Summarizing God and Sin

When we speak of original sin, we often do so in the context of our humanity.  Perhaps, instead, for just a moment, we might consider addressing this issue from the context of the Holiness of God.

What does it mean to be Holy?  Webster defines Holy as exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness.  This is actually an excellent definition, and one that has Biblical roots from which we can work.  Let’s start from the second half of the sentence: one perfect in goodness and righteousness.

The perfection of God is an essential Christian theme.  God is perfect in every aspect.  We will address this point again soon.  Perfect in goodness means that God is the ultimate boundless Goodness.  We have discussed the problem of evil already, and how God allows evil but manipulates all things to His perfect intension.  God, Himself, does not create evil; God is perfectly Good.

The perfect righteousness of God is the problem that burned inside of Martin Luther.  We owe the match light of the Protestant Reformation to the concept of God’s perfect righteousness.  Once again, we will come back to this point shortly.

One other key Biblical distinctive about God is justice.  God is perfectly just.  This perfect justice is the problem that we will discover in scripture.  One of the key historical points concerning doctrine is that into the late Middle Ages, the work of Jesus on the cross was considered to be a ransom paid to the devil for the sinful world.  Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century put forth the understanding of scripture that the ransom paid by the blood of Jesus was actually to God.  The key to understanding this logic is to understand the perfect justice and righteousness of God.

Now, let’s introduce sin into the picture.  Remember, we are examining this question from the perspective of God, not man.  When man commits the original sin, man has done a number of things that are hugely problematic.  There are Old Testament Biblical passages that discuss the inheritance of curses for a thousand generations. (We will leave eschatological calculations out of the mix for now.  It’s a long time!) If we assume the progenitor status and federal headship of Adam, by either standard, mankind is now in a whole world of hurt due to the original sin.  Why was this such a big deal?  The problem is that God created Adam perfectly capable of fulfilling the Law, the law written on his heart as the creation covenant of obedience.  If Adam had kept the Law, we might all be perfectly righteous and without death.  It is, of course, difficult to speculate on the what ifs of theology.  But Adam did sin, and now Adam was no longer perfect.  Perfection is the standard of our most Holy, righteous, good and just God.  Perfection.  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48 ESV) Now what?

This is the problem of sin.  God has an expectation of perfect goodness and righteousness.  He isn’t going to look away from sin, because He is perfectly just as well.  Justice must be satisfied.  Also, now that mankind has sinned, God is just a little bit put out and ticked off with mankind.  Sin is offensive to God.  Offensive.  We have offended God.  Not only does He expect perfect righteousness, but we offended Him as well.  Are you feeling comfortable with the situation still?

So, here is the situation from the context of a perfect, Holy, righteous, good and just God.  We have through sin, failed in perfection, are no longer Holy or righteous or good, and God’s perfect justice demands punishment for us.  Oh, yes, and God’s wrath is heading our way.

Here is an easy question: what are the wages of sin?  Death!  Of course.  Everyone can come up with that one.  So, let’s put things into some perspective here.  Adam took a bite of fruit from the wrong tree.  For that transgression, all of mankind for at least a thousand generations is condemned to die and remain in hell forever.  If you have any argument about mortal versus venial sins that you want to discuss, do so now in this context.  How much worse can we be punished?  There is, of course, more to that discussion; but it behooves us to have laid that foundation for later discussion.

That, my friends, is not fire and brimstone.  That is plain and simple Biblical truth.  All of the churches from Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholic to Reformed, Confessional Protestants hold this to be the truth.  It is only from this position of sheer, utter devastation, that we can begin to understand our next topic: Grace.

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