How Sin Silences the Conscience

**evanovitch** · 12-03-2010, 02:08 PM

Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

<span style="font-weight: bold">Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin</span>

The most ominous aspect of our culture’s moral slide is that the problem tends to feed itself. Sin denied dulls the conscience. The writer of Hebrews warned about the danger of being “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (3:13). <span style="font-weight: bold">Sin defies and deceives the human conscience, and thereby hardens the human heart. A sin-hardened heart grows ever more susceptible to temptation, pride, and every kind of evil. Unconfessed sin therefore becomes a cycle that desensitizes and corrupts the conscience and drags people deeper and deeper into bondage.</span>

On the cultural level, for example, we can see that as conviction of sin is silenced and the community conscience vanishes, society becomes more corrupt and more tolerant of worse debauchery. The rapid erosion of social standards regarding obscenity and moral propriety provides abundant evidence of this phenomenon. What was shocking and unacceptable only a decade ago is now standard fare on network television. Lewd humor that would have been judged inappropriate outside the locker room not so long ago is now the main attraction in children’s entertainment. And things are steadily growing worse. Just when “The Simpsons” seemed to be plumbing the depths of moral nihilism in animated cartoons, MTV introduced a couple of characters who make Bart Simpson look like a choirboy. Beavis, and his friend whose name is too crude to mention, epitomize the degeneracy of modern culture. Everything that is vulgar, disrespectful, or illegal, they consider “cool”—and all that is good or sacred, they ridicule.
Beavis and his buddy are the heroes of the next generation. That is an appalling thought.

<span style="font-weight: bold">How low can the culture sink?</span>Evidence of serious moral decline is all around. Look at the tabloids lining the supermarket checkout stands. The headlines scream news of people’s perversions, adultery, gluttony, extravagance, arrogance, selfishness, drunkenness, immorality, anger, and all kinds of vice. Worst of all, as Chief Vernon pointed out, these vices are brandished almost like badges of honor! Have you noticed the proliferation of T-shirts and bumper stickers that are printed with the most unspeakable profanities to be displayed shamelessly in public? Our society takes pleasure in its own wickedness. People are not ashamed of their sin; they boast about it. They go on televised talk shows just to glory in their own depravity. And the audiences love it. As the apostle Paul wrote, “Although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32).

Paul made that comment at the end of Romans 1, concluding a discourse about the downward spiral of sin. His words throughout the second half of that chapter are strikingly applicable to the predicament of contemporary society. Here the apostle shows how and why the human conscience vanishes. He reveals that those who ignore or suppress their conscience risk a dreadful judgment: God ultimately abandons such people to the devastating effects of their own sin. That is exactly what we see happening in our nation. It is also the record of human history—nation after nation being abandoned by God after they first abandoned Him and became hopelessly enthralled with their own sin.

MacArthur, John, F., Jr: The Vanishing Conscience. Electronic ed. Dallas : Word Pub., 1994 (Logos Library Systems), S. 57

**johnnycakes** · 12-03-2010, 03:13 PM

Re: Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

Beavis and Butthead, all the lewd animated cartoon shows, the effyou T-shirts etc mentioned in the sermon have made a lot of money and will make a lot of money for a lot of people involved.

The love of money or the overriding desire and/or need to get rich is what drives these things.
The more people are exposed to (no pun intended) the more they want.

We live in societies where great wealth is not condemned as Christ taught but revered and worshipped as the wealthy who run tings would have us do.

You cannot worship both God and mammon. And no, Beavis "mammon" is not a cute way of saying breasts, it's money.

**evanovitch** · 12-03-2010, 05:54 PM

Re: Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

i watch di Kardashian mother this morning say that wen she okayed her dawta's Playboy shoot she was in manager mode , not mother mode...i guess she didn't hear wen Barbara opined that the girls were her source of income now.....

di dawtas she had wid Bruce Jenner also earning har money as one is a moggle whose photo shoot raised eyebrows ...she defended it saying dat di likkle girl had on swinsuits an since di shoot was done by the beach the attire was appropriate....

**f0rTyLeGz** · 12-03-2010, 10:01 PM

Re: Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

In history was there ever a time when the people were "better?" More spiritual? Kinder to one another, and less craven? Was there a time somewhere in the past when the young people didn't show too much skin, and make too much noise? Was there a time in the past when the wealthy didn't hoard gold and wine?

**foolya** · 12-03-2010, 11:35 PM

Re: Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: f0rTyLeGz</div><div class="ubbcode-body">In history was there ever a time when the people were "better?" More spiritual? Kinder to one another, and less craven? Was there a time somewhere in the past when the young people didn't show too much skin, and make too much noise? Was there a time in the past when the wealthy didn't hoard gold and wine? </div></div>

no, what doesn't have to do with you not repenting?

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10)
11Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelations 20:11-15)

**f0rTyLeGz** · 12-03-2010, 11:48 PM

Re: Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: foolya</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: f0rTyLeGz</div><div class="ubbcode-body">In history was there ever a time when the people were "better?" More spiritual? Kinder to one another, and less craven? Was there a time somewhere in the past when the young people didn't show too much skin, and make too much noise? Was there a time in the past when the wealthy didn't hoard gold and wine? </div></div>
no, what doesn't have to do with you not repenting? </div></div>
What's repenting have to do with people ALWAYS saying how awful (other) people are?

**evanovitch** · 12-04-2010, 01:40 AM

Re: Hardened by the Deceitfulness of Sin

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">What's repenting have to do with people ALWAYS saying how awful (other) people are?</div></div>

...if at all possible,as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.....Rom 12:18

**evanovitch** · 12-06-2010, 07:23 PM

why do we still sin as believers?

The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. Questioner

<span style="font-style: italic">After we become born again, and we’re still in the flesh, is the sin that’s still on us, is it like in the wake, following behind us?</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">Answer</span>

What you’re asking is, If I’m regenerated and if I’m a new creation, and God has fitted me for eternity, and He has planted the life of God in my soul, that life has to be perfect, right? Because God cannot give me imperfect life; He cannot give me imperfect regeneration; He cannot give me imperfect righteousness. So that if I am righteous at all, I am righteous period, and that is true. That’s why Romans 7 is the key; Paul says, “It is not I that sin; it is sin that is in me. It is not that new creation; it is the sin that is in me.” Now what is that sin in me? It is my humanness, so that when that new I sheds that humanness, its perfection is then manifest, see? Now that’s the only way you can explain it. Now it’s hard because you can’t cut you into those clear pieces.

You’ve all heard people say, "Well, you’re body, soul and spirit." And then you ask the person who believes that, what’s the difference between soul and spirit, and they can’t tell you. Or else they’ll say some things are our emotions, and some things are our minds, but if you’ve ever been able to make a cut between what is your clear thinking and what is your emotion feeling, you can’t. So you are a being; you have wholeness as a being. And so you do righteous things, and that’s the nature of God working in you. You do unrighteous things; that is the sin that is in you. Paul simply makes a distinction for the sake of theology. And he says that you are a perfect new creation, but sin that is in you, in your humanness still manifests itself. Now you don’t want to get to the point where you get a dichotomy going, where you say, "Well that’s not me; that’s just my sin," so that’s what’s known as philosophical dualism. And the people who teach that therefore say that when you sin, don’t worry about it; it’s only your sin. What are you going to do? It’s your sin; it’s going to sin, right? That’s really true. People say, don’t worry about sin because that's your old nature. So if your old nature is your old nature, it’s going to be your old nature; let it do what it wants. Now I don’t think that. I think you’re one new nature; you have one new person. You don’t have two natures; you have one nature. You live in Christ; Christ lives in you. But there’s sin in your humanness, and until you shed your humanness, you can never see the full manifestation of that righteousness.

**evanovitch** · 12-06-2010, 07:25 PM

Re: why do we still sin as believers?

What is Sin?

(Genesis 3:1-7)

Copyright 2000
by
John F. MacArthur, Jr.
All rights reserved.

We are involved in a study of origins, and looking at the book of Genesis. I would encourage you to open to the third chapter of Genesis. We have gone through Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and we have studied the text of those two chapters, and we have launched from those texts to study other matters of scripture to try to fill in our understanding, and that will be the case in Genesis Chapter 3. Genesis Chapter 3 is familiar to us. It is a chapter that deals with the serpent in the garden, and temptation, and forbidden fruit, and a woman who was deceived, and a man who followed her in violating God's word and God's command. Then talks about the curse, and the price that was paid for that disobedience. Familiar to most everybody, to one degree or another, is the record of Genesis Chapter 3.

And at the very outset, I want to just lay down a simple statement that we're going to build on all the way through, and that is this: Genesis 3 is an accurate historical record of what actually happened in the garden. You may wonder why I'm saying that. The reason I'm saying that is because most people who comment on Genesis 3 turn it into something other than a historical account of a real event. It is as the word of God says it is.

Now, this Chapter, before we get into the Chapter, it's going to take us some time just to kind of prepare ourselves for it. This Chapter may well be the most important chapter in the Bible. Certainly, it is true that if you don't understand this chapter, you don't understand the rest of the Bible. You cannot understand the solution to the problem, unless you understand the problem. You cannot understand the cure unless you understand the diagnosis. You will never be able to understand God's remedy for this world, if you don't understand the malady under which this world lives and functions. I say it may well be the most important chapter in the Bible because it explains absolutely everything about our universe, and about life in that universe, and all of us who live in it. It explains everything about why things are the way they are, why we are the way we are, and what God is doing in history, and why He's doing it in terms of salvation.

Genesis 3 explains the human dilemma<span style="font-weight: bold">. All the problems in the universe have their origin</span> in the events of this historic account. Say that again: All the problems in the universe -- physical problems, spiritual problems, moral problems, social problems, economic problems, political problems -- all the problems in the universe have their origin in the events of this historic account. This Chapter then is the foundation of any true and accurate world view. And without this foundation, every and any world view is utterly wrong.

If you do not understand the origin of sin and its impact based on Genesis Chapter 3, then your understanding of the world is wrong. Everything then is misunderstood; everything is misevaluated; everything is misread; everything is misdiagnosed, and hopelessly incurable. You see, if you go back to the end of Chapter 1, it says: "And God saw all that He had made." And He had made all that has ever been made, so He saw the whole created universe. "And, behold, it was very good." When God completed the original creation, everything was "very good." But frankly, folks, everything in our world now is very bad. It is anything but good. And it has been anything but good through all of human history.

When God completed his perfect creation, it was "very good" because: There was no disorder. There was no chaos. There was no conflict. There was no struggle. There was no pain. There was no discord. There was no disease. There was no decline. There was no death. Now we all live our whole lives with all of that. Life is defined by disorder, chaos, conflict, struggle, pain, discord, disease, decline and death. We look at the physical world around us, and we see it decaying and tending toward disorder and chaos, disintegration and death. That's the law of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics; that matter continually tends to break down toward disorder. The physical world is breaking down. This is frightening to people when they take a look at, for example, the interplanetary world or the celestial world, the world of heavenly bodies, and they begin to fear that as big chunks keep breaking off various heavenly bodies and hurtling through space, they have a likelihood that they will at some point collide with this planet in a collision that will literally blast us into non-existence. And we watch in the national world just the history of civilization, and we see the cycle of rise and fall, and rise and fall, and rise and fall. We look in the animal world and there is this incessant process of struggle and death. We look in the human world, and every human relationship is a struggle.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Human life is a struggle</span>. As soon as life is conceived in the womb, it begins to live and die at the same time. It begins to grow and to decay at the same time. And in the spiritual and moral world, everyone finds it easier to do wrong. Have you noticed? It's much easier to do wrong. In fact, it's really impossible to do righteous things. Even when you do right humanly, you generally do it to feel better about yourself, which is an ill-conceived motive. It's much easier to do evil than good. It's much easier to float down on the moral sewage than it is to buck the tide, stay above it. Hatred and crime and war, perversion, wickedness, those things just come with life. So we have to ask a question. If we come to the end of Genesis 1 and everything is "very good," and we take a look at things, we have to ask the question: What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong here? This is not the way it was at the beginning.

Even going through Chapter 2, you really have only an expansion of the created work of God on day six. Chapter 2 just expands on the creation of man and woman that's mentioned from Verse 24 down through the end of Chapter 1. So you could put Verse 31 at the end of Chapter 2. It was really at the same point in terms of God's creation. "God saw every thing that He had made," including man, including woman, including the garden where he placed them all that's described in Chapter 2, and it was all "very good." But we look at the world today, and it's not very good.

Evolutionists really amuse me. They are clueless about this, because they are living under the self-deception that man is getting better; that he's improving. The idea of evolution is that man starts from simplicity and mutates upward into complexity; that he starts from a very low and minimalistic level of intelligence and mutates upward to a greater intelligence; that he starts at a base level morally and he moves up to a higher and higher level morally. But the fact of just life itself, the truth about man, is a refutation of evolution. Because the fact of the matter is man isn't getting better. He's getting worse. He's accumulating iniquities at a rapid rate. And with technological advances, he is accumulating wretchedness faster than ever. Man did not begin at the bottom of the moral ladder and slowly, by psychological evolution, rise higher. That's just not true. In fact, if you study human history, basically there hasn't really been any change. Men are morally no better than they were in the past and, I suppose, in some ways no worse than they were in the past. You can trace the patterns of wretchedness through all of human history. But the advancements that have come technologically and by science through the centuries have only enabled man to escalate and exacerbate his corruption.

What has gone wrong? If man began at the top, as Genesis 1 and 2 would tell us, and everything was "very good," and man was created "in the image of God," he started at the top. And he's been plunging down through the abyss of darkness headed toward a deep bottom ever since. What went wrong? What happened here? This isn't the way it was in the original creation. The downward plunge doesn't seem to be able to be stopped. It's like man has fallen from heaven without a parachute, and he's plunging at breakneck speed toward hell with nothing to stop him. And his life is basically defined by wickedness and evil in every aspect, every relationship.

What happened is recorded for us in Genesis 3. Let me read you the first seven Verses. "Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Indeed, has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.' Now, "The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely shall not die!" You know, what's death? No such thing existed. "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings." That's how the third Chapter opens.

By the way, you might be interested to know the word "sin" doesn't appear in the third Chapter. But this is where it entered into our world. This was it. When Adam and Eve, tempted by the serpent in the garden, disobeyed God, everything went from being "very good" to being very bad. In Romans Chapter 5 is a statement that we'll go back to in weeks to come as we study this issue. In Romans Chapter 5 and Verse 12, listen to what the Bible says: "Therefore, just as through one man," that's Adam, ".. sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." There is the New Testament commentary on the event that I just read you. Through one man, Adam, ".. sin entered into the world, and death through sin," the ultimate measure of decay. And so: "Death spread to all men, because all sinned." When Adam sinned, we were all there. We were in his loins; we were his progeny. We've all come from Adam and Eve. And so we inherited what theologians call original sin. When Adam sinned, we all went down, because we've all come from Adam.

At the end of Chapter 2 you notice that: "The man and his wife were naked and not ashamed." Wasn't anything to be ashamed about, because there was no sin. There were no evil thoughts. Nothing to be ashamed about. But you come to the end of the record I just read to you in Verse 7: "The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings." All of a sudden, there was shame. Why? For the first time in their existence, they had wicked thoughts. Never had a wicked thought before. Apparently, it had something to do with their sexuality. All of a sudden, there was shame, where there was no shame. This is the great indicator from their viewpoint that they had sinned. And the indicator from God's viewpoint comes when he says in Verse 16 to the woman: "I will ... multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, he shall rule over you." Then to Adam, He said: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, you have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying 'You shall not eat from it'; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles will grow for you. You shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you were dust, and to dust you shall return."

Now when God curses them, it's quite interesting. Those curses really are physical. There is a curse on the woman's pain in child bearing and on her conflict in her marriage. There is a curse on Adam in the fact that he no longer is going to be able to just pluck the wonders of Eden. He's going to have to cultivate the ground; he's going to have to fight the thorns and thistles; he's going to have to sweat to bring forth his bread, and he's going to ultimately die. But those things really don't say anything about the moral change that took place. They don't really say too much. Becomes very apparent real quick.

First of all, Adam and Eve felt shame. And shame is a function of guilt, and guilt is a function of sin. And somehow, they had thoughts of wickedness and were so embarrassed by those, that they sewed together some leaves to cover themselves. They brought forth two sons in Chapter 4. One of them murdered the other one. And the rest, of course, is history. The fall occurred at some point between the sixth day of creation, when everything was "very good," and when Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain. Because Cain was born a sinner. The fall had to occur before that; we don't know when. We don't know how long they enjoyed Eden in its glory. But once they fell, they were changed. They were altered. And they passed on fallenness and sin to every human being that ever lived, because they have all come from Adam and Eve.

When Adam sinned, he brought death on himself and everybody else. And we're all born to die. We all inherit what I like to call the death force, the death force. And as I said, the moment a baby is conceived, it starts to grow and die at the same time. And we battle all through life to keep the death force from being triumphant for as long as we can. We not only inherit death, we inherit sin, because we were all there in Adam. That's the first thing I want you to understand. That's original sin. There's another aspect to it, imputed sin. We'll about that later. You see in our time, if you don't understand that, you cannot explain the human dilemma. You can't explain that not only did this affect man's moral life and, therefore, every area of relationship, but it affected the ground. It affected the material universe, the physical universe. And Romans 8 says: "The whole creation groans" under this curse. The reason there is disintegration, death and all of that in the entire universe goes right back to Genesis Chapter 3.

So we are going to be looking at Genesis 3 to see all the things that we can see to help us understand this amazing event. The evolutionists, the psychological evolutionists, sociological evolutionist, has a big problem. Because if man is getting more and more capable, if he's getting more and more noble, if he is mutating upward and he has now reached the place where he is basically good and actually getting better, why is it that society is not changing? Why is he morally worse? Well, evolutionary psychologists say: There must be something wrong with his environment. And it all boils down to: I'm not bad, but you're bad, and you make me bad. So in this evolutionary process, some of us are going up, and others, I guess, are going down. Fairly selective approach. Psychologists reject sin because they want to exalt man, and they want to eliminate God. So because they reject sin, they have no explanation for why man is the way he is. They misdiagnose him totally, so they offer really no help. And we -- what do we do? We try to come up with harsher penalties. What is it? The three strike law; three felonies in a row and you go to jail and they throw the key away, and we bring back the death penalty. But nothing can end the reign of terror. Nothing can end the reign of corruption. You can't do it with counseling; you can't do it with psychotherapy; you can't do it with Prozac. You can't do it. Because the issue is sin. The issue is we have all inherited a corrupted nature.

Carl Menninger of the Menninger clinic wrote this: "In all of the laments and reproaches made by our seers and prophets, one misses any mention of 'sin,' a word which used to be a veritable watchword of prophets. It was a word, once in everybody's mind, now rarely, if ever, heard. "Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? "Guilty, perhaps, of a sin that could be repented and repaired and atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal or recovering or asleep? "Wrong things are being done," he writes "we know. Tares are being sewn in the wheat field at night. "But is no one responsible? Is no one answerable for these acts? "Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings. But has no one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?" End quote. By the way, that's in a book he wrote called "Whatever Became of Sin?"

And, of course, there's just no interest in the public forum talking about sin today. I mean that is absolutely archaic. Sinful nature? To say that people are corrupt at birth? To say they inherited a wicked nature from their parents because they were all genetically, as it were, in Adam? They were all there and sinned in Adam in his loins, and everything that came out of that cursed man and that cursed woman bears that curse? Unacceptable. To say people are all born with an evil bent; that they are all born with a desire to violate the law of God and to dethrone God and replace him with themselves? To say they are incapable of doing anything good? To say that they are rotten to the very core, that everything about them -- everything they think, everything they say and everything they do -- is only evil continually? To say their heart is deceitful and desperately wicked? Frankly, folks, that is just not acceptable in the public forum. Our culture has really declared war not only on sin, because they don't want anything defined as sin. Everything is just a lifestyle choice. Nothing is a sin. So our culture has declared war on sin and, consequently, declared war on guilt. The very idea of guilt is considered medieval, obsolete and certainly unhealthful.

There was a mega best-seller 20 years ago by Wayne Dyer, Dr. Wayne Dyer. It was called "Your Erroneous Zones." And he said the most useless of all erroneous zones is guilt. He said guilt, quote: "Must be exterminated, spray-cleaned and sterilized forever. We have to get rid of guilt." And, he says, here's how you do it. Quote: "Do something which you know is bound to result in feelings of guilt. Take a week to be alone. If you always wanted to do so, despite the guilt-engendering protestations from other members of your family, these kinds of behavior will help you tackle that omnipresent guilt." In other words, if you feel guilty about certain things, do them. And just keep doing them until you don't feel guilty anymore. He says defy your guilt. Spurn your husband; spurn your children; attack that sense of self-disapproval head on. Do something that is sure to make you feel guilty, and just keep doing it until you don't feel guilty any more. Refuse to hear the cries of conscience, the duties of family responsibilities, the appeals of your loved ones. You owe it to yourself. Sear your conscience. Nobody treats guilt seriously anymore. You know, when people feel guilty nowadays, it's because they ate too many French fries. Those are the guilty pleasures.

There was a headline in an advice column that caught my eye. It summed up the universal counsel of our generation. The headline said, "It's Not Your Fault." It's not your fault. Stop blaming yourself. The article said your compulsive behavior is not your fault. Refuse to accept the blame. And above all, do not blame yourself for what you can't control. Heaping guilt on yourself only adds to your stress, low self-esteem, worry, depression, feelings of inadequacy and dependence on others. Let go of your guilt feelings. And that ubiquitous Ann Landers has said one of the most painful, self-mutilating, time-and-energy-consuming exercises in the human experience is guilt. It can ruin your day or your week or your life. It turns up like a bad penny when you do something dishonest, hurtful, tacky, selfish or rotten. Never mind that it was the result of ignorance, stupidity, laziness, thoughtlessness, weak flesh or clay feet. You did wrong and the guilt is killing you. Too bad. But be assured, the guilt you feel is normal. Remember, guilt is a pollutant and we don't need any more of it in the world. You don't want to feel bad about anything.

Boy, what a serious issue this is, because you cut off people from the possibility of repentance. I love that story of the guy in New York City who, you probably heard of -- you read about it or heard it in the news -- he robbed a store. And the store owner grabbed a gun and shot him and paralyzed him, so that in the lower part of his body he was paralyzed and he was then confined to a wheelchair. When the case came to trial, the attorney for the robber, who had been shot by the man, took the case on the basis that this man who shot him did not understand that the man who committed the crime was a victim of society; that he was driven to crime by his economic disadvantages. The lawyer said he now is a shooting victim of the insensitivity of the man who shot him. And, he said, because of that man's callous disregard of the thief's plight as a victim, the poor thief is going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He deserves some compensation. And the jury agreed. And the store owner paid a huge settlement. What always fascinates me when I think about the story is within two months, the man was arrested committing another armed robbery in his wheelchair.

A woman who abused and brutally killed her own infant was acquitted of all charges because she had PMS. And you all remember the San Francisco city supervisor that was murdered, and an effort was made to kill the mayor. And when the person went on trial, it was the famous Twinkie defense; the fact that he was not responsible for what he did; he was acting rationally because he ate too many Hostess Twinkies. And the famous Twinkie defense was born. We have so much of that in our society; similar tactics, passing blame away from us. And when children are disobedient, they say they're hyperactive or they have attention deficit syndrome or whatever other syndrome they can invent, so they can sell people the drugs they want to sell them. And when somebody commits moral sin, they say they're addicted to sex, and then they're recovering sex addicts. And we have to remember, like AA, you'll never really recover, so your whole life you are recovering. So don't feel bad if they slip up here and there; it's just an addiction. Everything wrong with mankind is described as some kind of an illness. And you know that; that's just the way the world chooses to avoid the issue.

So we alone, I think, as Christians who understand the Bible and believe the Bible, we get it. We got all these people trying -- all the politicians, and all the moralists, and all the educators and all the university people and all the sociologists and everybody -- trying to fix society. And it can't ever be done by these people, because they don't ever deal with the reality of what is in the heart. All humanity, all humanity -- nobody escapes -- has a vile, rebellious, corrupt nature. The thought life is corrupt; the emotions are corrupt; the will is corrupt; and the behavior is corrupt. And Genesis 3 is crucial to understanding that.

By the way, you'd be interested: There are some things that are not in Genesis 3. The word "sin" is not there, and the word "Satan" is not there. And we'll say more about that as we get into the text itself. But the rest of the scripture makes it very clear. There's not even any statement there as to the fact that the sins of Adam were passed down. It's very apparent, because immediately in the next chapter you have conflict and murder among the two sons of Adam and Eve. But we have to understand the rest of scripture to interpret Genesis 3. So when we go through Genesis 3, we're going to be looking at some other passages to help us to interpret them.

It's really important for us to have a good biblical doctrine of sin. As I often like to do in studying the Old Testament, I got some Jewish sources, because I wanted to read about what the Jewish scholars, Rabbis and commentators of Judaism think about Genesis 3. Interestingly enough, Judaism as such has always rejected the existence of sinful depravity in man inherited from Adam. They reject that. Basically, they believe that what Adam did, Adam did, and he did it because he chose to do it. And Cain and Abel, they did what they did because they chose to do it. And that's how it is. There's no -- there's no depravity that passes down. There's no imputation of guilt to us because of the sin of Adam by God. That was just an isolated situation in his case. And we have the choice to do right or do wrong. And that's how they maintain salvation by righteousness, because they don't have a doctrine of depravity. They don't have a doctrine of original sin. They understand Adam's sin as affecting Adam. And the rest of us all have the same choices -- either to obey God or disobey God -- that Adam and Eve had, and we don't inherit anything from them. That is not what the scripture teaches.

For example, according to Isador Epstein in the publication called 'Judaism' from Pelican Press back in 1959, Isador Epstein says: "Judaism denies the existence of original sin. True, the idea that the sin of Adam had brought death on all mankind is not unknown in Jewish teaching. But the reference is invariably to physical death and is not to be confused with the spiritual death from which, in Christian doctrine, none can be saved except through faith in the risen Savior." Isn't that interesting? They understand the message of Christianity, and they want to cut it off at the front end. They want to deny original sin, so that they can deny that men are in a condition which requires Jesus Christ to be their Savior. And the quote closes: "Man can, therefore, achieve his own redemption by his own penitence." He doesn't need a Savior. You get rid of the Savior, and you get rid of original sin. Everybody makes his own choice. And if you happen to make a bad choice, just tell God you're sorry, and make more good choices than bad choices, and your good choices will outweigh your bad choices, and you'll get into heaven. Casuto, the Jewish commentator that I read so frequently says: "The central theme of Genesis 3 does not aim to give a philosophical explanation of the origin of evil in the world." End quote. So what he's saying is typical of the Jewish commentators: This has nothing to do with the origin of evil in the world. This is one man and one woman; they made a choice. And everybody else is in the same situation. But they're wrong.

Scripture clearly indicates this is where evil began. And it is the New Testament that is most definitive. And again, you have to know that verse, Romans 5:12. That's the key verse. When Adam sinned, everybody sinned in Adam. And when Adam received the penalty of death, we were all then sentenced to die. Christian Scientists tell us that sin is an illusion. It's not. The liberals tell us that sin is merely finiteness; to be human is to err. And the dualistic philosophers tell that sin is the flesh, as opposed to the spirit, which is pure. Now, those are all wrong. We will get a biblical understanding of sin in our study.

<span style="font-style: italic">Let me give you a definition of sin at this point. Sin is any personal lack of conformity to the moral character of God, or the law of God. Then sin is a disposition of the heart. It is a bent. It thinks evil; it speaks evil; it acts evil and it omits good. Let me give you those four, because those are the four ways in which you sin. You sin by thinking evil, speaking evil, acting evil or omitting good. You sin when you do, when you say, when you think, or when you don't do, say, think what God demands you to. So it is commission, as you've often heard, or omission.</span>

Now before we look at the seven verses, I want to give you a broad look at the subject of sin as it is outlined in the Bible, and then we're going to come back and see how it originated.<span style="font-style: italic"> Before we look at the story of Genesis and how it all originated, I want you to have an understanding of the theology of sin, because this is essential for our understanding</span>. Then when we go back into Genesis, we'll be able to see clearly where the root of all of this began.

And I guess maybe the best way to do this is to suggest to you that I want to just -- I want to answer five questions, okay? Five questions. I don't think I'll get through them all tonight, but I'll do a couple of them. And this is pretty familiar stuff, but we'll just lay a foundation. I never know who is listening to this, or who might hear the tapes or who might hear the radio program. I want to be sure we cover these issues.
<span style="font-style: italic">
I. The first question is: What is sin? </span>And I've just given you a definition. What is sin? Now we know what sin is. It is any violation, any violation of the character or law of God, the moral character or the law of God. Summing it up, 1st John 3:4. 1st John 3:4 says: "Sin is the transgression of the law. Sin is the transgression of the law." That is one definition of sin. Another way to translate that; everyone doing sin is doing lawlessness; "ad nomia," lawlessness. In other words, it's ignoring God's law; it's violating God's law. That is sin. Any violation of God's law is sin. Sin and lawlessness, in that Greek construction of 1st John 3:4, are identical. It's living as if there was no law of God. Calling your own shots. It's further defined in Romans 14:23: "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." Anything that you do that isn't done as a direct act of faith in God is sin. In Romans 14:23: To know to do right and not do it is sin. In 1st John 5:17: "All unrighteousness is sin."

So the Bible gets around that issue in many ways. When you do something that goes against real trust and faith in God, that's sin. When you know to do right and don't do it, that's sin. When you know something pleases God, something God has commanded, you don't do it, that is sin. All unrighteousness is sin. All sin is lawlessness. And all of those things are just coming at the same issue; that sin is any violation of God's moral character or His law. Put it another way: Sin is going beyond the bounds that God has established. That gives us a substantial understanding of sin. As you go through the Bible, you'll find all kinds of words. I'm not going to go through all the Hebrew words and all the Greek words of sin. There are just many, many of them. It's enough to know that sin is defined as any breach of God's law. Now, where is God's law revealed? Scripture, right? Scripture.

So we have a problem in our society today, folks. We -- we don't believe that man is innately a sinner. We think he's basically good and something happens to him environmentally. But if we do believe that -- if we do acknowledge that he does evil, how do we define that evil? What is our standard for what is evil? What is it? Well, once our standard for evil in America, our standard for morality in America, was established by the Bible. Right? By the Bible. I mean that's what the nation was founded on; that's what basically our laws were written on. Our view of morality, our view of crime, our view of justice, all came out of the Bible. And once, there were certain behaviors that were considered to be against the law. And that's changing. That's changing very rapidly. It's changing in the sexual realm. It's changing in the homosexual world. It's changed, of course, in the world of abortion, euthanasia. Boy, watch. Watch what happens with the genetic engineering that's going to come in the very near future, as they now can determine the ability to handle the genes and decide who gets born and who doesn't, and et cetera, et cetera. As we continue to move down deeper and deeper into the morass of sin and dislodge ourselves from any set standard, being the word of God, we have no way to define morality anymore except to take a survey. Right? To take a survey. That's what you do. The politicians do it. They give back what they think the constituencies would vote for. They -- they want to get elected. So they basically say I believe this, because they polled the constituents, and that's what they say. And that's how we develop our morality.

And you watch. As our society sinks deeper and deeper into sin, and distances itself consistently and completely from the word of God, it's going to be harder and harder to define morality. There won't be anybody who can walk into a court and hold up a standard. You can't walk into a court today and hold up the standard of the Bible as the standard of morality. All we have left is tradition. And tradition will be overthrown by surveys. It'll be overthrown by vote. It'll be overthrown by referendums. It'll be overthrown when the people want to overthrow it. It's all -- it's not going to get any better; it's just going to get worse. The reclassification of behavior, we don't have a standard. How do you go to a generation like that, and tell them they're sinners? Based on what? Based on what standard am I a sinner? And you say well, on the standard of the law of God, on the standard of the Bible. The Bible is not our standard.

I think we have no other choice but to hold the Bible up as the standard, and to say to the sinner: It is the standard, because it is the word of God. And it's up to you to determine, by reading it carefully and thoughtfully, that it is not the word of God. That's a challenge I put out. Oh, you don't think the Bible is the word of God? Have you read it? Have you studied it? Are you really sure about that? I never had anybody say to me yes, I've studied it thoroughly from cover to cover, and it's not the word of God. But I don't think we have anywhere else to go, I mean, because this is the standard. We're just not going to have a society anymore propped up by biblical standards. And you watch the continual escalation that goes on as we redefine morality in terms of popular referendum, popular vote and survey. That redefining of morality without a standard leaves our society in a death dive, because sin is breaking God's law. Sin is violating God's moral character. And there's nowhere to know that, except on the pages of scripture. And if you don't believe the scripture establishes morality, righteousness and unrighteousness, then you have no standard and you have no definition of sin. That's the real -- that's the real issue in our society today.

How do we tell our society about a Savior who will save them from sin when their definition of sin is basically non-existent? What is sin to them? You tell them it's a violation of the law of God. Well, where's that? Well, it's in the Bible. I don't believe that. But you know it's still the word of God that the Holy Spirit uses, right? So I don't equivocate. I just keep preaching the Bible, and let the spirit of God take it and use it to convict the hearts. So what is sin? Sin is a violation of the law of God. It's a violation of the moral character of God and His laws, as revealed on the pages of scripture. That is sin. That's all we need to say about it. That's all we need to say about it. So you study the Bible, and you're going to find out what God commands us to do and not to do. You're going to find out the essential elements of God's nature. And whenever we violate those, we sin.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Now let's go past the definition for just a moment, and look at the nature of sin just briefly. The nature of sin. </span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">1. First</span> of all, sin is defiling. I'll just give you a few things to think about. Sin is defiling. These are things that characterize sin; not defining it, but characterizing it. This is kind of how it manifests itself. It is a violation, yes. That's what it is. But how it shows up, it -- first of all, it is defiling. It is a pollutant. It is to the soul what rust is to gold; what scars are to a beautiful face; what stain is to white silk cloth. It is ugliness across the face of beauty. It is the -- it is a kind of ugliness that is defined in scripture in very graphic terms. In 1st Kings 8:38, sin in man's heart is compared to ugly, oozing sores from a deadly plague. In Zechariah 3:3, Joshua, the high priests, sin is like a "filthy garment" that is being worn by a person. When you go down in the inner city somewhere and you pass by the street people, who've lived in the same clothes and slept in the same clothes on the street for years, that's the "filthy garments" that are a picture of sin. Sin scars the image of God in man. Sin stains the soul. It degrades man's nobility. Interesting statement is made in Zechariah, the prophet Zechariah in talking about sin. There's so much about it, of course, all through the Bible. But in Zechariah Chapter 11 and Verse 8 is a very interesting statement, where God actually says that there is a loathing. He says: "Then I annihilated the three shepherds in one month, for my soul loathed them," is what it actually says. My soul detested them. And they also detested me. Sin causes you to hate God, and to loathe God and, God says: "My soul loathed them. My soul loathed them," and they loathed me.

When a sinner sees his sin, he sees it as defiling. He sees it for what it is. Ezekiel 20 Verse 43 says: "And there you will remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things you have done." When you really look at yourself, you see the defiling sin and you loathe yourself. Sin pollutes. Sin defiles. Sin corrupts. Paul calls it in 2nd Corinthians 7: "The filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan wrote: "Sin is called poison, sinners serpents; sin is called vomit, sinners dogs; sin is called the stench of graves, sinners rotten sepulchers; sin is called mire, sinners pigs. It is defiling, degrading. It stamps the devil's image on the human soul.

2. <span style="font-weight: bold">Sin is, secondly, rebellion</span>. It is not only defiling, it is rebellion. It establishes not only a defilement and a filth and a pollution and a corruption, but it establishes a life of rebellion. It is, by its own nature, as Leviticus 26:27 says, walking "contrary" to God. It is just walking in constant opposition, in constant rebellion. The sinner tramples on God's law, tramples on God's character, willfully crosses God's will, affronts God, spites God, mocks God. And the Hebrew word for sin, one of the Hebrew words "payshah," signifies rebellion. It is, at its core, rebellion. That's what it was for Lucifer; it's what it was for Eve; it's what it was for Adam. It's what it is for all of us. Perhaps a good definition, Jeremiah 44:17: "But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goes forth out of our own mouth." That's it. God, we will do exactly what we want to do. Sin is God's would-be murderer. Sin would not only unthrone God, but ungod God, and replace him with us. If the sinner had his way, God would cease to be God, and the sinner is the only God in his world. So sin is defiling, and sin is open, incessant rebellion.

3. Let me give you a thi<span style="font-weight: bold">rd one</span>. We'll pick up here next time. Sin is ingratitude. I mean everything we have, everything we are, is from God. We "live and move and have our being" in God, Acts 17:28 says. "He makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, sends rain on the just and the unjust." He -- He's given us everything. In Romans 1, Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, because: "When they knew God, they didn't glorify Him as God, neither were thankful," Verse 21. Sin is just ungrateful. All the food the sinner ever eats, God gave him. All the air the sinner ever breathes, God gave him. All the joys the sinner ever experienced, God provided. All the love he ever experienced in the human world, everything, all of his senses are from God. All of the pleasures of life to meet those senses are from God. Every beauty of life is from God. It is God who has given wisdom to us. He has given wisdom to the mind of every human being to think and feel and work and play and rest; that life might be full and useful. And it's God who made us love and made us laugh and made us cry. And it's God who gave us special skills and abilities to excel in some areas, and to know some measure of self-respect and value. It's God who gave us the capacity to care for each other and have relationships. And it's God who providentially preserves us from getting every disease and dying every death. God literally surrounds the sinners with mercy. They abuse them. Like Absalom, you know, as soon as David, his father, had kissed him and embraced him, he went out and plotted treason against his father. So the sinner eagerly takes the kiss of God that God provides in the created world, and embraces God's graces and God's mercy, and then betrays Him by being the friend of God's enemy, Satan.

Sin is serious ingratitude; it's damning ingratitude. And the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against that ingratitude. Sin is defiling. It is rebellion. It is ingratitude. Well, a few more, a few more questions next time, and then we'll start to look at the text.

Father, tonight we have just really begun our study in what is such an unhappy subject to be considering and, yet, so necessary. We have to understand the heart of man; we have to understand our own hearts. We have to understand our sin, its severity, its incurable power from the human perspective. We have to understand its pervasiveness, its deadliness. We have to understand sin because it's the defining element in our universe. It's why things are the way they are. It's why the creation is no longer "very good," but very bad. It's why everything dies. Father, we have to understand sin because, most of all, it's why we need a Savior. You have sent him, even the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that sin is humanly incurable. But you have sent Jesus to save his people from their sins. And you save sinners who repent and ask you for forgiveness. What an amazing reality! That as bad as sin is -- as defiling, corrupting as it is, as openly rebellious as it is, as ungrateful as it is -- you still forgive it when the sinner comes and asks, even as we heard given testimony to in baptism tonight. We want to understand the world and we want to understand it the way it needs to be understood, and that's the way You see it. And we are able to if we follow Your word. And we know what's wrong in our world. We know what's wrong in the lives of people. We know what it is. It's sin. And there isn't any human solution, but there is a divine one. May you bring many, many sinners to repentance and salvation. Use us to that end, we pray, in the name of your Son and our dear Savior. Amen.

**evanovitch** · 12-06-2010, 09:26 PM

Dealing with Habitual Sins

Dealing with Habitual Sins

by

John MacArthur

All Rights Reserved © 1993

Scripture: Hebrews 12:1

"The sin which so easily entangles us."

Take your Bible and turn back to the text which I read earlier in Hebrews, chapter 12. As you know, this is a great and monumental Scripture; there is much here to be considered. In the brief time that we have as we anticipate sharing in the Lord's Table, I want to focus only on one phrase, just one phrase of great import--and that phrase is found in verse one. It says, "The sin which so easily entangles us."

I want to see if we can't this morning talk about dealing with entangling sin. It is the nature of man, even the nature of a believer, to be easily entangled in sin. It happens so easily, and frankly there are certain sins which more easily entangle each of us than other ones. Each of us, in our own lives, have certain propensities for specific kinds of sins. It can be because we have in the past life cultivated habits of sin which now plague us even after our salvation. It could be because in our spiritual weakness even after becoming Christians we continued to develop habits of certain types of sin; certain specific sins that now we find more easily than others do entangle us.

It is true of every Christian that we have certain sins that easily capture us, but it is also true in general that sin easily entangles us. Not all sins are what we could call our personal entangling sins or our personal besetting sins: our personal habitual sins; the sins which we commit and then confess, and then commit again, and then confess, and then commit again, and then confess, and go on that way in our lives. Some sins fall under this category, but in general all sin seems to have sway with us. And maybe it will help you to understand why that is true if I just give you three very simple points about sin.

<span style="font-style: italic">1. Sin has great power over our flesh. </span>
The reason it so easily entangles us is because of its power, its strength, its force. It exerts strong influence on our will, it exerts strong influence on our emotions, it exerts strong influence on our affections. It rarely suggests things to us, it almost always commands them. It rarely leads, it most always pushes from the rear--drives, forces. Galatians 5:17 says, "The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit. They are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things you please." The beach head that sin has with its power is our flesh, and sin exerts tremendous power, tremendous strength against our flesh. It is a very powerful force and it finds in our flesh a very willing ally, a very receptive environment.

<span style="font-style: italic">2. Sin easily entangles us because it is so close. </span>
More than just forcing its way from the outside powerfully on our flesh, it forces its way on our flesh, as it were, from within us--from within the very flesh. It is very close; in fact, it is in our being. You can become a monk and sit in a cave and you will still deal with sin. Jeremiah 13:23 says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil." The point being: you can no more change the internal sinfulness that is a part of your life than the leopard can change his spots or the Ethiopian can change the color of his skin. It is a part of what you are. Sin is very powerful and finds a willing ally in your flesh because your flesh is fallen and your flesh itself has propensities towards sin. Sin is very close.

Your heart, says Jeremiah 17:9, "is deceitful." It "is more deceitful than everything else and is desperately sick."

There is a third component that makes sin easily entangled into our lives and that is that:

<span style="font-style: italic">3. Sin does not remain separate but it mingles in all our motives and all our actions.</span>

Sin is powerful. Sin is near, in that it is in us. And it isn't categorically separated. You can't draw a line and say "Well, this is where my righteousness ends and this is where my sinfulness begins." It has a way of weaving itself into the fabric of all our duties, and all our motives, and all our thoughts, and all our actions. It entangles itself with our purposes, and our plans; in fact, even your best deed. Even your best deed is not unmixed with sin. It is tangled up in our lives. In Romans 7, Paul cries out, "Oh, wretched man that I am!" Why? Because no matter how I try, I cannot disentangle myself from sin.

So sin is powerful, and sin is near--even within us, and sin does not separate itself but is mingled into everything. It is interwoven with everything in our lives. The best that we do is somehow corrupted in some way--large or small by a taint of self-will, or self-pleasure, or self-aggrandizement, or self-righteousness, or self-gain, or whatever. And so we become easily entangled, and as I said, there are certain sins that more easily entangle us, each of us, than others do. But if we are going to be the kind of Christians God would want us to be this verse says, "Let us lay aside the sin which so easily entangles us." Put it aside; put it away.

Now the question comes, "How do we do that?" It is not the first time we have been commanded to do that:

2 Corinthians 7:1 says, "Let us cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of the flesh."

Ephesians 4:22 says, "Laying aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit."

Romans 6:12 says, "Don't let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts."

1 Peter 2:1 says, "Lay aside all evil." Verse 11, "Abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul."

So we are very often told to set this aside. The question comes, "How do we do that?" From a practical standpoint we know, yes, it is the work of the Spirit and if you walk in the Spirit you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. We give all the credit for this to the divine Holy Spirit and yet there is a responsibility that is ours as we yield to the Spirit. How can I lay this aside? Before I answer that question let me suggest to you that this is an appropriate moment to be discussing this.

I suppose that it would be typical for many Christians, if not most, to come to the Lord's Table and confess their sins, in order that they might partake of this table and not bring judgment upon themselves as Paul warned us. So we tend to come here, perhaps, with our accumulated sin from the last time that we <span style="font-weight: bold">had communion, or the last time we seriously confessed our sin, but with really very little change in the pattern of sinning; and that's because while we want to confess our sins and have the confidence that He is faithful and just to forgive them, we don't take the steps, the necessary steps to so live that every time we come there is a decreased load of sin</span>--the list is a little shorter because we're dealing with it on a day to day basis. We are laying it aside; we are not just accumulating it at the same rate, dumping it all, as it were, on Christ, receiving His forgiveness in those great moments of confession, but seeing no diminishing pattern of sin in the day to day routine of our life.

So let us then, this day as we come to unburden ourselves of the accumulated sin and confess it and make our hearts right with God, also make a covenant, also make steps of commitment to start out a new pattern of life in which we will take strides, take the necessary strides to lay sin aside. A preventative act, not simply a remedial act of confession. Let me give you some principles that will assist you in laying aside sin.

<span style="font-style: italic">1. Don't underestimate the seriousness of your sin. </span>
I think the major reason we don't deal with sin strongly and firmly is because we underestimate its seriousness--to God, to God, to us, to those with whom we fellowship, to the church, to the unbelievers. Our sin steals joy; our sin ruins fellowship with God; our sin diminishes fruitfulness; our sin robs us of peace; our sin renders our service useless; our sin mitigates against our effectiveness in evangelism; our sin hinders our prayers; our sin brings the discipline of God. We need to understand the seriousness of our sin. It violates first and foremost our relationship with the Lord.

One of the most tragic days in the history of England was August 17, 1662. A tragic day because it was the last day for certain pastors to be able to preach to their congregations before they were exiled. Some of them lost their lives, some of them were exiled out of England to other countries. What precipitated this was something called the Act of Conformity. Through the years there had been developing in England a group of preachers and a group of churches that were called Non-conformists because they did not subscribe to all of the ritual and ceremony of the Church of England, nor did they confine their worship to the Book of Common Prayer. They were more concerned about Biblical Christianity; they were more concerned about teaching proper doctrine; they were more concerned about worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth and so they were known as Non-conformists. Many of you would know them as Puritans.

They did not conform to the strictures of the Church of England, which of course had neglected the Word of God and the gospel for the most part, and so a law was passed making them illegal. Twenty-five hundred of their ministers were exiled--forbidden to preach. Three-thousand non-conformists were killed and 60,000 families were disrupted. It all came to focus on August 17, 1662 because that was the last Sunday when these Non-conformist preachers could preach in their churches. For the last two weeks I have been reading a book called "Farewell Sermons." It is a compilation of 24 of the sermons preached on that day. Sermons from a pastor who would never see his people again: some of them died in exile; some of them later came back. But this was the end of their ministry and this terrible, terrible thing was being done, this terrible act of persecution and they were being dispossessed. The churches were losing them as their pastors; there was going to be none to replace them and they were being shipped off to exile.

It is very interesting to see their approach, to hear their sermons, to see and hear what was really on their hearts. None of the sermons which I have read so far were self serving. None of them condemned, really, the government for what it did. None of them were vengeful or retaliatory. There was a common thread in all of them. All of them sort of were along this line: "This is the will of God. We accept the will of God. We gladly suffer with Christ and our greatest concern is what happens to you."

One of the sermons struck me as extremely powerful, preached by a man named Calamy. He made one statement in this sermon that struck me; he said to his people, "You have experienced a calamity. This is a calamitous thing; this is a calamitous event," but then he said this, "There is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest calamity." "There is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest calamity." Then he later said, "There is more evil in the least sin then in the greatest misery." That is profound.

<span style="font-weight: bold">You look at your life and generally speaking you are distressed about your calamities and you are distressed about your miseries, but you are tolerant about your sins. You do not understand what that man understood: "There is more evil in the least sin than the greatest calamity." A calamity, a certain misery is not necessarily sin. Sin is sin. Treat your sin seriously--it dishonors God; it abuses mercy; it despises grace; it presumes on forgiveness; it defiles worship, service, and fellowship. It stains, and taints, and poisons, and destroys everything good and holy. </span>
Secondly, another principle that is necessarily understood if you are to lay aside sin:

<span style="font-weight: bold">2. Strongly purpose and promise God not to sin. </span>
Take a solemn vow and say, "God, I do not want to sin. I don't want to break Your law, I don't want to grieve Your Spirit, I don't want to dishonor the Name of Your Son which I bear." The Psalmist did that in Psalm 119:106, "I have sworn, and I will confirm it, that I will keep Thy righteous ordinances." Unless you have that kind of resolution in your life, you will find it more easy to be entangled by sin. In fact, I believe that it is that kind of heart purpose, it is that kind of bold affirmation that is at the root of all holy living, and until you make that kind of conscious commitment to the Lord, you are going to battle the same things over and over and be defeated.

There is a great verse, verse 32, in the same Psalm, Psalm 119, "I shall run the way of Thy commandments, for Thou will enlarge my heart." It is a very beautiful picture, "I shall run the way of Thy commandments, for Thou will enlarge my heart." What it means is, I am going to run in the way of obedience because I have a heart to do that. It starts in the heart. It is like a runner--very good illustration. A great runner, a long-distance runner, an endurance runner, a marathoner, very often has an enlarged heart muscle because of the tremendous development of his running ability and the strengthening of his heart to keep pumping all that is needed to that body as it pushes itself beyond normal limits. A great runner can run the way he runs because his heart is enlarged, and the Psalmist is saying, "I will run in the way of Your commandments because You have enlarged my heart. You have given me a heart for obedience." That's the kind of purpose that is absolutely essential.

There is a great difference, you see, between sin dwelling in us, and sin entertained by us. There is a great difference between sin remaining, and sin harbored, or sin preserved. To lay aside sin means to purpose and promise God to obey--a firm promise. I promise You, I will obey You!

There is a third component in this kind of commitment to lay aside sin, and it is this:

<span style="font-weight: bold">3. Be suspicious of your own spirituality. </span>
Paul said it this way, "Let the one who stands take heed lest he fall." Job 31:1, Job says, "I made a covenant with my eyes; how then can I gaze on a virgin?" He said, I have got to be careful where I look because I don't trust myself. I got to start with what I see because I don't trust myself. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." There is a certain watchfulness; you have to be watching for sin's subtle movements within your own supposed spirituality. Your heart is as I noted--desperately wicked, very deceitful, and Satan is desperately wicked and very deceitful. The seducing motions of your own heart can sometimes rise out of the moments of your most supposed spirituality. Be suspicious of your own spirituality--don't trust it. Understand that except for the grace of God you would fall into any and every sin--and you can be deceived so easily.

<span style="font-weight: bold">4. Resist the first risings of the flesh and its pleasures. </span>
Don't try to stop the process near the end; stop it near the beginning. James notes for us a certain process: people are tempted when they are carried away and enticed by their own lusts, "Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin." Well, you want to stop it at the point of conception--not try to stop it at the point of birth. You want to stop sin at conception, not after it has been conceived and run through a certain period of pregnancy (if you will) and now is about to give birth to the sin. You don't try to stop it at that point. You resist and oppose the first risings of the flesh and it's pleasures. Sin comes to you promising pleasure. You remember at the very outset: my goal is not to please myself, but to please the Lord.

There is a fifth principle in this and that is:

<span style="font-weight: bold">5. Meditate on the Word. </span>
There is a wonderful verse, verse 31 of Psalm 37, you probably should write this down. Psalm 37:31; it is a bit more obscure than some, but it really is very, very important. Listen to what it says, "The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not slip." When a heart is controlled by the Word, the steps don't slip. Another more familiar text dealing with this, and a wonderful one at that, is Psalm 119; and you remember that that Psalm begins in the very first part of those 176 verses with these words, down in verse 9 of Psalm 119, "How can a young man keep his way pure?" How can you lay aside sin? How can you win this battle? "By keeping it according to Thy word." By guarding it with Scripture.

It is the constant input of the Word of God that begins to fill up the mind and control the thinking, and that alone becomes the strength and resource in us that can resist the initial impulses of the flesh. "How can a young man keep his way pure?" By keeping his heart completely committed and guarded by the Word of God. Then in verse 10, "With all my heart I have sought Thee; do not let me wander from Thy commandments. Thy word I have treasured (or hid, or kept) in my heart that I may not sin against Thee." It is the Scripture that must be meditated on.

Meditate on the Word of God. You are always studying the Word, studying the Word, learning the Word, learning the Word, meditating on the Word as you get the Word--so filling you up so that it, "Dwells in you richly," (Colossians 3:16). You will find that it controls you. And as you start into some kind of attitude of sin or some kind of act of sin, the Word of God will act as a restraint. When you feel the impulse of the truth you know, meditate on that, not on the enticings of the flesh and its pleasures. So watch for sin's subtleties and don't trust your own spirituality. Resist and oppose the first risings of the flesh and its desires to please itself, and meditate on the Word--the ingrafted Word, which is able to save your souls.

<span style="font-weight: bold">6. Be immediately repentant over your lapses. </span>
It says in Matthew 26:75, that Peter, having obviously been aware of his sin at the crowing of the cock, "Went out and wept bitterly." There is something very admiral in that. We castigate, and rightly so, Peter for his defection, but we must also honor and respect him for his immediate--his immediate remorse. Be immediately repentant over your lapses and go back to the place of confession. Repentance isn't only saying, "I'm sorry Lord, forgive me." It is saying, "I'm sorry Lord, forgive me, and I don't want to ever do that again." That's the stuff of real repentance. If that third element isn't there then you're not fooling God about the genuineness or lack of genuineness.

When you confess your sins and when you say, "I'm sorry I did that, please forgive me--I don't ever want to do it again," name it--name it specifically. Let your own heart and even your own ears hear the naming of that sin, so that you develop in your heart a high degree of accountability with God for having named the very sin for which He is holding you accountable not to commit again. That's how you develop accountability; that's how you develop the fear of God. If you hold back from naming your sin, it's because you want to do that again; and it is bad enough to sin without having to be responsible for telling God you didn't want to do it and defying what you told Him. So you would rather sin only once, rather than twice; that's why you don't want to name your sin. Then you're guilty not only of sinning again but of being hypocritical before God.

True repentance will name the sin; specifically name the sin. Be immediately repentant over your lapses.

7. Continually pray for divine help.

Ephesians 6:18, after all the armor is put on and the battle against Satan and demons, after all of the warfare has been set and the battle is engaged against Satan and all of his forces, he says, "Praying always, with all prayer and supplication." Jesus said to His disciples, "Watch and pray for you know not when you are going to enter into the hour of temptation." "Devote yourself to prayer," (Colossians 4:2) "being alert in it." Don't fight the enemy on your own. When you engage the enemy--pray, plead with help.

But even in a preliminary sense, I really think anticipatory prayer is the most effective. You need to start your day, "Lord, this is the way you taught us to pray, 'Lead us not into. . . .'" What? "'temptation and deliver us from evil.' Lord, please, today lead me away from temptation--please, today Lord, deliver me from evil." You need to set the course of your prayers before the tempter arrives, before the flesh begins to rise and entice.

8. Establish relationships with other believers that hold you accountable.

"Bear you one another's burdens," says Paul in Galatians 6, "and so fulfill the law of Christ." We are all in the same boat folks. We all struggle the same way and we need each other. "If a man is caught in a "paraptoma" (a fall; a sin; a trespass), you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Each one look into yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens." We are all in this together. It might be you going down this time; it might be me going down next time, but between the two of us, we are going to hold ourselves accountable for holy living. By the way, that is in my judgment, the greatest factor in a Christian marriage--is the intense, and intimate, and spiritual accountability with regard to sin that exists at that level. That is a very, very important reason for Christian marriage.

I believe that there ought to be in every single sense a high level of spiritual accountability between a husband and a wife for every aspect of their life in that marriage. The most intimate knowledge of my spiritual life, apart from God Himself, is in the mind and heart of my wife. The most intimate knowledge of her spiritual life and her struggle as a Christian, apart from God Himself, is in my mind and heart. We know each other better than anybody in the world knows us. Therein lies the highest level of spiritual accountability--for me and for her. No one apart from God Himself holds me as accountable for what I am before you and before the Lord as she does, and vice versa, and that is what makes a Christian marriage really Christian and really distinctive.

That's the highest level of accountability. But beyond that there are other relationships in which you engage that can be very, very strengthening for your own spiritual life. You want people around you who lift you up, not people around you who pull you down. You want people around, associated with you as friends and close coworkers, who will see your failures just like you will see theirs, love you in the process and lift you up and demand of you the highest standards.

How are you going to come to the place where you lay aside the sin that so easily entangles you, and especially those besetting sins which you tend to fall into over and over again? First of all, realize sin is powerful. It is near, even in you and it is intertwined with everything in your being. And in order to deal with it you must understand its seriousness; you must promise God not to sin; you must watch carefully for your own spiritual weaknesses; don't trust your spirituality. You must resist the first risings of sin in the flesh; you must meditate on the Word; you must be repentant immediately for the lapses that come; you must continue in prayer and dependence on God's power and establish intimate relationships of spiritual accountability.

I would say that there is no better place to start this kind of life pattern than right here at the Lord's Table. We are here not only to unload the burden of sin we've accumulated for which we will be forgiven, but I hope we are here to start afresh in the new course that's going to bring us back here next time with a lighter load and a shorter list. Maybe the sum of it all is found here in Hebrews, chapter 12, in those wonderful and magnificent words, verse 2, "Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith." Listen, He is one who in His striving against sin never fell. "He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet He was without sin." He never fell, He never succumbed; so, if you are going to look at somebody as a model--look at Him. He was striving with sin even to death and never fell. He's our model; He's our example.

So we are here to remember His death; we're here to ask His forgiveness, and we're here to ask Him again, to be our example as we lay aside our sin and fix our eyes on Him to follow the path of victory over the sin that easily entangles us.

Let's bow together in prayer. Father, we thank you again that your Word speaks so pointedly and powerfully and directly to our hearts. We thank you that you have given us the resident Holy Spirit who can enable us to be obedient when we otherwise would not have the strength. Help us this morning to make the vows that we've learned about as we've considered entangling sin and how to deal with it. Help us to take these steps so that we can pursue the path of holiness and not need to be disciplined as often, so that we cannot miss the joy and the peace that should be ours, and the usefulness, and the worship, and fellowship, and ministry.

Now, as we come to this table we pray that as we think of the bread and the cup, we will remember what a price that our Lord paid for our sin. And we will take it seriously, as you do. We come to confess our sin and to renew our covenant to lay sin aside and to walk in a holy way. We now confess our sins, all of them, and ask you to wash us and make us clean. Forgive us every sin--known and unknown--every sin. Help us Lord not to do them again, but to walk in obedience. Amen.

**evanovitch** · 12-06-2010, 09:27 PM

How to Overcome Sin

How to Overcome Sin

by

John F. MacArthur, Jr.

All rights reserved.
Copyright 1991

The question is, "How do I kill sin in my life? How do I do it?" Let me give you some little principles--very basic, very straightforward.

If you live by the Spirit and are headed towards eternal life because of your salvation, the Spirit in you gives the power to be killing the deeds of the flesh. The question is, "All right, how do I do that? I agree that the power is there, that's the bent of my life, that's the way I am going, I want to see the Spirit do more and more and more of it. How do I get to that point? How do I get that victory? How do I get that pattern established?

How can that become habitual? What do I do?"

1. Recognize the Presence of Sin in Your Flesh.

Do you know (I believe with all my heart) why most Christians are most commonly defeated by sin? It is because the sin has so totally deceived them, that they never really get to the point where they honestly evaluate its reality. They are not dealing with the issue. You spend so much of your life justifying your sin as a quirk of your personality or a product of your environment. You spend so much time sugar-coating your habitual kinds of sins as simply idiosyncrasies of individuality, or some prenatal predilection that your mother had, or whatever. You have become so good (we all have) at coating over the reality of our sin that we don't see it, so we don't deal with it because we "flat out," number one, don't even recognize it for what it is. Any kind of spiritual victory begins when you identify the enemy. I
mean that it is the same old story, "If you don't know what you are shooting at, how are you going to hit it?" How am I going to eliminate from my life what I don't even identify as needing to be eliminated?

Sin is not only wicked, it is deceitful. It is deceitful! And it's there, believe me it is there. John Owen was right, he says [of sin],

It has no doors to open.

It needs no engine by which to work.

It lies in the mind and in the understanding.

It is found in the will.

It is in the inclinations of the affections.

It has such intimacy in the soul.

It's there! But inevitably it's covered up. Do you remember when David said, "Protect me from secret sins, hidden sins?" And to kill it you have to recognize it, you have got to search it out. Psalm 139 is a good verse, verse 23 (Psalm 139:23), remember this? "Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be . . . " what? ". . . any wicked way in me." Help me see my sinfulness. I want to recognize it for what it is. I want to get to the root of it. That's what is so fallacious about contemporary psychotherapy, it's that instead of having to deal with the reality of your present spiritual condition, it wants to drag you in the past and find somebody else who is responsible for your problem. You must deal with whatever is debilitating your life--that is you. And don't be deceived about how good you are. Believe me, your sin is there, and it is wretched and it spurts forth between the cracks of your supposed righteousness. It comes out in anger and bitter words, unkind thoughts, criticisms, self-conceit, lack of understanding, impatience, weak prayers, immoral thoughts, and even overt sins. You have got to know your weaknesses.

Haggai the prophet, chapter one, twice, verses 5 and 7 said, "Consider your ways! Consider your ways!" Take a good deep look at yourself. 1 Kings 8:38 says, "Know the plague in your own heart." Know the plague in your heart! And Paul in Ephesians 4:22, talks about deceitful lusts. You have to begin by examining your own life to see the reality of what is really there.

2. A Heart Fixed on God.

Second step. In order to gain this victory, its triumph, and to see the power of the Spirit of God begin to give you the power over the unredeemed flesh that you desire, that God desires, you must have a heart fixed on God. A heart fixed on God. The Psalmist said in Psalm 57:7, "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed." What do I mean by that? Undivided devotion to God! That's that wholeness in spiritual life where I am given wholly to God. What do I mean by that? What I am really saying in this context is, you can't have sin in one area. You can't just sort of clean up a lot of it but leave it in one area. You can't starve it out and kill it in one spot and feed it so it lives in another spot. If it lives anywhere it will crawl all over everywhere. It is the most noxious, fastest growing weed in existence. It will not confine itself to one flower bed, it'll be everywhere. The Psalmist said in Psalm 119, verse 6, "Then shall I not be ashamed." When? When will you not be ashamed? "When I have respect unto all thy
commandments." My life isn't going to be right, my life isn't going to be without shame until I give proper respect to every command of God. And that is to deal with every issue of sin in my life. The only unashamed life is the life of one who is totally fixed on God; everything has been dealt with.

3. Meditate on the Word.

Meditate on the Word. The filling of the Spirit is equated in Colossians 3, to letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. When the Word controls you, when it controls your thinking, when it is there as the Psalmist said, "To meditate on day and night," when it is there hidden that "I might not sin against God," then you have a control factor in your life. The way to kill sin in your life is to feed it Scripture. It's a poison. It'll poison sin. Just feed a sinful life Scripture--it will poison it! Whatever really controls your mind, controls your behavior; so you learn to close out the garbage and you feed the sin, the remaining sin, in your life a steady diet of God's glorious truth and it poisons sin. And so you must give yourself to the Word. You must saturate yourself in the Word. You must hear the Word preached and taught. You must learn it yourself and you must meditate on it day and night.

4. Commune with God in Prayer.

These are so very basic. Fourthly, and very important, commune with God in prayer. Commune with God in prayer. This sort of circles back around to the first point that I gave you. True prayer gives the heart a sense of its own vile character and renews the hatred of sin. True prayer does that. John Owen said, "He who pleads with God for the remission of sin also pleads with his own heart to detest it." Somewhere along the line, in your own prayer life you need to get honest. You need to get honest. And you need to begin to say to God, "I want you to reveal my sin, I want you to stir it up in me. I want you to show it to me. I want you to blow away the dust that is covering it. I want you to peel off the things that have been hiding it away in my life, so that it becomes manifest and visible to me. I want to see the reality of my sin. I want you to show it to me just the way it is." That's part of your communion with God.

When you pray to God--that is an honest confession. You can say you confess your sins, but until you pray, "God show me all the sins of my life, reveal all of them, uncover every little corner of my life. Bring it up and may it become as detestable to me as it is to you, and may you give me the strength to see it go away." Those are the kind of prayers that are the true prayers of repentance. I have always believed that when you really confess your sins there is a little P.S. that you add to the end of it, when you say, "Lord please forgive me for that sin," and you always add, if your confession is true, "and Lord may I never do that again." That's my heart's cry. And then prayer exposes secret sins. Prayer weakens prevailing sins. Prayer finds strength in fellowship with the Holy God to kill sin in our lives.

What must I do if I am to know victory over sin? First, I have to recognize the sin in my life. Don't kid yourself, don't gloss over yourself, don't underestimate your wretched condition as Paul didn't in Romans, chapter 7. And then fix your gaze wholly on God and become totally devoted to Him, so that everything in life, center and circumference, is Him. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 16, "I have set the Lord always before me," and that is the only way to live. And then it is also equally essential that you cultivate a knowledge and understanding, and a deep comprehension and application of Biblical truth, and that you spend time in honest prayer before God, bringing the truth to life in His presence. And in those kinds of simple spiritual exercises comes the death of sin. Then there is a fifth and last in this little pattern of victory.

5. Cultivate Obedience.

Now we go out of that private place, where you looked for your sin and where you fixed you gaze on God. And where you meditated on the Word, and where you communed with God in prayer, and we move into the public place and now the pattern of your life is set on a course of obedience. Paul said, "I haven't attained," I love this, "but," he said, "I press towards the mark." I haven't reached the goal but I am on the path. What path was he on? The path of obedience. Peter said, "Our lives should be characterized," 1 Peter 1:22, "by obedience to the truth." And we walk a path of obedience. If you want to engage yourself with a real battle with sin, just set your course, day-by-day, moment-by-moment, one step at a time, on a path of obedience. At first it seems hard, at first the progress seems slow, but you stay with it and eventually you become habitually obedient. Habitually obedient. It becomes a habit! You stay on the path that God has laid out in His Word. That path will lead you to grow in grace, to perfect holiness, to renew the inward man day-by-day, and you'll train yourself towards godliness.

Now, it would be fair, I think, to ask a final question, and that is, "How am I doing on this?" How can I do a little inventory and say to myself, "Soul, Soul, how are you doing? How's this working out? Are you doing these things?" Just ask yourself some simple questions.

A. How's my zeal for God?

Is my heart cold towards God? Has sin made me indifferent to times of communion with Him? Do I have little or no interest in His presence? In the glory of His name? Do I love His Word? Do I love His law? Can I understand what the Psalmist meant in Psalm 119:136, when he said, "Rivers of water run down my eyes, because they keep not thy law." Do I have such a love for God's law that I am devastated when His law is disregarded? Do I earnestly contend for the faith? Do I live to uphold truth? To live it? To proclaim it? What level is my zeal at?

B. Do I love the Word?

Do I find myself drawn to the Word? Almost pinned to it by some divine wrestler who has me on the canvas and I can't get up until its truths have become my own convictions. Do I find myself indulging in the deep things of the Word? Ask myself this, "Self, do you love the time of prayer? Do you love the place of confession? Do you eagerly rush into the place where you can confess your sin and ask God to do the self-examining process by the light of the Holy Spirit, so that every dirty thing can be brought to light. Do you seek that? Do you delight in worship? Is it your great longing to be here with God's redeemed people? Is it precious to you to spend the Lord's Day in the church? Is it your soul's highest delight to sing His praise and know Him better, that you might offer Him honor?" Or do you say with the Jews of Malachi's day, "What a weariness worship is!"

Ask yourself this, "Are you sensitive to sin in the church? Are you sensitive to sin in the world? Does it tear your heart up when you see sin around you any where? In your own life?"

You see those are just the basic principles I gave you, just flipped around and turned into self-examining questions. Spiritual victory is there if you recognize that you are not under any obligation to sin. If you recognize that the Spirit of God has already bent you towards life, and so He's already killing sin in your life, and the power to kill all of it is there. Then all you need to do is tap into the means, and I gave you simple principles by which you can begin to do that in your life, and a little test by which you can examine where you are.

I don't know about you but I want to have a life of virtue. I want to have a life of joy. I want to have a life of peace, and I want to have a life of usefulness to God, and this is the path to that life. And may God give you the strength to walk it; and may through you walking it faithfully, God bring glory to His own name. That's the purpose of everything.

Let's bow together. Father, confirm to our hearts these truths, that we might be all that you want us to be.

**f0rTyLeGz** · 12-06-2010, 10:22 PM

Re: why do we still sin as believers?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: John F. MacArthur, Jr.</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I want to just lay down a simple statement that we're going to build on all the way through, and that is this: Genesis 3 is an accurate historical record of what actually happened in the garden. </div></div>
How can anything that this man says be taken seriously?

**freedom-man** · 12-10-2010, 09:11 PM

Re: why do we still sin as believers?

Augustine (354-430)
Original Sin

Augustine was the author of the disastrous Church doctrine of original sin that would become orthodox dogma for more than a thousand years.

Reinterpreting Jewish scripture, Augustine said that the disobedience of Adam was an inherited human trait, a sin transmitted in the act of procreation. He thus arrived at the conclusion that all people are sinners from birth. No longer was sin solely the result of conscious individual choice.

With pitiless fanaticism, Augustine extended the guilt of Adam's transgression to every new born baby.

"Unconscious infants dying without baptism are damned by virtue of their inherited guilt."
– St Augustine (Newman, Manual of Church History, Vol. I, p. 366).

New born babes were sinners like the rest of us! There was no escape. Unbaptised babies would burn in torment forever, said the wise bishop. Moreover, the individual could not remove sin by himself no matter how "righteous" he might be; only within the embrace of Holy Mother Church could he be "saved."

"It was just, that after our nature had sinned ... we should be born animal and carnal."
– Augustine (R. Seeburg, History of Doctrine, I, p338)

No Sin Here

Both the Germanic tribes and the Romans had a sense of criminality and justice. Social transgressions had known consequences delivered by magistrates. When it came to matters of religion, the individual who failed to placate the gods and thus 'transgressed' would reap the consequences of his action directly from the gods – it required no intervention by a priesthood. The gods took care of themselves.

The philosophers of the ancient world had no notion of a "sin" nor did any of the pantheistic systems. The Gnostics, although their doctrines varied in detail, likewise had no notion of sin. Even dualistic systems, like Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism, which had two eternal principles, good and evil, at perpetual war with each other, had no true notion of sin. For them, all evil, and consequently sin, came from the principle of evil.

But the Jews had a different idea ...

The Jews had Sin ...

Sin entered the world with Adam.

But of course it never did because Adam never existed (the figure is an archetypal man, symbolizing 'humanity'). Sin actually entered the world in the perverted mind of priestly scribes. A perfect God no doubt could have created a perfect world. But instead God's priests had their deity create Sin. If God's creatures did not sin how could this heavenly monster exercise his 'saving compassion' through the intercession of the priesthood?!

Sin, sinfulness and sinners appear in every book in the Bible, several hundred times in fact. Sin is the very foundation of Judeo/Christian religion. It is the dominant theme of the Torah and the Prophets.

Who is the author of all this "transgression of God's Law?" In a theology which allows only a single god, there can be only one answer:God himself!

According to the paramount Jewish sage, God tells us:

I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

– Isaiah 45.5,7.

The theology of course has an unresolved paradox because the sole deity has to remain blameless, even if he is the ultimate author of all that is evil.

"Since it is of faith that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all good it is difficult to account for sin in His creation. The existence of evil is the underlying problem in all theology."

– The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV

In an attempt to talk their way out of this corner, the priests pass the blame for sin to mankind. Though Man is "God's perfect creature" he is given the free will to chose various temptations – which are themselves on offer only because God allows them to be! Thus the great god himself connives to entrap mankind in sin, with such tasty fruits as the Tree of Knowledge and genitalia. When Man's weak will succumbs the penalties are severe indeed. As Ezekiel writes in 18:4, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And don't think you can hide your sin either: "Be sure your sin will find you out" Moses writes in Numbers 32:23.

After its encounter with Zaroastrianism, Judaism later acquired the notion of an evil god (Satan), together with his demons, as a counterpoise to the good god (Yahweh) – but even then, Satan can only exist because the "all-powerful" god allows it.

Man inevitably sins. The temptations are so appealing, contact with the unclean and bodily discharges are so likely. The answer? The holy charlatans come forward with the notion of repentance and atonement, which – surprise, surprise! – involves obedience of, and payments to, the priests: animal sacrifice will do nicely, thank you.

The priests specified a whole variety of offerings ("burnt", "peace", "guilt", "sin&quot

which required either "clean" animals (cattle, sheep, goats, doves, pigeons), cereals, incense or wine (Leviticus 1. 3 ). The fat and inedible parts were burnt (that was God's bit!); blood was smeared or sprinkled on the altar (a bit of drama); the choice cuts and skins went to the priests. The priests eat and the sin of others is atoned.

Should an individual refuse to atone, the Torah requires that the sinner be expelled (or killed) to protect the collective from divine retribution.

Rabbi Solly: 'All Are Sinners'

The Law obviously gave rabbi St Paul – or rather those who wrote pseudepigraphically in his name – a problem. If the Law was a perfect code of behaviour why was the salvation of Christ necessary?

“If righteousness come by law, Christ is dead in vain."
– Galatians. 2:21

If the Almighty had 'given up' on the misbehaving Jews why not just take the Law to the gentiles? Paul's objective, however, was to fuse the dying/rising sun-god of the pagans with Jewish scripture. In a stunning short-circuiting of the theology Paul gave the answer: we are all sinners.

"For God has consigned all people to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all"
– Romans 11.32.

"All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
– Romans 3.23.

The entire human race is already condemned!

God makes us all sin so that he can save us! Paul's epistles refer to sin almost a hundred times. According to the radical rabbi, the atonement for all of humanity's sins – past, present, future – had already been paid by the sacrificial death of the god-man Jesus. Aren't we all "saved" then? Only with the intercession of a priest, says Paul, who can bring the sinner to the "grace of god". All the sinner had to do was "accept Jesus". Paul offers "fast-track" salvation for the pagan multitude ... Says Paul:

"For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
– Romans 6.23.

Thus Paul's religion – in common with all others – creates the 'problem' for which it then offers the solution – submission to the priesthood, of course! Much of Paul's message is actually to do with collecting cash ...

"So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous gift you had promised ... Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

– 2 Corinthians 9.5,7.

The Christians devise Bigger, Deadlier Sins ...

Judaism had had its sin but at least it allowed for the occasional appearance of men of "righteousness". In the sacred mythology, these paragons appeared from time to time to berate their fellow tribesmen.

But Christianity went further. In the demented mind of the Christian theologians, sin became more obnoxious than it had ever been. As Christianity developed so too did sin. No longer was sin just an action (Romans 1:32); transgression could occur in word (e.g. Matthew 5.22), or thought (e.g. 1 John 3.15) – "Thought Crime" would accompany the arrival of Church totalitarianism.

The natural self, with carnal instincts, had to be denied. The guilt that any transgression engendered, even for the tiniest infraction, fed the psychosis upon which Christianity flourished. Sins became cardinal or deadly. Deliberate disobedience of the known will of God required the harshest punishment – death and the torments of hell. Rebellion against God’s law was far worse than the calamitous behaviour of princes that merely produced distress, sorrow and suffering.

Empowered by the authority of the Roman state, the fanatics of Christ were more proactive than Jewish scribes had ever been. It became their sacred duty to hunt out and punish sinners.

Sex-obsessed old men define doctrine

Early Church fathers, of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, made allusions to a doctrine of an "original sin." Tertullian, perhaps influenced by stoicism and the belief in the essential unity of matter and spirit, thought the soul to be physical, passed on by parents in the act of procreation. (He gives an account of a Montanist prophetess, who professed to have seen a soul and attempted to describe its appearance!).

Tertullian taught when a parent sinned, this physical taint of the soul was passed on to children.

Origen, a more speculative theorist, argued for a preexistence of the soul. He felt sure all men had sinned and had fallen in this former existence. Fallen man had been banished by God into material bodies to be disciplined and purified. Origen, like Augustine after him, supposed that there was an inherent pollution and sinfulness in sexual union, the means by which sin entered the world. A woman's pains in childbirth were in themselves clear evidence of the sinfulness of the original act!

Augustine (known as the 'Great Sinner' after the candour of his Confessions) was obsessed with the lust of procreation – undoubtedly a reflection of his own dysfunctional sexuality. Wildly promiscuous in his early life, he had abandoned two mistresses, one with his child, and the illicit affairs had filled him with guilt. In later years, he did not trust himself to be left alone with a woman. In his City of God, Augustine considers the conjecture that:

"Since it is possible for humans to control the movement of soft flesh (he instances their mouths and faces, and even knows people who are able to wiggle an ear), it may have been that, prior to the fall, Adam was able to have intercourse without an erection. It is the involuntary movement of the male member which so alarms him."
– Daphne Hampson, After Christianity, p188.

The most significant feature of sex, said Augustine, was this "involuntariness" of the male erection (sometimes absent when you want it; sometimes present when you don't!). He concluded that the 'concupiscent' impulse belonged to "nature" (natura vitiata), not to the spirit. Painfully misogynistic, Augustine decided that because male "nature" was uncontrollable it was women who had to be constrained. In his Confessions IX,9 he praises his mother's complete subordination to her violent husband.

Says Augustine,

"Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of man downwards as the caress of a woman and that physical intercourse which is part of marriage."
– Soliloquies.

In Augustine's judgement – and subsequently that of the Church – sexual desire and gratification ("lust&quot

had to be controlled, limited and confined. Libido was stigmatised as a sin, detracting us from God. In contrast, celibacy, chastity and virginity were lauded as being far closer to the perfection of god and were to be the choices of preference. Centuries of misery – sexual and psychological – were the consequence as millions became celibates or fought their own nature. Since such precepts severely threatened the continuance of the human race, passionless, matrimonial intercourse solely for the procreation of children remained permissible, though even this was a 'venial' sin. Premarital and extramarital sex clearly were sins, as was sex during pregnancy or after childbearing age. Even the harmless release of masturbation became a grave sin, the crime of 'Onanism'.

Thanks to St Augustine and the Church, guilt over the most natural of human proclivities was inculcated into generation after generation of humanity – an irrational and morbid guilt no less present among "believers" in the twenty first century as it was in the second or third century.

The Wages of Sin – A Very Wealthy Church

"The money from the guilt offerings and sin offerings was not brought into the temple of the LORD ; it belonged to the priests."

– 2 Kings 12.16

After deliberating on sin at synods in Rome and Carthage (251/252 AD), the Church decided that no one could avoid venial sin, and therefore all needed the intercession of the Church. But it also ruled that "all sins were forgivable with sufficient penance."

“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered."
– Romans 4.7

Here, potentially, was a vast business in forgiveness– But who had the right to absolve sin?

Certain sharp clerics saw the opportunity and declared themselves to be "Confessors". Filled, as they said, with the Holy Spirit, they claimed the right to absolve sins (particularly the sin of apostatising during the Decian persecution) – and just as surely availed themselves of recompense for their efforts.

The appearance of this rash of competitive charlatans set alarm bells ringing among the bishops who responded by declaring their own exclusive right to forgive sin. The lucrative sin business was being parceled out among the operatives.

Towards the end of the 4th century Augustine made clear that it was only the Catholic hierarchy that could forgive sin:

"Since the days of Adam, all have sinned; only a few with 'God's Grace' can rescue sinners."
– On Predestination.

Augustine waged a brutal campaign against the followers of Pelagius, a monk who had the temerity to believe that man had an innate ability to live by God's commands and could thereby avoid sin.

In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory, an enthusiastic follower of Augustine, codified sins into seven types, folding "vainglory" into pride, "acedia" into sadness, and adding envy. His ranking, from most serious to least was: pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust. In the 17th century, the Church replaced the vague sin of "sadness" with sloth.

The list of sin crimes set the stage for centuries of ecclesiastical extortion: the sale of remissions from sin!

The Church had devised the most successful protection racket in history.

Pimping Priests

Common venial sins could be remitted by prayer, confession to the clergy, contrition, fervent communion, and other 'pious works', all of which required frequent attendance at Church and appropriate service or recompense to the officiating clergy.

Having transformed even a Christian marriage bed into "whoredom" the Church could extract its penance for every act of copulation that involved "lust". Clerical abuse of the institution of "confession", originally made at the feet of the priest, obliged the Church to introduce the confessional box for decency's sake.

The saintly Augustine had also provided the dubious theology of purgatory, a holding pen where even compliant Christians would find themselves after death, a place where 'fire might wash them free of sin'. Picking up the message, said Pope Gregory:

"As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that before the final judgement, there is a purifying fire (purgatorius ignis) ..."
– Dialogia !V, xli.3.

The popes were subsequently to generate a vast income by selling indulgences which would 'free souls from purgatory'. The living – filled with anxiety for their deceased relations – could offer prayer, service and payment to the Church, so that those in purgatory could move more quickly through their chastisement!

The Criminal Clergy

More serious mortal sins required even greater sacrifice on the part of the sinner. What need had he of earthly goods when his immortal soul was in peril?

According to the demented theology (I Corinthians, 6.9; Matthew, 25.41; Mark, 9.45, etc.), God insists that Sin must be atoned for, either in this world or in the world to come. Punishment in the future life would be proportionate to the sin committed in this life but would also last forever – a tad harsh from a god of love and goodness! In the future life, warned the Church, the penalty for sin would be the 'pain of loss' – that is, "privation of the beatific vision of God". Worse yet, Torment in Hell awaited the sinner, and as the centuries progressed that Christian Hell became an ever-nastier place.

Yet for all the theorizing about the afterlife (and the consequent terror it engendered in believers) opting for atonement in the world to come was not an option in the Christian empire. A merciful God had provided a remedy for sin in this life by the institution of His Church!

Catholic Crime Syndicate – 'Purgatory Inc.'

'As the penny in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.'

The weak and gullible were fleeced by papal agents – such as Dominican friar Tetzel – who sold papal releases for dead loved ones 'suffering the cleansing fire'.

16th century woodcut Jan Breu the Elder

With a blend of 'eternal bliss' on the one hand and a 'satanic pit' on the other the Church mercilessly exploited the fears, credulity and hopes of humanity. Through centuries, the Church secured not only almost limitless regal patronage but also endowments, estates, and legacies from the wealthy, convinced that they were buying a place in Heaven. From all and sundry the Church collected tithes, indulgences and fees; it sequestered the property of heretics and Jews; it seized the lands of the infidel.

Time did not soften the rapacity of the Church. The Council of Trent (1545 - 1563) reaffirmed that all mortal sins had to be confessed. This included even the most intimate, secret thoughts because thoughts ...

"sometimes more grievously wound the soul and are more dangerous than sins which are openly committed".

By interpretation of 'His law' and by the administration of 'His sacraments', Holy Mother Church could adequately provide 'remedies' for sin – and ultimately ensure union for the repentant sinner with God in Heaven. The Church had a Holy duty to save the sinner's soul from eternal torment. The destruction of his body and the expropriation of all that he possessed was a small price to pay for that Divine Grace.

In the early years of the 16th century Luther was to become the mouthpiece for those having "dangerous thoughts". Luther reinterpreted Paul's epistles and other key passages in the Bible to argue for a "grace" that could be achieved by an individual's own faith – without acts of penance, the intercession of saints and martyrs, holy pilgrimages, Letters of Pardon, etc. – in fact, without the whole paraphernalia of the ecclesiastic protection racket.

Holy Mother Church had become (and remained) Europe's largest landowner, its hierarchs the richest men on the planet, its pontiff a maker and breaker of emperors. When the scions of wealthy Italian families fought or bought their way onto the papal throne it was to control the most successful criminal organisation in history.

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How Sin Silences the Conscience

How Sin Silences the Conscience

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