7:7-25.
Text: Psalm 51:5
Introd: I think most of us find it hard to take when someone tells us some “home truths” about ourselves.
We don’t find criticism easy to handle.
Compliments are not too hard to put up with.
But when something even slightly negative is said about us...
we tend to either let it to go in one ear and out the other ear...
or else we react angrily and try to defend ourselves.
When did you last thank someone for drawing your attention to some character fault?
Very rarely do we thank the person concerned for pointing it out to us.
More often we become very, very defensive about criticism.
I see that tendency in myself and I have seen it in some of my parishioners.
Is it not true that a similar thing happens when it comes to God’s Word?
The Word of God... written OR preached... has much to say to us.
And a great deal of what it says about us is very positive.
And we as Christians just love those positive truths of Scripture.
There are these wonderful truths: we are children of almighty God his sons & daughters.
We are forgiven... we have eternal life now... we have a home waiting in heaven.
It’s great to hear those wonderful things. People love the positive things in the Bible.
However the Bible also has those very negative statements about us... stuff about our sin.
That’s when we tend to switch off and say: All that sin business is too depressing.
When there is so much that is positive, why focus on the negative?
There are many people who don’t want to hear sermons on sin.
There are churches that have dropped prayers of confession. They are seen as too negative.
But let me ask you: What do you think really helps you to grow more?
A compliment...? Or constructive criticism?
Character development really needs a good balance of both.
We should certainly not shrug off criticism if we want to mature as human beings.
Tonight then we may not shrug off the hard things the Scriptures tell us in these two Bible readings.
For a second time the Belgic Confession sums up some tough issues and we must listen and learn.
A] THE PROBLEM DEFINED.
1. THE NATURE OF OUR PROBLEM
A friend once said to me: “John, you’ve got a problem!”
And that right away put me on the defensive.
So much so that I didn’t listen too carefully.
Tonight the Bible comes to us in these two readings and it says, “People you’ve got a problem.”
And then there’s the danger that we get all defensive....
That we switch off and don’t listen too carefully any more.
The Bible tells us, “You have a problem... and your problem is sin!”
Of course we are ready to admit that – after all we have been taught that for years.
We know that time and again we fail our God... we agree that we sin against Him often.
But, hey, we then confess those sins... and we know it’s all OK. Problem solved!
But it isn’t like that... at least... that’s only part of the story.
The point is that we often tend to look at it this way:
There are those moments in which we fail God and sin.
But in between there are many moments when we don’t sin and everything is OK.
Sorry, that’s not the way it is at all... that is a mistaken concept of sin.
It is not so that we human beings live basically good lives... interrupted by some slip-ups.
The Bible has a far different picture of our problem and we need to listen to that carefully.
The problem is NOT that we sin from time to time.
The problem is rather that we are sinners... and that is quite a different matter.
Man’s problem is not that he HAS sinned or DOES sin.
His problem is that he IS a sinner... and by nature he is lost in it.
The stress is not merely on what we do... but on what we are.
And what we do, happens only because of what we are.
Let me make a comparison:
In Australia tiger-snakes are known for their highly lethal bite.
Over the years tiger-snakes have claimed many victims.
But it’s not so that this animal suddenly becomes a tiger snake in the instant it bites someone fatally.
It always was a tiger snake... never anything else.
And because it was a tiger snake it followed all the instincts of a tiger snake and bit someone.
Its bite does not make it a tiger snake.... but because it is a tiger snake it bites.
It is exactly the same way with our sin problem.
It is not that you sin from time to time and that this occasional sin makes you a sinner.
Not at all! You already were a sinner before your first conscious sin.
In fact you were never anything else.
And just as a snake follows its nature and bites so you as a sinner follow your nature and sin.
That’s the point David makes in Psalm 51: Surely I have been a sinner from birth,
Sinful, from the time my mother conceived me.
IOW sin is not just an occasional act... it describes my natural condition from conception on.
In Romans 7 the whole thrust of is not just that Paul sins from time to time
But rather that there is an old sin-nature that stops him from doing what is good.
The B.Conf. teaches that too... that we have our whole nature corrupted.
Already tiny babies in their mother’s wombs are infected by it
And because we have this kind of nature it leads to actual sins.
We call this sin that we are born with ORIGINAL SIN.
That doesn’t mean at all that there is anything original about sin. That’s not what it’s saying.
Rather it means we trace this sin-nature, this corruption, right back to the original sin of Adam
As a result of his sin we are now born with a sin nature.
That makes our problem far, far worse than many imagine.
Let me just mention two ways in which this has important implications for us.
I have met Christians who teach that we can achieve total perfection in this life.
And I have to agree that this is true.... you can achieve perfection!
Provided... provided that you see sin only as something that you do... sometimes.
Then in between your lapses into sin you may well claim perfection for yourself.
If however this Biblical picture of our problem in Psalm 51 is true
then it makes no sense for us to ever claim perfection.
This also has implications for the way many counsellors view sin.
I had a Baptist friend who claimed that wrongdoing comes only by imitations
He believed that babies were born innocent and that they learn bad things from other people.
Already as children they pick up from us our bad habits as parents.
And later from friends at school... and from others in society.
One day this man was suddenly confronted with this verse from Psalm 51.
It basically tells us that we could put a child on a dessert island away from all evil influences...
and even if we could create there a perfect environment
then that child would still grow up sinful and with sinful actions.
Original sin is a serious reality showing the seriousness of our problem.
I was born with it and so the good I want to do I don’t do and evil I don’t want to do I do.
2. THE EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM.
Please note too that not only is our condition serious.
This condition is also UNIVERSAL.
This sinful corruption has extended to all of humanity.
It’s not so that the world is divided into good guys and bad guys.
Like the old western movies on telly with good guys in white hats and the baddies in black hats.
Sometimes we’re tempted to think the world is divided that way.
And of course we in the church are the goodies.
The badies are the pagans out there who don’t care about God’s law.
But it’s not that way at all... all of humanity suffers from original sin.
There are no exceptions – well, okay: there was one, Jesus Christ!
He was the only perfect man to walk this planet since Adam.
Sometimes we read of a tragic family situation where an hereditary disease is present in a family line.
The grandfather was known to have had it. The father died of it at an early age.
And now the son has it too... the whole family line is infected.
This disease is in that family’s genetic make up. That’s tragic!
Well original sin is like that too. It’s as if in some way it runs in our genes.
It has infected the whole of the human race like a hereditary disease.
So parents, if you wonder where your kids got their problems from they got it from you.
There are two aspects to this.
First we could think of original sin as a brokenness or pollutant.
And we could think of Adam as being the one who passed it on down the family line.
Adam was your great, great, great... etc. grand-dad who kicked off this family disease.
And Scripture teaches that what is unclean and sinful cannot produce what is pure and sinless.
So every human being has been polluted by the fallout of original sin.
Secondly we could think of it in terms of the guilt it leaves us with.
The test that God gave Adam in Paradise couldn’t be given to every generation anew.
God therefore appointed Adam to represent the whole human race in the test.
Some people are quick to say that God was unfair in making Adam our representative.
They feel they wouldn’t have done what Adam did so they want their own test.
Yet in many other areas of life we have no difficulty in thinking in terms of representation.
Let me give an example from a great Kiwi sporting achievement.
Back in 1995 New Zealand won the America’s Cup from the Yanks.
The media there was over the moon. Everyone said: We beat the Yanks.
But it’s not true that we won it. Sir Peter Blake’s Team New Zealand did.
Yet everyone talked about us winning the America’s Cup.
Blake’s team simply represented New Zealand.
In the same way Adam represented humanity before God.
And therefore the Bible and the church have always taught that in Adam’s fall we sinned all.
So we all share the guilt. Original sin is a common problem to the whole of the human race.
And not one of us can look down on someone else as though it is their problem and not ours.
All mankind shares in the pollution of it that is in our genes and in Adam’s guilt as our representative.
B] SOLUTION OUTLINED.
1. SOLUTIONS THAT DON’T WORK.
It is essential that we understanding these things.
We must have a good grasp of our human dilemma.
Wrong understanding leads to wrong, ineffective solutions.
Today if we talk about sin as mere moral lapses and failings then we will accept wrong solutions.
Some say that it really doesn’t really matter all that much – God is, after all, loving.
All we have to do is work at it... believe in yourself... do your best.
And if you’re genuine about it you’ll gradually improve and God will be pleased.
Others suggest that we can make it up to God by some extra good works.
So we say some extra prayers or put a little more money in the collection for TEAR fund.
If our sins offend Him, then our good deeds please Him.
And those two kind of cancel each other out.
People who talk that way have never understood what David says in Psalm 51.
If you do not realise how drastically original sin has corrupted us
then you will not understand either our desperate need...
our need for the radical answer that God had to provide for our problem.
In the Middle Ages they had another answer that some still teach today.
They said that the sacrament of baptism removes our original sin.
But, baptism doesn’t do that. It isn’t the answer either – no matter how important it is.
No ritual or rite in the church can ever solve that problem of our original sin.
And if you think that because you have been baptised your sin nature is dealt with
and you are accepted of God... you are wrong.
Baptism does however point us to what the real answer is.
It is a sign and a seal of the solution God has provided in the gospel.
2. THE GOSPEL ANSWER.
That brings us to the only true solution.
The gospel about the doing, the dying and the victory of Jesus.
Jesus had a holy and sinless birth.
Therefore He is the only one born without original sin.
So the gospel deals with both aspects of original sin: with the guilt but also the pollution.
First the gospel deals with our guilt.
Both the guilt of the sins we do daily as well as the guilt we carry from Adam our representative.
He forgives the actual sins that we committed this day.
But He also, in grace and mercy, forgives us the guilt of our original sin.
The sin that is part and parcel of being human in a fallen world.
That is now no longer counted against us to condemn us.
Here again we need to come back briefly to this idea of a REPRESENTATIVE.
We human beings have two representatives... Adam was one of them.
But because he failed... we failed with him and in him.
And that makes us guilty before God.
So God gave us another representative: the Lord Jesus Christ... the second Adam.
And because He succeeded we succeeded with Him and in Him.
That is why God can now declare all those who believe in Him “Not guilty!”
Secondly the gospel also deals with the pollution of original sin that somehow runs in our genes.
The gospel deals not only with our sinful actions... our lapses... our rebellion.
But in the gospel God also deals with our very sin nature... with what we are.
God begins in those who believe a process of change and renewal.
The power of that old sin nature is broken. God gradually remakes us in His image.
I began tonight by saying that negative things about ourselves are hard to take.
That’s why we as human beings are so rarely open about our faults.
We find criticism a little hard to handle... compliments are much more up our alley.
Yet in the Scriptures we see that God is ruthlessly blunt with us.
He tells us what our real problem is... that our whole nature is corrupt.
However when the Lord tells us that then He also balances that with good news.
He at the same time shows us the way out of the problem
by reminding us that through faith in Jesus we become sons and daughters of God.
Then our original sin problem cannot condemn us.
God tells us both the negative and the positive and we need to hear both.
If we listen only to the good news of the gospel and not the bad news about our natural condition
and regarding our total corruption then we’ll never understand why Jesus had to die.
If OTOH we listen only to the bad news about our sinfulness
and our total corruption from birth then we will end up only in despair and with no answers.
God tells us the hard truth about ourselves as sinners.
So that by faith we may also see ourselves as children of God and rejoice in that.
3. THE WARNINGS GIVEN.
Our B.Confession ends with a warning.
A warning to make sure we keep a proper perspective.
Especially on these truths we’ve been talking about today.
In daily life you and I can so easily get things all out of kilter.
There is always the danger that we Christians don’t take sin too seriously.
And there are two reasons for that.
OTOH we might well be tempted to say:
Our situation is one of total corruption of our whole nature.
Why, even Paul said ‘The Good I want to do I don’t do.’
So why get too hung up about sin... you can’t win all the time anyway.
We’re only human after all...!
So we rest rather comfortably in our sinfulness.
OTOH we might look at it from the other point of view.
We might well say: well God forgives anyway, in Christ He is always merciful.
So, again, why worry if we slip up? God will not condemn us.
Over against both those tendencies that we slip into so easily we are warned:
This teaching about our sinful nature and that God has forgiven us our actual and original sin.
Should make us sigh and long for our full and total deliverance.
With Paul we should pray that we may be set free from that body of death.
True – the guilt of Adam is totally dealt with in our forgiveness.
However dealing with the pollution from our old nature is a lifelong process....
as we grow in grace and holiness
and then finally... only in the moment of death we are freed from it forever.
May we as Christians long more and more for that holiness that God works in us already now.
And for the perfection that will be ours when we enter into His presence. Amen.
BC stands for Basic Christianity. What are the fundamentals of the faith?
BC also stands for Belgic Confession – a document in which the Christian church (in a time of great persecution) spelled out the basics of what she believes.
When Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep it needs to grasp again the basics of the faith and confess them in a world where the faith is increasingly under attack.
Those who drew up the BC declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags and their whole bodies to the fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.
