Live Dead Joy: 30 Days of Living and Dying with JesusSample

“Guilt-Based Theology of Sin”

How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Joseph asked when he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:9). David, after sinning against Uriah, his own honor and family, and even against Bathsheba, made this startling confession in Psalm 51:4: “Against You [God], You only, have I sinned!”

The Christian theology of sin is guilt-based. Even if no one else knows what we have done, even if the sin is internal, it is damning, for we have offended the holiness of God. Pre-Christian (Judaic) and post-Christian (Islamic) theologies of sin are much more shame-based. Sin is most heinous when its effects ripple out among the community and insult the honor of those related to the sinner. The more people the action negatively affects, the more serious the sin.

A holy God, however, is just as insulted by secret sins, for all sin is under His wrath. Our internal accommodations of sin (pride, lust, attitude, jealousy, etc.) are just as offensive to God as our errant external actions. The internal concessions are the root; the external actions are the fruit. We are in a daily mortal struggle. We are in a boxing match that does not end until death. Sin seduces us moment by moment: “Come and lie with me!” We must not only say no repeatedly, holding up our prayer-gloved hands, we must also keep moving our feet away from the barrage of sin’s fists so we are not even near temptation. Sometimes we also have to leave what is rightfully ours and just flee.

Let us not be the fools who critique the outward failings of those around us without acknowledging that our inward sins are just as ugly, just as lethal. We must be committed to a lifelong boxing match of resisting an untiring foe. “He did not heed her, to lie with her or to be with her” (Gen. 39:10). God is so pure that my internal sins, the sins that do not involve or shame anyone else, are enough to condemn me to judgment.

Pray for the Unreached:

Moroccan Muslims of Morocco

14,448,000

0.01% Evangelical

Pray that God would raise up missionaries from all over the world to plant the church together with Moroccans (Matthew 9:37).