Last week I tweeted the following: “Check your hysteria over the fact that you haven't committed your self-imposed "big sins" (sexual sin, divorce, drinking beer, rated R movies not called the Passion of Christ, etc...) which cause you to look down on others. Prov. 8:13, "I hate pride and arrogance"...oh dang, that's YOU!”
This tweet generated some feedback, honestly, not to my surprise.
First let me clarify: The "self-imposed" is referring to “self-imposed big sins”, meaning we try to independently categorize degrees of sin. The point isn’t that those things listed in the parenthetical statement aren’t sin or couldn’t result in sin. I was not questioning “What is sin?” or “What isn’t sin?”. Sin is sin. Sin differs in severity but not in degree.
From Adam we all inherited a sinful nature and are in desperate need of the grace of Christ. If we have embraced the Gospel, then the wrath we deserved was exchanged for the righteousness of Christ, which becomes the basis for our standing before Him. When we create lists of “big sins” and “sins Jesus is somewhat cool with” and then judge others as a result, we are in opposition to the Gospel. The creation of the above “lists” distorts the reality of sin and the universal need for a Savior, and that distortion is what we are to judge. Instead, we run to our man-made “big sins list” to discuss its dangers, argue its validity, and defend its purpose. All the while further misrepresenting the Gospel.
This scenario is depicted in Luke 18 when the Pharisee stood up in the temple to pray, thanking God he wasn’t like all of the other sinners who [insert big sin list]. Jesus opposed this arrogance vehemently throughout the New Testament because it’s an enemy of the Gospel and is nothing less than religious idolatry.
Religious idolatry reveals itself in a couple ways:
1) We think we are okay before God because of the rightness of our beliefs rather than the sufficiency of Christ, as expressed in the Gospel. We become doctrinal Pharisees. We must have correct doctrine, but doctrine in and of itself is not the source of our rightness before God.
2) We become moralists, which is what the tweet was referring to. We think we have a right standing before God because we “do” these things and “don’t do” those things. This always leads to arrogance and self-deception about our own need for Jesus. It’s why so many Christians flame out the moment they don’t measure up to their “lists” because their standing before God was never based on the sufficiency of Christ but rather the rightness of their behavior. Rather than failure pushing them toward the Gospel, it moves them in the opposite direction.
As a pastor, I believe we have been called to expose and aggressively confront religious idolatry – Jesus did. Otherwise, people will not understand the Gospel. Rather, safety will replace the dangerous grace of Christ, control will replace real, transformed hearts, and external morality will replace the un-manipulated outflow of understanding Christ’s love.
