Sin

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Karl Menninger:

     The very word “sin,” which seems to have disappeared, was a proud word. It was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. It described a central point in every civilized human being’s life plan and life style. But the word went away. It has almost disappeared—the word, along with the notion. Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore? Doesn’t anyone believe in sin?

(Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? [New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1974], p. 14.)

Cf. Owen C. Thomas:

     Although the concept of neurosis was unknown before the late nineteenth century, there is an element in the Christian tradition which tends to support the causal relation between sin and neurosis. Paul taught that when a person rebels against God, this leads to the disruption of the person (Rom. 1:28-32). Similarly Augustine taught that when the will is not subordinate to God, the affections of the soul are insubordinate to the will and become disordered. According to Christian faith a person’s relation to God is fundamental to the person’s well being on all levels, including the psychological. If the relation to God is disrupted, then we can expect things to begin to go wrong on all levels of the person’s life. If persons are created to have their lives centered in God, then to lose this center is to place all aspects of life in jeopardy, leading to psychological confusion, conflict, and perhaps neurosis. Thus we have discovered that causality is a possible relation between the concepts of sin and neurosis.

     Are these concepts complementary in the sense that they refer to different aspects of one reality in a person? Is it possible to assert that one particular human state looked at from one point of view is an unconscious emotional conflict and looked at from another point of view is estrangement from God? This sounds like a possibility.

     …However, if, as we have noted above, it is possible to conceive of the presence of sin without neurosis and vice versa, then this complementary relation would not always be the case. So the concepts may be complementary but not necessarily always.

     At this point it is important to note that the referents of the concepts of sin and neurosis are usually held to be universal, that is, present in all people. The Christian doctrine of sin asserts that estrangement from God is universal, and that it is overcome only fragmentarily in historical life. Freud and his followers assert that neurosis in some form and in some degree is probably universal, but that it can be overcome in varying degrees. We have noted that one limitation of the applicability of the relations of causality and complementarity is the fact that it is possible to conceive the presence of sin without neurosis and vice versa. If, however, the concepts of sin and neurosis both involve their universality, then this limitation is removed.

(Owen C. Thomas, Theological Questions: Analysis and Argument, [Wilton: Morehouse-Barlow Co., Inc., 1983], pp. 66, 67.)

Cf. Rebecca Manley Pippert:

Surely you don’t expect a modern person to believe that human woes could be tied to something as archaic as the notion of sin? Few concepts have less cash value today than sin. In fact, since the time of the Enlightenment we have not even used the concept of sin as a category for understanding the human condition. So let’s not be so naive as to say our problems are a result of sin. Nobody believes that anymore.

     Yet the notion of human fallenness has captured the imagination of literary thinkers such as Camus and William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies. It was exactly Karl Menninger’s point in Whatever Happened to Sin? And listen to what psychotherapist Otto Rank says in Becker’s The Denial of Death: “The neurotic type suffers from a consciousness of sin just as much as did his religious ancestor, without believing in the conception of sin. This is precisely what makes him ‘neurotic’; he feels a sinner without the religious belief in sin for which he therefore needs a new rational explanation.” Thus the plight of the modern person is that he or she is, according to Becker, “a sinner with no word for it.” Becker even lists the characteristics of the disease as being in disharmony with others, always trying to create one’s own world from within themselves, blowing oneself up to larger than true size, refusing to admit one’s cosmic dependence.

(Rebecca Manley Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons: The Search to Satisfy Our Deepest Longings: Revised Edition, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001], p. 86.)

Cf. Ernest Becker:

     But now we see the historical difference between the classical sinner and the modern neurotic: both of them experience the naturalness of human insufficiency, only today the neurotic is stripped of the symbolic world-view, the God-ideology that would make sense out of his unworthiness and would translate it into heroism. Traditional religion turned the consciousness of sin into a condition for salvation; but the tortured sense of nothingness of the neurotic qualifies him now only for miserable extinction, for merciful release in lonely death. It is all right to be nothing vis-à-vis God, who alone can make it right in His unknown ways; it is another thing to be nothing to oneself, who is nothing. Rank summed it up this way:

The neurotic type suffers from a consciousness of sin just as much as did his religious ancestor, without believing in the conception of sin. This is precisely what makes him “neurotic”; he feels a sinner without the religious belief in sin for which he therefore needs a new rational explanation.

Thus the plight of modern man: a sinner with no word for it or, worse, who looks for the word for it in a dictionary of psychology and thus only aggravates the problem of his separateness and hyper-consciousness. Again, this impasse is what Rank meant when he called psychology a “preponderantly negative and disintegrating ideology.”

(Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, [New York: The Free Press, 1975], pp. 197-198.)

Cf. Otto Rank:

…those masses are still deeply engulfed in religious traditions of their forefathers, and the mere fact that a handful of intellectuals have introduced a few new terms into popular language does not alter the deep religious feeling most people, including those intellectuals themselves, still cherish in spite of their denial.

     To label sin by the misleading term of “guilt”—which is the result of it—does not in the least change the individual’s inner experience concerning it. The neurotic type suffers from a consciousness of sin just as much as did his religious ancestor, without believing in the conception of sin. This is precisely what makes him “neurotic”; he feels a sinner without the religious belief in sin for which he therefore needs a new rational explanation. The need and desire for a humanistic Christianity is one thing and the ability to lead a Christian life—to be “un vrai chrétien”—is quite another.

(Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology, [New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1958], pp. 192-193.)

Barbara Brown Taylor:

…neither the language of medicine nor the language of law is an adequate substitute for the language of theology, which has more room in it for paradox than either of the other two. In the theological model, the basic human problem is not sickness or lawlessness but sin. It is something we experience both as a species and as individuals, in our existential angst and in our willful misbehavior. However we run into it, we run into it as wrecked relationship: with God, with one another, with the whole created order. Sometimes we cause the wreckage and sometimes we are simply trapped in it, but either way we are not doomed.

     Contrary to the medical model, we are not entirely at the mercy of our maladies. …The choice to enter into the process of repair is called repentance, an often bitter medicine with the undisputed power to save lives.

     Contrary to the legal model, sin is not simply a set of behaviors to be avoided. Much more fundamentally, it is a way of life to be exposed and changed, and no one is innocent. …the essence of sin is not the violation of laws but the violation of relationships.

     …“All sins are attempts to fill voids,” wrote the French philosopher Simone Weil. Because we cannot stand the God-shaped hole

inside of us, we try stuffing it full of all sorts of things, but it refuses to be filled. It rejects all substitutes. It insists on remaining bare. It is the holy of holies inside of us, which only God may fill.

(Barbara Brown Taylor, Speaking of Sin: The Lost Language of Salvation, [Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2015], pp. 40, 41, 41, 46-47.) Preview.

Cf. Augustine of Hippo:

...You made us for Yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You.

(Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 1.1; trans. Penguin Classics: Saint Augustine: Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986], p. 21. Cf. NPNF1, 1:45.)

Cf. Blaise Pascal:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, [London: Penguin Books, 1966], # 148 (428), p. 75.)

Fore more see: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, [New York: Dutton, 2008], Chapter Ten: The Problem of Sin, pp. 159ff.

R. C. Sproul:

When we want to emphasize the importance of something in English, we have several devices from which to choose. We may underline the important words or print them in italics or boldface type. We may attach an exclamation point following the words or set them off in quotation marks. These are all devices to call the reader’s attention to something that is especially important.

     The Old Testament Jew also had different techniques to indicate emphasis. One such device was the method of repetition. We see Jesus’ use of repetition with the words “Truly, truly, I say to you” (NASB). Here the double use of truly was a sign that what He was about to say was of crucial importance. The word translated “truly” is the ancient word amen. We normally think of the word amen as something people say at the end of a sermon or of a prayer. It means simply, “It is true.” Jesus used it as a preface instead of a response. …On a handful of occasions the Bible repeats something to the third degree. To mention something three times in succession is to elevate it to the superlative degree, to attach to it emphasis of superimportance. …Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy, or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that He is holy, holy, holy, that the whole earth is full of His glory.

(R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, [Carol Stream: Tyndale, 1998], pp. 23-24, 24, 25.)

Derek Thomas:

     The first lesson that emerges from the fifth petition is that Jesus takes sin seriously. Anselm, the medieval theologian and scholar, wrote a treatise on the necessity for Christ to become incarnate in order for him to be our Redeemer — the book was called Cur Deus Homo, Why Did God become Man? In it, he portrays a somewhat dense character, suitably called Bozo, who cannot follow his reasoning. Exasperated, someone tells Bozo: Nondum considerasti quantum ponderis sit peccatum, ‘You have not yet considered the greatness of the weight of sin.’ A failure to take sin seriously leads us into all kinds of moral and spiritual failure. Sin, after all, is why Jesus came into this world. It is the reason why he had to become a servant — a suffering servant. It is sin that necessitated him dying on a cross of shame. 

     We can never take sin lightly.

(Derek Thomas, Praying The Saviour’s Way: Let Jesus’ Prayer Reshape Your Prayer Life, [Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2002], pp. 99-100.)

R. C. Sproul:

None of us keeps the Great Commandment for five minutes. We may think that we do in a surface way, but on a moment’s reflection it is clear that we don’t love God with our whole heart or our whole mind or our whole strength. We don’t love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We may do everything in our power to avoid thinking about this at a deep level, but there is always that nagging sense in the back of our minds to accuse us of the certain knowledge that, in fact, we violate the Great Commandment every day. Like Isaiah, we also know that no one else keeps the Great Commandment either. Herein is our comfort: Nobody is perfect. We all fall short of perfect love for God, so why worry about it? It doesn’t drive sane people to the confessional for six hours a day. If God punished everyone who failed to keep the Great Commandment, He would have to punish everyone in the world. The test is too great, too demanding; it is not fair. God will have to judge us all on a curve.

     Luther didn’t see it that way. He realized that if God graded on a curve, He would have to compromise His own holiness. To count on God doing so is supreme arrogance and supreme foolishness as well. God does not lower His own standards to accommodate us. He remains altogether holy, altogether. righteous, and altogether just. But we are unjust, and therein lies our dilemma. Luther’s legal mind was haunted by the question, How can an unjust person survive in the presence of a just God? Where everyone else was at ease in the matter, Luther was in agony: “Do you not know that God dwells in light inaccessible? We weak and ignorant creatures want to probe and understand the incomprehensible majesty of the unfathomable light of the wonder of God. We approach; we prepare ourselves to approach. What wonder then that his majesty overpowers us and shatters!”

(R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, [Carol Stream: Tyndale, 1998], pp. 87-88.)

John Calvin:

Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy—his pride is innate in all of us—unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured. For, because all of us are inclined by nature to hypocrisy, a kind of empty image of righteousness in place of righteousness itself abundantly satisfies us. And because nothing appears within or around us that has not been contaminated by great immorality, what is a little less vile pleases us as a thing most pure—so long as we confine our minds within the limits of human corruption. Just so, an eye to which nothing is shown but black objects judges something dirty white or even rather darkly mottled to be whiteness itself. Indeed, we can discern still more clearly from the bodily senses how much we are deluded in estimating the powers of the soul. For if in broad daylight we either look down upon the ground or survey whatever meets our view round about, we seem to ourselves endowed with the strongest and keenest sight; yet when we look up to the sun and gaze straight at it, that power of sight which was particularly strong on earth is at once blunted and confused by a great brilliance, and thus we are compelled to admit that our keenness in looking upon things earthly is sheer dullness when it comes to the sun. So it happens in estimating our spiritual goods. As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods. Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and to ponder his nature, and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom, and power—the straightedge to which we must be shaped. Then, what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness. What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. What wore the face of power will prove itself the most miserable weakness. That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God.

(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.1.2; trans. The Library of Christian Classics: Volume XX: Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion: In Two Volumes. (Vol. xx: Books I.i To III.xix), ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960], pp. 37-38.)

William Golding:

     “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!” said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”

(William Golding, Lord of the Flies: Casebook Edition: Text, Notes & Criticism, eds. James R. Baker & Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr., [New York: Perigee, 1988], Chapter Eight: Gift for the Darkness, p. 147.)

Genesis 4:7:

…sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you…

(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)

Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn:

…the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains . . . an unuprooted small corner of evil.

(Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation: III-IV, trans. Thomas P. Whitney, [New York: Harper & Row, 1975], p. 615.)

Timothy Keller:

     In her book Creed or Chaos? Sayers said that over the previous century and more, politics had operated on the following basis: What was wrong with human society was not in the human heart. It lay in social structures, in a lack of education. It was a lack of applying what we know through science. Therefore, if we could just fill those gaps, human society would achieve greatness. But modern history is littered with disillusioned people who thought capitalism would make us better or socialism would make us better. The sins of the human heart just express themselves differently in each of these systems. Politics is another outside-in approach that does not change the heart.

(Timothy Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, [New York: Dutton, 2011], p. 78.)

Note: Political solutions treat the symptoms of the problem, not the cause (i.e. the hardness of the human heart). E.g. the problem with abortion is not that the law makes it legal (i.e. Roe v. Wade) but rather that as a nation we see nothing wrong with murdering unborn children. The laws of our nation are a manifestation of the hearts of the people, the answer to the problem of abortion is not changing laws, it’s changing hearts. People need the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not different governmental rules. A man who is dying of an infection does not need an aspirin to numb the pain, he needs antibiotics to kill the infection (i.e. treating the symptoms vs. the cause).

R. C. Sproul:

The debt that we owe God is not a pecuniary debt that can be measured in dollars and cents. It is a moral debt. Every sin we commit is deposited in the treasury of wrath that constitutes our debt to God unless we are recipients of the mercy of Christ. On the cross, all of that sin debt was paid by our Savior. 

     I honestly cannot believe how many people think they can pay the debts they owe to God. They think they can perform ten thousand deeds of righteousness to make up for their ten thousand debts of sin. This is foolishness. The debt is too huge and our so-called good works are actually filthy rags (Isa. 64:6), good for nothing. We absolutely need grace. Since we have received it, we should be the last people to grab our brothers or sisters and demand that they pay their debts to us. 

     As I said at the beginning of this chapter, we are not required to give unilateral forgiveness, but we must stand ready to forgive every second of the day. As Christians, we should be the most merciful of people. 

     It has been said that Christians are beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. That saying is somewhat trite, but things tend to become trite when they are repeated frequently, and sometimes things are repeated frequently because they are true. We have nothing before God except His mercy. None of us has even begun to understand the depth of that mercy. We sing “Amazing Grace,” but we are not really amazed by it, because we do not like to think of the enormity of the debt that has been canceled by the Father’s compassion. We need to think about that debt so that we will grasp that we are forgiven by divine mercy and grace.

(R. C. Sproul, Matthew: An Expositional Commentary, [Sanford: Reformation Trust, 2019], pp. 509-510.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria