If sin doesn't matter, why stop doing it?

It really is a good question.  If all sin, past, present, and future have already been forgiven for the world, why not just keep on sinning?  For that matter, why not sin some more so that increase the amount of grace that exists and so people can see we're forgiven and okay with God?

Years ago, one of my favorite speakers (back when I was really into speakers/preachers), told the story of one of his kids who was really into candy.  I don't remember the details, but basically his son dug into the trash to eat some really old candy they'd thrown away from a couple years back.

When he found his son eating the nasty, old, trash covered candy and encouraged him to stop so he could eat better things including new, clean candy, his son said something to the effect of, "But I pulled all the hair and stuff off of it.  It's okay."

God wants us to stop eating out of the trash.  He wants to teach us what is trash and what's good.  And that can be a process and take a while for people to learn about.  And he doesn't throw us out until we learn enough to know better about what is or isn't trash/sin.  He teaches us as we can learn (Titus 2:11-14).

Sin is our attempt to meet needs/desires God gave us in ways that God didn't make us to be satisfied. From the garden of Eden to the 10 commandments, God made us and designed us to function best and do life together best by trusting and depending on his way of doing things, since he made us and knows best.

Can life be done differently than following the "owner's manual"?  Well sure it can. We do it all the time.

How often do people change their oil only after the change oil light has been on for 10,000 miles?  How often have we eaten the whole box after we had one and then said, "Well, I messed up and had one - I may as well go ahead and eat the whole box."  Ever known anyone who went ahead and had sex before they got married?  Ever know anyone who had a bit too much to drink?  Ever known anyone who took themselves too seriously and forced their ideas/vision about God and church on other people?  Ever known anyone who lied to get out of socially awkward situation and to avoid hurting someone's feelings? Ever known anyone who didn't love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength?

You get the picture.  We break rules and there are little to no actual consequences that we can see, at least immediately. 

Lots of people, including you and me, sin all the time and we're still walking around.  And God still loves us, lives in us, guides us, and will never leave us.

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So, what's the point of it all?  If God's forgiven all our sin and he's not counting them against us anymore (2 Cor. 5:19), what's the motivation to "be good"?  And I'll continue on here, but this last question is the one I hear from most people who are concerned they're gonna lose their most impactful tool to use on people who they think need to get in line - they *want* to be able to threaten people with God and so it's not at all helpful to them to hear or know that God forgives all sin.

Long story short, sin is not good for us and works against what God is doing in this world through Jesus and his Spirit.  Read through all the places in the New Testament after the gospels where Paul and others talk about "don't do this ______ anymore!" and all of them are things that work against the good things God is doing in this world.

What's God doing in this world through Jesus and his Spirit?  He is setting people free from differently kinds of slavery, bringing people together into true community that ought not ever be together from a human point of view, healing things we need healing from - probably things we don't even know we need healing from, helping people see who couldn't see before - and not just physical eyesight - opening people's eyes to see life from God's point of view, etc.  

You get the idea.  God didn't come into the world just to get us ready for the next.  That is a part of it, but there's so much more and it starts here.  Our life with him and one another in eternity starts here.  

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Consequences

In college, when I was younger and even dumber, I had to have my tonsils removed because of chronic infections.  The doctor's office said to not eat after midnight in anticipation of the surgery the next day.  As you might imagine a college sophomore doing, I ate pizza right up until midnight, knowing I wouldn't be able to eat solid food for a while after surgery.

And during surgery, while they're trying to remove my tonsils, I threw up all the pizza I'd had up until midnight.  The doctor let me know about that pretty straightforwardly during rounds the next day.  He clarified strongly that their guidelines weren't meant to be no food after 11:59 PM, it was supposed to be don't eat after dinner - you're having an early surgery and need your stomach to be cleared while we operate on you.  If I remember correctly, the MD's offices are much more clear about that these days.

And maybe I paid for it - I don't know how much it complicated things during surgery, but in few days following, I had to go back in for another surgery to fix a leaking blood vessel that was not healing over. I'd swallowed and thrown up enough blood that I was as white as a sheet and passing out by the time they got me back in to repair the issues from the first surgery.

There were consequences to my interpreting the rules of surgery differently than they were supposed to be interpreted and followed.  

When we "sin", there are consequences now.  We produce our own hell on earth for ourselves and maybe even for others.  So many of the admonitions to stop sinning in the letters to local collections of believers are because sin destroys the very thing God is trying to build/help in this world - selfish behaviors tear people apart and builds new walls, competition destroys cooperation and community, hate elbows out love, cheating destroys trust, stealing destroys generosity, etc.

A big part of "put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature" (Col. 3:5) has to do with "stop working against what God is trying to do among you!"  

In Romans 6, Paul is answering the Roman's question of "Should we go on in sinning so that grace can increase?" And his response is "NO, you shouldn't!" And Paul wasn't saying they were already on thin ice for daring to ask such a question NOR did he suggest that they were getting too close to the edge and God was about to pitch them into the non-saved pile.

These people in Rome had a legitimate question - does it matter whether we sin or not?  And Paul says, "Yes, it matters".  But not for the way my tribe has usually said why it matters.  

In my tribe, it's always been about "If you keep on doing that, you're eventually gonna make God mad enough at you that he's gonna removed your name from the book of life."  And there are SO MANY problematic things with that kind of thinking that I won't go into there, but suffice to say, that's not Paul's point of view.

Paul wanted them to see that they're saved, free, and much more AND that they're on a new path, a new journey.  Why keep eating old candy out of the trash can when God has SO MUCH better for you ahead?

Why keep living under this idea of sin vs. not-sin to have a fun/ideal life?  God has set you free from that kind of thinking so that you can move into a new way of living and thinking that is completely outside of all that Old Way.

The right to have an opinion vs building other people 

A big caveat in all this is that not every sin does something so overt that people notice, so why do those kinds of sins matter? That's completely true. You and I can do things by ourselves no one will know about. Also, sometimes we can "sin" and it doesn't have any of those negative impacts listed above - what about those times?  I agree with that too.  

To some degree, it has to do with how we define "sin" versus how someone else defines "sin".  There are times we disagree about what is right and wrong, good or bad.  Paul talks about this a good bit in Romans 14 and the first part of 15.  There ARE times when you might think something is "bad" and I don't.  Paul says to keep it to yourself and don't do things to hurt one another's conscience in those situations.  

And interestingly, he has this letter to the Romans read in everyone's presence so that people who disagree about what is or isn't sinful have to hear him say, "Ya know, sometimes you all will disagree about what's right and wrong and that's okay.  Keep it to yourself and don't judge each other over those kinds of things."

Sometimes when people say, "Don't sin" they're really saying "Be good and don't do bad.  I don't trust you because you seem like someone who would be bad and I don't like the cut of your jib." Google it.  

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Paul would regularly point out in his writings that people who live in X, Y, or Z kinds of sinful ways won't inherit the kingdom of God.  Paul wasn't saying to his audiences "that's gonna be YOU if you're not careful mister!"  

The audience of his letters was FULL of people who were doing all these bad things. It was sometimes the whole point of his letter, to answer their questions about what to do or not do - we wouldn't have most of the New Testament if Paul wasn't writing to teach and instruct them about life in Christ.

And very important to remember and hear - Paul usually spent a lot of time telling the hearers about who they are in Christ, their security in God, the gift they have in the Spirit so that they remember who they are and what God thinks of them.  

He didn't write his letters and say, "To this group of people in your church, you're all good and God likes you, keep up the good work - BUT to this other group in that church, you all are skating on thin ice and God's gonna curse you if you don't get it together."

He wrote about amazing blessings to God's people AND told them to stop doing things that weren't helpful, but were divisive and working against what God is doing.

Paul wanted his hearers to remember who they are and what they're called out of - a life driven by self and selfishness, competition, striving, one-up's-manship, division, hate, etc - and into a life that is real life and full and not heavy - you know, the kind Jesus talked about.

He wanted them to not offer themselves to the slavery of the world, which is essentially what sin is.  He wanted to remind them of the righteousness that God put on them through Jesus and to admonish them to move on into Christ and not sit around being jerks to each other.

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Wow.  I just realized there are probably a dozen different directions you could go after this with follow up questions.  What about the people Paul said to "hand over to Satan"?  What about the people John said had gone out from among them?  What about the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

I'll probably set aside some time in the future for some of those tough knots as well.  Suffice to say, none of those "hard things" are as hard as we make them and still fall under the basic ideas mentioned above.  

We're pretty constantly looking for exceptions and loopholes with, for, and against God and people - that's not just part of my tribe, but people in general.  And I get it - that was most of my religious life.

So now I take a lot of comfort in things like...

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

And I don't constantly have to take a statement like that completely apart and say, "Well, what does 'in Christ' mean? Isn't there room right there to say that _________".  

Paul and other writers weren't setting up a new list of ways you could go to hell.  They were pointing us, through the guidance of the Spirit, toward something we've only begun to imagine.

I can hear preachers, elders, and other leaders from my past say, "Well, you know when you talk like that, you're just giving people an excuse to sin and a license to not go to church."  

No, I don't think so.  People don't need a license to sin.  They do pretty well without a license.  Churches, from days gone by, used fear to control people for their attendance, money, and participation.  Still do.  Well, at least some do.

That was never Paul's reason for writing things he said about sin and forgiveness.  His message was "there is good news in God through Christ!" and that anything added to that was not a real gospel. (Galatians).

More soon.  The sun is coming up and the day is waking.

Grace and peace.