Why Don’t We See Sin For What It Is
- We are generally (perhaps deliberately) unaware of the giant chasm created by the smallest of sins and the demands of God because the Church has taught us that we are under grace and therefore the tiny sins don’t really matter. They are simply errors in judgment. If my greatest sins can be easily forgiven by the magnanimous God, why would He pay any attention to the insignificant mistakes? If these tiny mistakes do count, then they are of little concern because of the enormous capacity of grace. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” Apparently the contemporary answer is “Yes!” God is magnified by overlooking my errors because He is far too majestic to concern Himself with such trivia.
- In Christian thought, the believer’s place in heaven is already guaranteed by the death of Jesus on the cross. There is no fear of withdrawal of forgiveness (we ignore the implications of the parable of the great debt). Since the ultimate goal of believing is assuring a place in the Kingdom of the next world, and since this is accomplished by simply believing that Jesus paid the entry fee, why should there be any further concern with present world behaviors? Of course, social etiquette and cultural mores still suggest that we should try to be on our best behavior, but the idea of reward and punishment for individual sins has been effectively abolished by the cross and therefore is no longer applicable at the eternal level. With this issue settled, all that is really left is an inner motivation to become the best I can be. We recognize that this kind of motivation is a form of humanism, so we quickly assert that in a corrupt and broken world, moral perfection is simply a goal, not a reality. If it were a reality, then escape to heaven would no longer be so important.
- Since believers have resolved the big picture issues, we act as if God would never hold us accountable for the small things. What really matters are the big issues. Grace, forgiveness, mercy, heaven, an attempt to be better; with these secured by theological paradigm, the details are relegated to historical interest only or spiritual motivation for self-improvement.
- Nevertheless, the monster within deceives us – this is the job of the yetzer ha’ra. Self-deception becomes a means of ignoring the chasm between our acts and God’s standard of holiness. Self-deception holds us captive to a theology of self-concern rather than a standard of holiness.
- As contemporary believers, we are not encouraged to perform a ruthless inventory of our behavior. What matters to us is the intention of our hearts. Melanchthon’s successful conversion of external evidence to inward confidence means that the measure of true spirituality becomes my inward feelings, not my outward actions. As long as I believe that God is forgiving, I am assured that He actually does forgive. Therefore, my behavior is irrelevant. Under these conditions, one might wonder if we are even capable of such a ruthless inventory.
- Once the community and the external standard of Torah obedience are removed, where do I look for a measurement of my real spiritual condition? If I look to my inner feelings of the experience of grace, I am easily persuaded that things are OK in spite of the lack of external alignment. “The tendency to be lenient with oneself covers sin.” Without Torah as the standard, I am subject to the social accommodation of the Church that ultimately reflects the moral nobility of the culture, not the will of God.
Cheryl Durham’s conclusions about an historical transition from outward community norms of spiritual awareness to inward personal affirmation help us realize that this view of sin and the historical reality of replacement theology follow the thinking of the Reformation. Durham notes that the idea that inner spiritual awareness is the true character of relationship with God assumes certain epistemological conditions.
“Many Gentile Christians believe that being ‘in Christ’ is also about exemption from formal education because, in their minds, ‘the Law’ is already written on their hearts. This is a ‘Gnostic’ view of faith as it sees the Holy Spirit as a personal spirit guide who transmits individual messages similar to a channel or medium in occultist practices. This type of believer has only to perceive or feel within him/herself what he/she believes is the Holy Spirit’s presence. This person’s perception is often self-confirmed by an internal feeling of calm or peace. The peaceful feeling is an affirmation that whatever the receiving person is thinking is the will of God. Taking this rationale to its logical end, the ability to discern the will of God internally and individually removes the necessity of Torah teachers for those ‘in Christ’; neither do they need a contextual understanding of the Bible. I have often heard people claim, “The Holy Spirit tells me everything I need to know.”[1]
“Proof texts, written in one’s native language, confirm that the person’s ‘feeling’ is in fact the Holy Spirit telling them what to do. To this type of Christian, the historical account of God with Israel is irrelevant because individuals ‘in Christ’ have an ever-new progressive and personal special revelation that the history with Israel does not provide. The Christian who has individual personal revelation from God will not feel the need to be accountable to Israel as he sees Israel as the old people of God and Christians as the new people, prophets and apostles.”[2]
Compare this Christian position with Dozier’s remarks about the perpetual authority of Torah in Judaism. “The Torah’s perpetuity is described by Yeshua in Matt. 5:18: ‘For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.’ But the warning follows in verse 19: ‘Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.’ This concept is repeated in Luke 16:17. In content and intention, many Jews considered the Law universal, and even Gentiles who obey its commandments share its promises and a place in the ‘olam ha-ba, the world to come. R. Meir contended that even a Gentile who occupies himself with the law is ‘like the high priest’ because of Lev. 18:5 ‘Ye shall therefore keep my statues and my ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them.’ The term ‘a man’ includes any man, even a Gentile. R. Jeremiah in Sifra on Lev. 18:5 further expands this view to ‘even a Gentile who obeys the law is like the high priest.’ The Sadducees were ‘common sense literalists’ (Moore I, 280) and denied the authority of the Oral Torah or unwritten law. The bitter disputes between the Pharisees and Sadducees often centered around this difference of doctrine. After the destruction of the Temple, the Sadducees dwindled and virtually disappeared and the Pharisees dominated Judaism uncontested. . . Of all the multiplicity of Judaisms, none questioned the Torah – only the varied interpretations of the Torah. The sole standard of these Judaisms is Torah.”[3]
Which view more accurately expresses the view of the Bible and of the community “in Christ”? Which view more accurately reflects the statements and actions of Yeshua?
- In the end, the fundamental difference is the psychology of accountability. Christianity does not deny accountability. Far from it! But the Christian version of accountability is ultimately a psychological state of mind. It is an inner conviction of alignment with the will of God, independent of and often in opposition to the will of God revealed in Torah. What matters for the Christian is the psychological certainty of God’s love and grace, not the external, written instructions about actual, real-world behaviors.
In contrast, Judaism teaches that while God is merciful and gracious, His common will has been revealed in a set of linguistic statements that can be examined, discussed, debated and measured in human behavior. Accountability is a function of compliance with an external standard. Individual psychological conditions are irrelevant. Correct behavior is a matter of duty and will, not feelings.
The Christian view reduces the gap between standard and performance because it gives inner motivation equal weight with external behavior. In this regard, Christian ethics is ultimately a road paved with good intentions. Grace covers all the rest. The Jewish view acknowledges the need for heart and hand alignment. God is not served with sacrifice alone. A contrite heart is essential. But a repentant heart that does not produce Torah obedient behavior is essentially worthless. Repentance has not been accomplished and the debt is still owed. Grace does not abound for the one who is not transformed. In Judaism, the gap between performance and holiness increases with each discovery of misaligned efforts.
[1] Cheryl Durham, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation
[2] Ibid.
[3] Donna Dozier, unpublished Ph.D. thesis.
I think the big problem of the world – that it cannot seem to be able to find a way around – is the problem of what to do with the individual. Even the biggest of empires shared a common Achilles heel, which was how to keep the common people lined up with the interests of the state: how to keep the Spartacuses and the Ghandis (not to mention the Messiahs!) from appearing; but most of all, how to keep the individual from waking up and realizing that he is putting out more than he is getting back.
From the kingdom of Nimrod on, the problem of the individual has been the single biggest problem of the state. The obvious answer, at least as far as I have been able to see, has been to control the individual by controlling what he fears. This has been accomplished mainly by state religion (all empires have to have at least one), for religion is about fear (worship), and thus the god of this world has appropriated the hard-wired design of heaven. I can be controlled in my fears, so all that is needed to control me is to control what I fear. To make sure of, as well as to simplify, this control, compulsory state education has, historically, from Hammurabi on, been the most important way to inculcate the masses with exactly the fear that is most useful to the state (think that still isn’t the case today?).
The single biggest threat to the systems of this world, then, is an individual, fully actualized. I think it was Karl Marx who remarked that an idea was more dangerous than a sword. We were created to be fully ourselves when we are fully cooperating with heaven. The more I love, the more real my existence becomes, and the more I become DIFFERENTIATED from every other person. You know, I sat in my 12-step group, fully convinced of my uniqueness, and heard my story coming out of the mouths of others over and over, until it began to dawn on me that evil must be a script written by just one individual. I eventually got bored with the repetition, and just started calling it the giant rigid script in the sky, written where everyone could read it, for it never seemed to vary much. C. S. Lewis observed that we are all the same in our sin; it is in our obedience that we become gloriously different; fully individualized.
In his book, Democracy In America, Alexis deTocqueville observed that we faced the possibility of the biggest tyranny yet for mankind, which is the tyranny of the masses. The pressure of our peers is more insidious than any empirical tyranny. Mob rule is the lowest form of human governance, but, with the introduction of self rule in the guise of individual rights, we had opened a Pandora’s Box of evil; one that France had already experienced. The only thing, he said, that was keeping it from us, was a strong sense of personal responsibility that he credited directly to our Protestant, born-again faith. He observed that, if we were ever to forget that personal responsibility in any way, mob tyranny would be on our doorstep. Sobering analysis!
As Skip points out, Gnosticism is the worship of self, as it puts man at the center of his own existence. Once you accomplish that, all sense of responsibility to any higher authority ceases. Man is his own god. In our society, built upon the platform of individual ‘rights’, Gnosticism, that most subtle of the snares of the snake, is the design most surely suited to separate us from our individual responsibility to heaven. Heaven’s rules, then, instead of being the means by which I become myself, become the biggest impediment to the world’s version of what my self is. A person who fears only himself is the single smallest, most vulnerable, and most easily taken down target of all.
The worship of self, in the guise of all the many ways we have been handed in today’s society to do that, is the biggest guarantee that the most complete tyranny of the cruelest sort is possible. In the communist world, where this has already been being perfected, the only people who survive are the ones who have ‘proven’ their usefulness to the state by turning on their fellow man. Tyranny of the masses is where every man’s hand is against every other. Wait; where have we seen that before?
one must remember that the word [Grace] is favor that one has with Eloheem . And when you have favor with someone you don’t go out of your way to do things that piss him off because you will lose the favor you have with Him. People ten to for get that one can lose there salvation. You are to enter the strait gate for wide is the one that leadeth to destruction and many go that way. just a thought
“Cheryl Durham’s conclusions about an historical transition from outward community norms of spiritual awareness to inward personal affirmation help us realize that this view of sin and the historical reality of replacement theology follow the thinking of the Reformation. Durham notes that the idea that inner spiritual awareness is the true character of relationship with God assumes certain epistemological conditions.”
It may follow the Reformation, but was not caused by it. The post-Reformation shift came about with the rise of Pietism, a post-Reformation phenomena. Christ ‘in’ us became the new emphasis over Christ ‘for’ us. The emphasis on the inner world became predominant as the philosophers from Berkeley onwards hacked away at the possibility of knowing the outer world. And if Kant is correct, that we cannot know the outer world at all, then why should anyone place any kind of emphasis on this outer world. It is, after all, whatever we make it to be.
The tragedy is that the Christians followed the empiricist philosophers and so abandoned the idea that the outer world has any significance at all. After all, if you can’t ‘know’ the external world, then it is hardly possible to change it or even necessary to try to live to some set of external rules.
One Nation Under Grace
~ Sin shall no longer be your master.. [Why?] ~ because you are not under the Law, but under grace ~
(John 1.17)
[Are you listening?] ~ What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ~(Romans 6.1) And the answers is? An emphatic NO!! Friend, “God FORBID!!”
Did you know?
~ He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By His wounds you are healed ~ (1 Peter 2.24)
Friend, – it was MY sin that held Him there, until it was accomplished!
His last words? “Go into ALL the world and proclaim the Gospel..” When did our mission change?
~ He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By His wounds you are healed ~ (1 Peter 2.24)
Skip, I was thinking as I read what you wrote, just take the 10 Commandments, as I’ve been doing ministry over the years, I worked with other churches. One of the first areas we had them start teaching kids was with the 10 Commandments. I can’t tell you how many versions and issues came up about those 10 Commandments and what was the correct version. Then, I learned more about them through Rabbi Lapin and was blown away by what I learned. I never heard what he taught.
Would a start to get the Body of Christ to start looking at Torah be to first start with the 10 Commandments and what they really are and mean?
see my “The Ten Commandments in Paleo Hebrew,” available on the web site.
Hello Skip and others,
The Spiritual conflict ongoing in my life today is contrasted in your article here citing the differences between Christian and Jewish view of sin, grace, forgiveness and Torah. Per Dana’s comment, I am somewhat astonished to realize many believers do not go beyond the ten commandments and consider directives such as: Bear one another’s burdens; trust in the Lord with all your heart; cast your cares on Him for he cares for you; all the “do not fear” verses; as directives also. The word “keep” is defined by many as not obey but hold dear, kind of like someone creating a keepsake box. I am more prone to sin when the response is presented in Classic Luther, paraphrasing, I cannot by my own reason or strength come before God. Instant gratification snaps into gear and voila, off I go to satisfy my desire whatever that may be. I prefer the Jewish view to what Christianity calls sanctification. The hymn writer describes it simply, Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” Thanks brother, you are gifted and needed in this hour and culture!
Berean Literal Bible
The one faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and the one unrighteous/unjust in very little is also unrighteous/unjust in much.
Why will we judged in big ‘sins’, and not the smallest?
One can cover up the big issues but not the smallest care-less behavior which one presumes will be overlooked, or go unnoticed. HA!
“..so we quickly assert that in a corrupt and broken world, moral perfection is simply a goal, not a reality”, and that we are not expected, nor can be perfect. Double HA!
“Self-deception becomes a means of ignoring the chasm between our acts and God’s standard of holiness.” Really, are we expected to be HOLY ???
” we are not encouraged to perform a ruthless inventory of our behavior. What matters to us is the intention of our hearts” That’s right! God knows MY heart, I am at peace.(!!!!)
” “The tendency to be lenient with oneself covers sin.” WHY should there be a need for me to perform such “a ruthless inventory” of my behavior??
“Correct behavior is a matter of duty and will, not feelings.” I need to behavior well in all situations as I can be observed by others?!?!
“But a repentant heart that does not produce Torah obedient behavior is essentially worthless” as “Grace does not abound for the one who is not transformed.” Do I need to, I know Who holds the future, and that is enough for me!
May we realize how self-deceived we are, that we have a responsibility to uphold His standards on morality and discipline.
Amen, Ester. Right relating is all about action. Grace becomes true in my life for me when it shows up in my life for others. I get what I give away! Halleluah!
Question: does the grace of the ‘old testament’ differ from the grace of the ‘new testament’ and if so how.
Example:
Old testament definition: Undeserved favor
New testament definition: God’s movement upon man’s heart
Source: Strong’s
Thank you in advance for your response(s).
Oops…
Old Testament: UNMERITED favor. sorry.
Instead of relying on Strong’s, why not look at the Hebrew equivalents of the Greek words? Then you will discover that there is no difference. The same God. The same grace. The same execution of the plan.
This question is in reference to an ongoing conversation i have w/a person who has been taught there is a difference.
Their point of reference is their current church and that (and their) church’s reliance on Strong’s.
Thank you.
PS: I mean, really?
God’s divine influence on man’s heart (Strong’s)….isn’t that kind of like deliberately sloshing the water of obscurity?
Strong was a spiritist w/no real connection to YHVH or holiness, yet people cling to his reference materials as tho they are life.
Thank you for your response.
Most Christians have no idea that their New Testament theology stands in opposition to the word of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. They simply believe what the Church has taught them. Until they investigate the origins of their faith statements, and stop relying on the translated text, they will never see the connection between the Tanakh and the Jewish apostolic writings of the first century (the New Testament). But any expanded lexicon, like TDNT or TDOT, will certainly demonstrate that the words found in the NT are JEWISH in their usage, not like classical Greek and that means we must know what the concepts were in the Hebrew Scriptures in order to understand what the authors of the NT thought. Relying on Strong’s alone is simply insufficient and subject to error. Just look at the word ‘hesed. Because of the influence of the LXX, it is routinely translated in Greek as eleos (mercy), but it doesn’t mean mercy at all. I have written a lot about this one word but it is only an example of the translation difficulties. The same is true for our English concepts of law and grace. You simply cannot grasp what these ideas mean in the Bible if you rely only on English and English commentaries.