Article January 2, 2012 Issue

Your freedom from sin – proved step by step

By Sarah Hyatt

Sin. How long has it been since you last delved into the subject? Or are you like so many who consider it an outdated concept or morality laced with judgmentalism that’s been replaced with situational ethics, cultural mores, and lifestyle choices? There is a danger to health and harmony when we turn away from sin and naively declare that there is none—either because we’ve decided that it is an irrelevant theological doctrine that no longer applies in a modern world, or because we consider ourselves to be removed from it by our own human goodness. To the extent that these arguments succeed in having us turn our backs on sin, we not only lose the full salvation that Jesus promised from all that is unlike God, but we leave ourselves vulnerable to attacks from sin in hidden forms. 

The world today needs to have sin uncovered and destroyed for the good of all. Is there a way to address the issue of sin that can move from the condemnation of people to the destruction of those thoughts and actions that create discord, foster suspicion, hatred, and distrust, and defile our purity as children of God? 

A good starting point might be to define sin as those thoughts and actions that claim to separate us from God’s harmonious presence and tender care. If you reason from the standpoint of the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God, Spirit, then that claim of separation logically has no validity. But that doesn’t let us off the hook. Sin’s claim from the beginning is that there is pleasure to be found in disobedience to God, good, to be gained from turning from God to the physical senses for satisfaction, and even that evil/sin can accomplish a good purpose. For most people, evil can’t succeed in its malicious purposes by revealing its intent to harm. Sin succeeds by claiming to be good—to be righteous, to be necessary and justified—a deception that needs to be exposed and eliminated. 

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