3.3 Romans 7 is not about the inevitability of sin in our lives. (part 3)

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11. I sometimes think that Paul must turn over in his grave (or perhaps do flips in heaven) when he sees how so many have misinterpreted Romans 7 to mean exactly the opposite of what he was trying to say. The conundrum he presents in 7:7-25 is a hypothetical person who wants to keep the Law but lacks the power to do so because he or she does not have the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, the picture has resonated so strongly with the experiences of so many Christians that they can't seem to read the plot to its resolution in Romans 8.

In my opinion, Paul's position on sin in Romans 6-8 is not remotely ambiguous. After all, how does he start this section? "Should we remain in sin so that grace might abound? Absolutely not!" (Rom. 6:1). It sure sounds like he does not believe sin should typify a believer.

Let's try that again in Romans 6:15: "Should we sin because we are not under Law but under grace? Absolutely not!" Hmm. That's strange. Sounds like he's saying sin should not typify the life of a believer. 

How about Romans 6:12: "Do not let Sin be ruling in your mortal bodies." Very strange. It sounds like he is saying that my body should not participate in sinful activities. That sure sounds like sin should not typify the life of a believer.

Romans 6:13 confirms this understanding. "Do not continue to present your [body] members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as living from the dead and your members to God as instruments of righteousness." This is not about a legal fiction where, as Luther said, we are both "sinner and saint at the same time as long as we keep repenting." [10] Paul is talking about the way we concretely live in the world -- how we use our "members," our body parts.

12. While I'm on this point, let me make a quick side trip to Galatians 5:16: "Walk in the Spirit, and you will never fulfill the desires of the flesh." It is worth noting the grammatical constructions here. The first verb is a present imperative -- an ongoing command -- "Be walking." The result is a clause known as the "subjunctive of emphatic negation." It has two words for not in it, which in Greek is an emphatic "no."

Once again, Paul seems to say in strong terms that sin should not typify the life of a believer. This is not a legal fiction, as Luther argued. In Hebrew, "walking" is the word for ethics (halakah). This is about how you live. After all, what are the fruit of the flesh? Galatians 5:19-21 tells us. The deeds of the flesh range from sexual immorality to idolatry.

As a side note, I believe part of our problem in appropriating Scriptures like these is that Western culture has become so introspective, particularly after the Romanticism of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Whereas Paul's understanding of something like envy was probably much more concrete than the "navel gazing" that we hyper-individualistic, introspective Westerners might think. Even Jesus' focus on the heart in Matthew 5 was not likely as hyper-introspective as we can be.

We remember that Paul thought he did pretty well at keeping the Jewish Law before he gave his allegiance to Jesus. In Philippians 3:6, he says that he was "blameless" when it came to the righteousness in the Law. [11] It is a reminder that, in the minds of most Jews at this time, keeping the Law to a standard acceptable by God was considered achievable. 

13. My puzzlement at the popular misinterpretation continues as we work our way through the last part of Romans 6 and into the first part of Romans 7. Paul repeatedly contrasts what we "used to be" before the Spirit and what we are "now." Take a look at these contrasts:

• "Thanks be to God because you used to be slaves of Sin... having been freed from Sin, you became slaves of righteousness" (6:18).
• "Just as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness leading to lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness" (6:19).
•  "When you were slaves of Sin, you were free to righteousness. But now, having been freed from Sin and having been enslaved to God, you have your fruit to holiness" (6:20, 22).
• "When we were in the flesh, the passions of sins (aroused through the Law) were working in our members results that bore fruit to death, but now ... we serve in the newness of the Spirit" (7:5-6).
• "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. God has accomplished the impossibility of the Law that was due to the weakness of our flesh...  so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us" (Rom. 8:2-4).

Notice how consistent Paul's repeated sense of sin, righteousness, and holiness is throughout Romans 6-8. We used to be slaves to Sin. Our "members" -- our bodies -- used to do things they shouldn't do. We were in the flesh.

But now, we are set free from the flesh. We are no longer slaves to sin. We are now slaves to righteousness. This is a result of the Spirit. Our members -- our bodies -- now produce fruit of righteousness and holiness in our lives.

14. We need to emphasize the point. Over and over throughout Romans 6-8, Paul repeatedly says that believers should no longer be slaves to the power of Sin. We should step back and point out why this was important to his overall argument in Romans. His opponents were accusing him of teaching "let us do evil that good may come" (Rom. 3:8). He had a bad reputation among Jews, as James reminds him in Acts 21:21 -- rumor was he was telling Jews not to keep the Law. They saw him teaching a sinning religion.

Accordingly, Romans 6-8 have as their primary rhetorical goal to show that his theology is not "pro-sin." Those who say that he encourages people not to keep the Law are dead wrong. "Do we nullify the Law through faith?" he poses in Romans 3:31. "Absolutely not!" he responds repeatedly. [12] 

Paul is absolutely against sin. That is his point in these chapters. In that sense, the popular interpretation of Romans 7 is diametrically opposed to Paul's fundamental purpose in this section.

15. With this overwhelming context in mind, let's finally turn to Romans 7:7-25. In these verses, most Pauline scholars believe that Paul is picturing the situation of someone who wants to keep the Law but does not have the power of the Spirit in order to do it. [13] Let's track his train of thought.

7:14 -- "The Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly (carnal), having been sold under Sin." We should immediately sense that something is up. Why? Because throughout the last part of Romans 6, he aligned being a slave to sin to the time before we came to be in Christ. 

In fact, in the verses right before this one, he has been talking about the beginnings of his spiritual awakening. "I wouldn't have known sin except for the Law" (7:7). "I was alive apart from the Law once" (7:9). He's telling his past story. [14]

So when he gets to 7:14, he is talking about our default human state starting out -- not his present condition. [15] He is not talking about the state of the person who has been baptized into Christ and has received the Spirit. He is telling the story of "everyman" in his or her spiritual pilgrimage. We all start off "in the flesh," a slave to Sin.

7:15, 19 -- "I don't know what I'm doing, for I don't do what I want to do but I do what I hate... I don't do the good I want to do, but I do the evil I don't want to do." As with 7:14, Paul is dramatizing the plight of the person who wants to do good but cannot actually do it because they are still a slave to sin. They have not yet been freed from the power of Sin and become a slave to righteousness.

A quick reminder of 6:17 is in order: "Thanks be to God because you used to be slaves of Sin but you obeyed from the heart the type of teaching to which you were committed. And having been set free from Sin, you were enslaved to righteousness." See where Paul has located himself in the storyline in the last part of Romans 7? It is before a person has come to be in Christ.

In fact, this same progression -- leading to the "Thanks be to God! -- takes place at the end of Romans 7. The struggle of the person who is a slave to Sin reaches a climax. 

7:22-25a -- "I delight in the Law of God in my inner person, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and making me a captive to the law of sin that is in my members. O wretched man am I! Who will rescue me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God! Through Jesus Christ our Lord!"  

The drama now reaches its peak. Note again. In Romans 6 Paul has implored the Romans not to let sin reign in their "members," in the actions of their bodies. If Paul were talking about his current experience in these verses, he would be in a lesser spiritual state than he is instructing the Romans to be.

No! This is the situation of the person who is still a slave to Sin. This is a person whose "members" are still instruments of unrighteousness. He gets to the same climax alluded to in Romans 6:17 where, "Thanks be to God!" the new believer is set free from the power of Sin. How does this happen? It happens "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Romans 8 follows directly on this victory! [16] "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of Sin and death!" We have now reached the resolution of the tension Paul portrayed in the last part of Romans 7. The situation of when we "used to" be slaves to Sin is resolved. We are now at the part of the story where we have been freed from Sin and are now slaves to righteousness.

Indeed, now we can keep the Law by the power of the Spirit! "God has accomplished the impossibility of the Law that was due to the weakness of our flesh...  so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us" (8:2-4). Sin no longer reigns in our mortal bodies. We no longer yield our members as instruments of unrighteouness. We are no longer sold under Sin. 

Indeed, we are no longer "in the flesh," for "those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (8:8). Now, we are "in the Spirit" because the Spirit of God dwells in us (8:9). Note that Paul expects this to be true of all believers. He is not describing what he thinks will take place after a second experience. In a perfect world, this situation would be true of everyone in Christ.

However, as we will see in the next chapter, the problem is that we often find Christians who are still to some degree in the flesh. In Romans 6-8, Paul gives the ideal and the way it should work. But leave it to the Corinthian church to mess things up! In the next chapter, we will see how it is often necessary for us as believers to move on to the spiritual from the carnal. Once again, we find a place to argue that most Christians can find themselves at a second moment of grace.

16. We shouldn't leave this chapter without a quick mention of Romans 12:1-2, a classic entire sanctification text. "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice -- holy, pleasing to God -- which is your appropriate worship. And stop being conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mindset so that you can verify what the will of God is -- the good and pleasing and complete will of God."

Do you see that this instruction alludes back to Romans 6? In Romans 6, Paul urged the Romans to present their "members" as instruments of righteousness leading to holiness. He told them not to let Sin reign in their mortal bodies. As he now starts the exhortation of Romans 12-15, he returns to that theme. Our bodies -- which were formerly slaves to sin -- must now be given completely to God. Our flesh is crucified (Gal. 2:20). We die to Sin and now live to God (Rom. 6:2). We are no longer conformed to this world.

Now, we walk in the Spirit and do not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). Our mindset is transformed and renewed. Note that Paul is not focusing on ideas or worldviews here. The transformed mind to which he refers is made clear in the chapters that follow. Far from ideology, he has in view a mindset of mutual submission and love of one another. Indeed, Romans 13:8 sums up what a renewed and transformed mind is -- it is a mindset of love toward others.

Now we can not only see clearly what the good, pleasing, and complete will of God is. We are now empowered to do it through the power of the Holy Spirit. God has made possible the impossible through the sin offering of Christ Jesus so that we can now fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law.

Of course, experience demonstrates that most Christians are not quite there at first. In theory -- in theology -- we all should be. But in practice, there is often a middle zone where a Christian is still fleshly or carnal. It is to this uncomfortable middle zone that we turn next.

[10] simul iustus et peccator, semper repentans.

[11] One of the most transformative articles on my interpretive journey with Paul was Krister Stendahl's "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," now in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Fortress, 1976). 

[12] The difference between Paul and some other Jewish believers is that he did not consider Israelite-specific laws to be binding on his Gentile converts. He also seemed to believe that the unity and mission of the church took precedence over keeping these Israelite-specific laws. Although he did not express it in this way, he was laying the seeds of what later Gentile Christians would think of as the "moral law."

[13] It's an ancient literary device known as prosopopoeia.

[14] I actually think he is telling the story of everyone, not his story specifically, but I don't want to distract from the main point here.

[15] I have heard individuals say something to the effect of, "He is using the present tense. Therefore, he is talking about his current state and what is happening in the present." I'll try to be kind. This statement reflects an utter lack of understanding of Greek tenses. They are not primarily about time. In fact, some argue they are not about time at all. In any case, the Greek present tense can be used in several ways (including to talk about the past). This argument doesn't even pass first-semester Greek.

[16] You might note that I have left off the final part of 7:25 for clarity's sake: "So then, I myself with my mind serve the Law of God but with my flesh the law of Sin." This sentence summarizes the pre-faith condition of the person who does not have the Spirit but wants to keep the Law. However, because this summary comes after the climax of Paul's train of thought, some mistakenly think it condemns us to never have victory over the power of Sin. Again, this interpretation completely undermines Paul's train of thought in these three chapters.
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Preface: A Sanctification Story 

1.1 Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)
1.2 Spirit-fillings in Acts (part 2)

2.1 What is holiness? (part 1)
2.2 What's love got to do with it? (part 2)
2.3 What is perfect love? (part 3)

3.1 What is sin? (part 1)
3.2 All sins are not the same. (part 2)

3.2 All sins are not the same. (part 2)

Preface: A Sanctification Story 

1.1 Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)

1.2 Spirit-fillings in Acts (part 2)

2.1 What is holiness? (part 1)
2.2 What's love got to do with it? (part 2)
2.3 What is perfect love? (part 3)

3.1 What is sin? (part 1)

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5. Now we get to an important practical question. To what extent can a believer live above sin? To what extent is it possible for a Christian not to sin?

The word on the street is that we cannot help but sin even after we come to Christ. Many Christians identify strongly with Romans 7:19 -- "I do not do the good I want to do, but I do the evil I don't want to do." Someone might quote 1 John 1:8 -- "If we say that we do not have sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Seems pretty straightforward, right?

Except both of these verses are completely taken out of context. We've ripped them from the text and made them say things they weren't saying. In context, both Paul and John turn out to have exactly the opposite theology we are making it sound like they had.

6. Let's start with 1 John 1:8. If John was really saying that Christians cannot help but sin, would he also say 1 John 3:9? [5] No one who has been born of God practices sin because his seed remains in him and he is not able to sin because he has been born from God. Wow! That seems to say something quite different from what many take 1 John 1:8 to say.

If we would only read a little further in 1 John 1 to 1:10, we would get a better sense of what 1:8 is really saying. "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." This is the perfect tense, as also in 3:9. The perfect tense has the sense of something that happened in the past and has continued to the present. So, I have been married twenty-five years speaks both of an event that happened in the past but that has since continued.

1 John 1:10 is saying the same thing that Romans 3:23 does -- all have sinned at some point in the past. If you say you have never sinned ever, you are making God a liar. Now note the wording of 1:8. "If we say we do not have sin." The verse does not say, "If we say we do not practice sin." In other words, 1 John 1:8 is simply saying the same thing that 1:10 says. Everyone needs Christ because everyone has sin from the past -- sin that is forgiven and cleansed when we come to faith.

The perfect tense in 3:9 then gives the situation of the person after they have been born of God. If we all have sin before we come to Christ, we all have God's seed in us afterward. That seed is the seed of love we have already seen. And the seed of love makes sin incompatible with our new life.

It is difficult for us to interpret 1 John because it's historical situation isn't entirely clear from the text itself. It only gives us hints. A good hypothesis is that John's church had recently undergone a split (2:19) in which a group of early Gnostics had left. They were "Docetists" who thought that Jesus had only seemed to be human. But to them, he had not truly come in the flesh (4:2).

In keeping with the fact that they did not believe Jesus came in the flesh, they denied the atoning work of Jesus on the cross. In effect, they denied their need for atonement, as if they did not have any sin that needed to be cleansed. 

This group also seems to have had some material means but to have withheld it from those in need in the community (3:17-18). So when 1 John talks about love, it is not referring to an emotion but to the concrete help that one person can give to another. This is the nature of God, and John indicates it should also be the nature of the church. 

If this hypothesis is correct, then the words of 1 John that can seem so abstract take on a much more concrete character. And the abstract theology that we are prone to take from the words ripped out of context becomes much clearer. John is not on "team sin."

7. 1 John has a number of interesting comments in relation to sin. For example, 1 John 2:1 gives us the bottom line: "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you might not sin. But if someone should sin, we have an Advocate with the Father -- Jesus Christ the righteous." 

From this verse it should be obvious that John is not teaching a sinless perfection. Perhaps we should go back to 3:9 and translate it, "No one who has been born of God continues to sin... He or she is not able to keep sinning." It is not an absolute statement. It is a statement of what should be normative for the Christian life. The Christian life should not be typified by sin, although it can happen, and we have a good Lawyer.

Even more intriguing are the comments John makes about sin as he closes this letter (or sermon). [6] In 1 John 5:16-17, John distinguishes between sins that are "to death" and sins that are "not to death." He says to pray for the restoration of someone who does not sin a "sin to death" But he doesn't suggest praying for someone who commits a sin to death. What could he be talking about?

A first observation is that there clearly are different levels of sin -- at least two. Another one of the common myths in the church today is that "All sin is sin." This is not the biblical view. Jesus, for example, talks about an unpardonable sin (Matt. 12:31; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10). He clearly considered this sin to be more serious than other sins. In John 19:11, Jesus says that those who handed him over to Pilate were guilty of a greater sin than Pilate was. 

Paul certainly does not treat all sins the same. While he chastises the Corinthians for many sinful behaviors, he only tells them to expel the man sleeping with his father's wife (1 Cor. 5:1-5). Some sins -- if continued -- imply that you will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:10), but others seem more easily forgiven (1 Cor. 11:18).

8. So where did this popular myth come from when it is so obviously not a feature of Old or New Testament theology? [7] There are likely some historical forces at work here. But perhaps some naturally think this way because we know that "all have sinned" before coming to Christ, and many believe in eternal security after you come to Christ, where "eternal security" means that you will certainly be saved after you come to Christ no matter what you do.

If your actions after Christ don't affect your spiritual destiny, and your actions before you come to Christ all have the same consequence, then you could see how someone might naturally conclude that "all sin is sin." However, while it is true that all sins have the same basic consequence before you come to Christ. The view that once you are saved, you are "always saved" is not biblical.

We can simply bring out the "big guns" of Hebrews: "If we continue to sin intentionally after we have received a knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is remaining" (10:26). Similarly, "If they fall away, it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the word of God and the powers of the coming age, to be renewed to repentance. After all, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and holding him up to disgrace" (6:4-6).

This concept seems similar to what we are reading in 1 John 5. There is a point where sin severs a person from God, Christ, and salvation. It is a "sin to death." Where is that line? God knows. From everything we have said so far, it is a matter of our hearts leaving God, not a matter of some action in itself. It is not a matter of someone "taking us out of God's hand" (John 10:28-29). It is a matter of us walking away from God with our hearts.  

9. The holiness movement had an opposite extreme. I call it the "one sin you're out" perspective. If you said a curse word and got hit by a train before you could repent, you were hell bound. Some have jokingly called this "eternal insecurity." It is not biblical either.

The balanced perspective of the New Testament would seem to be something like the following. Before we come to Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, we cannot help but sin. The result is that all have sinned, and the wages of sin are death (Rom. 6:23).

After we come to Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, intentional sin should not be normative for the believer. God's seed is in us, we should love one another as the norm. Sin is not falling short of absolute perfection. Mistakes are not sins in the sense of doing wrong although we can unintentionally wrong others. "Infirmities" of our mind are not sins. Sin is intentionally doing what is contrary to our allegiance to Christ or intentionally not doing what we know faith would have us do.

If we sin, we ask Christ for forgiveness, and his blood atones for our sins. However, we can walk away from God. Our hearts can abandon God. As Paul says, we can become "disqualified" because we stop running the race (1 Cor. 9:27). It's not a matter of a single sin act, although one can imagine a choice against God so definitive that it would sever the relationship at once.

This would seem to be 1 John's "sin to death" and Hebrews "falling away."

I like to think of it in relational terms. A single act rarely breaks a relationship, although some acts are so severe they might conceivably do so. If you forget your anniversary, thou hast sinned, and atonement must be made. But it probably doesn't mean divorce. Every sin damages our relationship with God, but a single sin is unlikely to sever our relationship with him.

Can you come back after you have crossed back to death? The church long ago concluded that you could. [8] The Parable of the Prodigal Son would seem to say so (Luke 15). We can certainly make a logical argument for potential return. If it is the Holy Spirit that draws us to Christ, then anyone who genuinely desires to repent can because the Holy Spirit is saying so. God can work out the details. [9] 

Those who have committed a sin to death will never truly repent.

10. We should look at James 2:10 before we move on to Romans 6-8. On the surface, someone might think it teaches that "all sin is sin." "Whoever keeps the whole Law but fails at one point has become guilty of all." Again, if we rip this verse from its context, we might think it is equating all sins.

The verse is actually saying that we can't make excuses for ourselves by saying, "I'm a pretty good person. I keep almost all the Law except for x." In the context of James 2, it probably refers to a wealthy person who keeps most of the Law but dishonors the poor (2:6). 

The bottom line is that the verse is not saying that all sins are equal. It is saying that all righteousness is important. Love must be complete, not partial. If we fail to love one group, we aren't off the hook just because we do pretty well at loving another...

[5] I will refer to the author of 1 John as "John the elder" even though 1 John is technically anonymous. The style and theology is similar to 2 and 3 John, in which the author merely refers to himself as "the elder." 

[6] 1 John does not have the typical features of a letter. It seems more to me like a homily. 

[7] In the Old Testament, we have already seen the sharp distinction between unintentional sins and intentional sins. The sacrificial system was primarily targeted at the cleansing of unintentional sins (Num. 15:27-31).

[8] In the Novatian controversy of the 200s, it was determined that Christians who had renounced Christ under persecution could be restored.

[9] I often think of Schrödinger's cat at this point. You seem to have left the faith. You never come back. You committed a sin to death. You seem to have left the faith. You come back. You apparently didn't commit a sin to death. How do we know whether you have committed a sin to death? Only when we open the box at the end of your life and see whether the Spirit has let you repent.

3.1 What is sin? (part 1)

Preface: A Sanctification Story 

1.1 Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)

1.2 Spirit-fillings in Acts (part 2)
2.1 What is holiness? (part 1)
2.2 What's love got to do with it? (part 2)
2.3 What is perfect love? (part 3)

________________

1. You hear many popular notions about sin among Christians that don't hold up to good exegesis of the Scriptures. Ironically, these "myths" about sin have infected a lot of Wesleyans as well. However, some of the exegetical strengths of the Wesleyan tradition lie in its interpretations of key passages relating to sin in the New Testament.

One common myth is that sin means "to miss the mark" in the sense of falling short of absolute perfection. Suffice it to say, the Bible never says this. In older Greek, the word hamartano could mean to wander or err -- to "go wrong" as it were. So you could talk about an arrow "erring" from its target as in Judges 20:16 in the Greek Old Testament. [1]

But the New Testament use of the word almost always involves a conscious moral choice. [2] In general, it doesn't think of sin as missing a target, nor does it treat sin for a believer as an unavoidable event. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has taken you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to resist. But with the temptation he will make also a way to escape so it is possible for you to bear it."

2. Occasionally, someone might point to Romans 3:23 as an instance of "missing the mark." For example, the New Living Translation (NLT) renders this verse, "Everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard." But this translation almost certainly misses the mark in what the verse means. 

A more accurate translation is, "All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God." The glory of God is that which God created Adam and humanity to have in the creation (Ps. 8:5; Heb. 2:7). Then humanity lost this glory when Adam sinned (Rom. 3:23). But Christ makes it possible for us to regain this glory when Christ returns (Rom. 5:2, 8:18; Heb. 2:9-10). The more we understand Paul's theology of glory, the more we will see the depth of this verse's meaning.

What Romans 3:23 is saying is that, because of our sin, we have all lost the glory that God created humanity to have. But it is not formulating sin in terms of failing to keep some divine standard -- let alone an absolute one. The focus of sin in the New Testament is not the standard (legal) but the intentionality (moral).

2. There are two basic senses of sin -- in terms of sin acts -- in the New Testament: to do wrong and to wrong (someone). In the previous chapter, we argued that if love is the ultimate standard of doing what God requires, then the most basic definition of sin ultimately refers to any choice that is contrary to love.

Can we sin unintentionally? Yes, although this is not the focus of the New Testament. Unintentional wrongdoing was far more significant in the theology of the Old Testament. [3] The sin offerings of Leviticus 4 focus on unintentional "sins" as well as matters that might make a person unclean. The same is true of the guilt offerings of Leviticus 5.

Why? Because the sacrificial system wasn't designed as much for intentional wrongdoing, which more frequently led to exile or death. Numbers 15 draws a sharp distinction between atonement for unintentional sins and sins "with a high hand," for which there was far less sacrificial provision for atonement. Hebrews 9:7 echoes this fact when it says that the Levitical system atoned for "sins committed in ignorance.

It is possible to sin unintentionally because we can harm someone else without intending to do so. We can wrong someone intentionally or unintentionally. In Matthew 18:21, Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone if they "sin against" him. He seems to have intentional wrongdoing in mind here, but we can imagine that a person might wrong someone unintentionally (for example, running over someone's cat).

In terms of ethics, sins committed in ignorance tend to be "consequentialist" sins -- sins that relate to the consequences or effects of our choices.

3. However, in most instances, the New Testament has an intentional act of wrongdoing in mind when it talks about sin. All such acts of sin are rooted in our minds and in our choices -- in our intentions. Wesley defined sin "properly so called" as a "willful transgression against a known law of God." [4] In this definition, he recognized the central role of the will in the type of sin with which God is most concerned.

Matthew 5 gets at the roots of sin when Jesus contrasts those in his day who focused on external standards and rules in their understanding of sin rather than on the heart from which our actions flow. A person might not violate the rule not to murder but violate it in one's heart with hate. A person might keep the letter of the Law with regard to adultery but violate it in their heart.

In both cases, one has sinned because his or her intentions are wrong and do not reflect a heart of love. Sin is thus not focused so much on the violation of a rule. Its primary nature is not legal but a matter of intent. As Jesus says in Mark 7:21, the heart is the seat of sin not the external violation of rules.

When we think of sin primarily as missing the mark -- especially falling short of absolute perfection -- we are lowering its sense. This is a less morally mature understanding of sin and, indeed, a picture of a less mature God who is more focused on rules than intentions. Jesus and the New Testament give a deeper sense of sin that gets at the heart rather than external legalism.

4. Just to make the point even clearer, let's look at several verses in the New Testament that reinforce this picture of the nature of sin acts (we will get to the question of a sin nature soon enough). James 4:17 indicates that if a person knows the good that he or she should do but does not do it, they are sinning. This type of sin is called a sin of omission. A sin of omission is when we do not do something we know we should as opposed to a sin of commission when we do something we should not.

But notice that intentionality is involved. We know what we should do but we choose not to do it.

Romans 14:23 gives us one of the most insightful pictures of sin in the entirety of the Bible. Paul is discussing matters on which Christians disagree such as whether one should eat meat that has been sacrificed to an idol or observe the Jewish Sabbath. In the end, he indicates that it comes down to faith. 

One person acts from a heart of faith and keeps the Jewish Sabbath. Another person acts from faith and gives all days to the Lord equally without setting the Sabbath aside. Both are acting righteously and neither is sinning (Rom. 14:5-8).

There is a key truth that comes from this insight. Two people can do exactly the same thing and the one be sinning while the other is not sinning. What makes the difference is not the act itself but the person's intentionality toward the act. Romans 14:23 thus makes it particularly clear that the nature of sin is in one's intention rather than in one's action per se.

Some might think that 1 John 3:4 has a legal approach to sin: "The one who practices sin also practices lawlessness because sin is lawlessness." But what does John have in mind? The chapter goes on to describe such sinning in terms of those who do not love their Christian brothers and sisters. They sin by not meeting the needs of others when they have the resources to do so (1 John 3:11, 17). 

And so, far from some legal sense of sin and lawlessness, 1 John also has a love-focused understanding of sin. John turns out to have a very concrete sense of wrongdoing in mind -- concrete sins of omission by not helping others when one knows he or she should. Like Jesus and Peter, John sees love as the essence of Law-keeping. Indeed, it is he who tells us that God's nature is love (1 John 4:7-8) and that the one born of God cannot sin because God's seed remains in him or her (1 John 3:9). 

What then is lawlessness here? It is an attitude that is contrary to the love of our neighbor. Such an unloving attitude toward others is a lawless attitude. It is contrary to the very essence of the Law.

[1] Although even here, it is a slightly different word, diamartano.

[2] There are some exceptions. Hebrews 9:7 speaks of old covenant sins as "sins committed in ignorance. Acts 3:17, 17:30; 1 Timothy 1:13 all speak of periods of ignorance that preceded faith in Christ. Luke 12:48 mentions servants who aren't ready for the Lord's return unintentionally. 

[3] The focus of sin in the Old Testament also often had a corporate dimension that we tend to miss because of our individualist culture.

[4] We find references to "sin properly so called" in Wesley's sermon, "The Scripture Way of Salvation" as well as in a letter he wrote in 1772 to a Mrs. Elizabeth Bennis.

"Sin and Soteriology in Romans," Martinus de Boer

Nijay is Twitter-shaming me to finish blogging through the book. But you don't understand. Five more books have come in the mail!!!

1. I have never met Martinus de Boer but was reminded that his monograph Defeat of Death has been sitting on my shelf for over twenty years. I bought it back when I had ideas. I really like this chapter of the book Sin and Its Remedy in Paul, edited by Nijay Gupta and John Goodrich. It's another snack length chapter of 19 pages. It goes well with a mid-afternoon apple (or half-banana if you don't finish it the first afternoon).

While reading, I thought a couple times of Krister Stendahl's seminal piece, "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." It was one of those rare, "YES! Of course!" moments in my thought history. [1] So Sin is a power that Paul does not consider intrinsic to a human being. It is "not to be identified with the human self" (17). Yes! Similarly, repentance is not a major category of Paul's thought as it has come down to us (21n.27). Yes!

I also thought of Stendahl when de Boer spoke of weak flesh as a morally neutral description (28). Paul is not a Gnostic. He does not believe flesh is evil. It's just putty in Sin's hands.

2. I liked so much in this chapter that I did a side-search to see if de Boer was Methodist. Sin is a power... for sure. But "Sin does not exist apart from sinning." Yes! Down with Simon Gathercole (sorry Simon). 

Interesting synthesis on the primal sin: "Adam functions both as a corporate personality whose trespass determines all subsequent human destiny... and as the paradigmatic human being whose sinful deed sets the pattern for his descendants" who repeat his sin (24).

Interesting thoughts on a distinction between "trespass" and "transgression." As I understand him, de Boer links "transgression" to violation of a known Mosaic law. But there are "trespasses" or "fallings away" from Adam to Moses that lead to death. Interesting explanation for the puzzling Romans 5:13-14.

I liked this sentence: newness of life is "a participation in Christ's resurrection life, not just in the future but also now, and is characterized by righteousness" (30).

3. I put a few question marks in the margin. Is the essence of death separation from God? (20) Is sin the failure to acknowledge God? (23). Do humans in principle still have the ability not to sin? (27) 

[1] Don't you love it when someone either puts your thoughts so crisply or opens up a new vista such that your reaction is, "How could I not have seen this before??? It's so obvious! Wittgenstein had this effect on me once upon a time. Stendahl as well.

Sin and Its Remedy in Paul, Nijay Gupta & John Goodrich, eds

So many books, so little time. Having tasted a few chapters of Scripture and Its Interpretation, Nijay Gupta's new edited volume arrives on Sin and Its Remedy in Paul. Since I am quite fond of sin, I feel compelled to read several chapters until the next book screaming at me arrives. Start the stop watch.

Nijay writes the first chapter: "Sin in Context: ἁμαρτία in Greco-Roman and Jewish Literature." I both love and hate the fact that the publisher has apparently forced them to write really short chapters. Nevertheless, he packs a wallop in 13 pages--bite size for an afternoon intermission.

He starts with secular literature: Aristotle, Herodotus, Polybius, Strabo, Plutarch, Arrian. Should I be disturbed that he likes Polybius, the Debbie-downer, the most? The primary take-aways from this section are two. First, the word has no particular religious connotations. Second, "most often the terminology pertains to any sort of error, mistake, or offense, with no assumption about motive" (6). It isn't very common in Greco-Roman literature, only used some 200 times in the extant literature we have 

As it turns out, this background is not particularly helpful for understanding the word group in the New Testament, in my opinion. By the way, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics book 5 is interesting on this score. Aristotle has three categories of injury: 1) atychema, accidental injury or harm, 2) hamartema or unintentional offense, and 3) adikema, harmful intent.

The second second section is on Jewish literature. He prefaces with the Hebrew Bible, drawing heavily on Joseph Lam (2016). Transgression metaphors in the HB include burden, debt, path, and stain. Then Mark Boda (2009) considers sin in the Old Testament a "violation of the command of God" (7). But sin is not primarily a legal category in the OT but a religious category.

Finally, Nijay makes his way through Jewish intertestamental literature: Tobit, 1 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Psalms of Solomon, Twelve Patriarchs, Josephus, Philo. A little more on the intentional side in this sweep, but it could still be used of unintentional harming. Philo is interesting because he sounds a little like Matthew 5 and acts of intent before action.

Bottom line--we'll just have to let the NT speak for itself. None of this background is determinative for how the NT uses the word group.   

4.5 Sin in the New Testament

See the bottom for previous posts.

4.4 Sin in the New Testament

4.4.1 Defining Sin

• The standard for right is to love God and love neighbor (Matt. 22:37-40; Rom. 13:8-10). 
• Therefore, a sin is contrary either to love of God or neighbor. This constitutes wrongdoing (1 John 5:17) and lawlessness (1 John 3:4)
• In the New Testament, sin is (predominantly) an act of will (Jas 1:13-14).
• Temptation is thus not sin (cf. Jesus; Heb. 4:15).
• Sin is a matter of the heart (volition) far more than the act itself (Mark 7:18-23; Matt. 5:27-28)
• Feelings are not sin, although they can be a source of temptation (cf. Eph. 4:26).
• Sin is thus any act of the will that either is out of faith with God or contrary to love of neighbor/enemy. Cf. Rom. 14:23
• There are sins of commission and sins of omission (cf. Jas. 4:17).
• Sin is not imperfection. Mistakes are not intrinsically sinful (although they can reflect prior choices).
• Unintentional sin should probably remain a category, referring to acts that are unintentionally unloving toward others, including God.

4.4.2 Sin as a Power

• The human body, skin, "flesh" is not intrinsically sinful (contra Gnostics) Cf. Mark 14:13
• Because of Adam, human flesh and the creation are under the power of Sin (Rom. 7:14-18).
• Sin acts are acts of the will. The power of Sin is a power that drives us to sin (sometimes called sin principle or sin nature, although this is really Augustine rather than Paul)
• Romans 6-8 does not teach that sin should reign in a believer's life--more to come, but cf. Rom. 7:5

4.4.3 Sins to Death

• 1 John 5:16-17 (where the Catholic Church gets mortal and venial sins)
• Explain 1 John 1:8-10 and 3:9. "Having" sin is not doing sin but is 1 John's equivalent of "all have sinned." 3:9 should be given the present tense connotation of "be sinning" or "continue to sin."
• The unpardonable sin of Matthew 12:31-32 (since the HS brings repentance, no one who is drawn to repent has committed such a sin).
• Hebrews 6:4-6; 10:26; 12:16-17. Parable of the Prodigal Son is the fulcrum text on this question. Schrodinger's backslider

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation

4.1-3 Sin and the Fall

4.4 Sin in the Old Testament

"All Sin is Sin."

Not.

As unified as our theology and Bible professors are against this popular idea, our culture assumes it. Yesterday in my biblical theology class, we were trying to tease out the true from the false in this popular sentiment.

What is true?

• Before we come to Christ, you might say that all sins put us in need of Christ's atonement. "All sin is sin" in the sense that "all have sinned and lack the glory of God."
• James 2:10: "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it." This verse might be the closest biblical statement to the popular sentiment. James' point is that "not killing" doesn't excuse you from "committing adultery." God expects us to keep the whole (moral) law, not just part of it. And yes, James thinks it is possible to do so.
• We are not to judge others or to think ourselves more spiritual than others. We can't pump ourselves up by saying, "My sins aren't as bad as yours."
• It's true that Matthew 5 makes the intention to kill a sin, not only the act of killing.

What is not true?

• I can understand how someone with a weak sense of eternal security might apply the first idea above to the time after coming to Christ. If I am eternally secure no matter what I do, then you might say, "All sin is sin." But of course the Bible doesn't teach this, and those with a deep sense of eternal security would question your salvation if you became a serial killer.
• The NT certainly distinguishes between the seriousness of sins. Paul chastises the Corinthians for many sins, but he only delivers one of them over to Satan in 1 Corinthians 5. 
• 1 John 5 even distinguishes between sins that lead to death and sins that don't lead to death.
• If you understand sin in terms of intentionality, which the NT does, then the intensity of the sin relates to the intentionality of the sin. If I forget Valentines Day, I have sinned against my wife. But I can think of much worse ways to sin against my wife than that. In the same way, apostasy to where you burn Christians at the stake is surely a more serious sin than forgetting to pray one day.
• Historically, Christians have always distinguished intensity of sins. This recent, "All sin is sin" fad is in fact a recent fad.

E6. There is such a thing as corporate and structural sin.

Now, for real, the sixth and final post in the third section of theology in bullet points on the nature of evil.
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1.There is such a thing as corporate sin and sin that is perpetuated by the structures of society. These are sometimes difficult concepts within Western culture. Western culture tends to be individualistic in orientation, and our system of justice does not hold me responsible for the actions of those with whom I am associated.

This is neither the default of the human animal nor the majority sentiment of human culture in history. Homo sapiens is a herd animal. We live and travel in tribes, and we have tended to hold entire tribes and families guilty for the actions of single individuals within those tribes.

We are not surprised to find this dynamic in the stories of the Bible as well. When Achan sins in Joshua, all of Israel loses its battle with Ai. Then, in order to cleanse itself, Achan's whole family--even his animals--are stoned to death. The elimination of his whole family accomplishes a kind of atonement, and Israel is thereby collectively purged of its guilt.

By far the most striking example of this "collectivist" dynamic has to do with the Babylonian captivity. There is a layer of texts in the Old Testament that indicate that the generation of Israel that went into captivity was not the cause of the captivity. In 2 Kings, it was the sin of Manasseh--who died peacefully of old age in bed--who ensured Israel's destruction, even though the righteousness of Josiah followed him (2 Kings 23:25-27).

Both prophets and psalmist wrestled with this collective punishment for the sins of a previous generation, indeed, a previous king according to 2 Kings. Both Ezekiel 18 and Jeremiah 31 record a saying that circulated in Israel, "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." One of the psalmists does not even blame the sin of a previous generation: "All this came upon us, though we had not forgotten you; we had not been false to your covenant" (Ps. 44:17-19).

Jeremiah 31 associates a new dispensation with a new covenant God was going to make with Israel: "everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge" (31:30). The idea that we all stand as individuals before God is thus not just an idea of Western culture. It is an important strand within the biblical texts as well. So Paul may invoke Adam to explain the current situation of humanity (collective guilt) but his theology does so in order to make salvation available to every individual.

2. It is no surprise, therefore, that we tend to think more today in terms of the collective consequences of the sins of others than in terms of collective guilt. This is not a bad thing. Indeed, in the flow of biblical revelation, the strand that should prevail is the one that affirms with Ezekiel 18:4: "The one who sins is the one who will die." [1] We should not model our behaviors toward others on the basis of the groups to which they belong.

There have been and no doubt are Christian groups that would use a sense of collectivist guilt in Scripture as a pretense for prejudice against other groups. Certainly Jews have been persecuted by Christians in the past under such a pretense. And today many American Christians would no doubt be tempted to want to destroy all Muslims under a similar assumption.

The New Testament principle of "neither Jew nor Greek" in Galatians 3:28 cuts across all group culture. Revelation 7:9 suggests that people "of every nation, tribe, people and language" will be part of the kingdom of God. The trajectory of the kingdom thus trumps any sense of collective identity based on racial or ethnic determinants. We have a new family, a new tribe as Christians, and the true Church is an "invisible" Church insofar as our ability to determine who is in it.

Nevertheless, it is clear that there are collective consequences to the sins of our groups. The "sins of my parents," when we speak of such things as drug use or unwise actions during pregnancy, can have a direct effect on the health and soundness of the child. If my father gambles away all the resources of my family, then I may very well suffer in consequence. There were Germans who hated Hitler and still died in the Allied bombings.

We might say that the notion of collective guilt, insofar as it is legitimately considered, is a hyperbolic way of speaking of collective consequence, except in the case of collective sin mentioned below.

3. However, there is such a thing as collective sin. Wrongdoing is compounded in the hands of a gang or a subculture or a tribe or a culture. The sin of one can be amplified when many are doing it together. The collective sin of the Nazis was far worse than the sin of Hitler himself or any one Nazi. We begin to enter the territory of the atrocity.

We can also speak of individuals being "complicit" in the sins of others or in the sins of their group. This is a kind of sin of omission, a sin by what one doesn't do rather than by what one does do. It is a sin of silence while others do wrong around you. Is there a time to die in protest of the wrongdoing of the surrounding culture?

The story of Kitty Genovese is now a reference point in American law for those who standby and do nothing while a crime is being committed. [2] An American rightly can be found guilty of not helping a person when the crime is serious and it would have been easy enough to help. This is the enactment in law of James 4:17: "If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them."

Collective sin is thus the wrongdoing perpetuated by a group of people, including those who do nothing when they could. As with individual sin, collective sin can be intentional or unintentional. A group can harm another unintentionally, especially out of ignorance. There is a kind of collective guilt that goes along with collective sin, including collective sin that is unintentional.

4. A society can not only sin corporately, but it can set up or allow structures to exist that perpetuate collective sin. Slavery as we conceive it today is a societal institution that perpetuates collective sin structurally. American slavery was a system of more or less permanent domination that is a classic example of "structural sin."

Any system that perpetuates injustice toward a particular segment of society is "structurally sinful." The Jim Crow laws are another good example of structural sin, where whites in America enacted laws that systemically oppressed another group. Any economic system that perpetuates poverty is structurally sinful. [3] Any system that has a "glass ceiling" for women of equal giftedness is a structurally sinful system.

If the fundamental criterion of sin toward others is that which does not love neighbor, then any structuring of society that is unloving toward specific individuals, not on the basis of their choices but on the basis of their grouping, is structurally sinful.

There is such a thing as corporate sin, and the structures of society can also be "sinful" in the sense that they wrong the individuals in that society.

[1] I suspect that the greatest deficiency with the current default neo-evangelical approach to the Bible is that it tends to apply individual passages of Scripture directly to today without taking into account the entirety of Scripture, its overall council. It does not adequately take into account the diversity of the Bible or the way in which God has accommodated his message to particular times and places.

[2] This woman was mugged and murdered outside an apartment complex. The murderer came at her three times and stopped the first two times when lights in the apartment building came on. But no one called the police.

[3] It is significant that the perpetuation of poverty is not merely a question of "Republican versus Democrat." You could argue that the welfare system in America, because of the way it functions, actually perpetuates poverty and dependence. This argument seems every bit as sound as the nineteenth century argument that unbridled capitalism tends to make a few very wealthy while taking advantage of the majority who do the work.

In the future, we may have to consider a system where automation controlled by artificial intelligence eliminates the need for most human workers and, thus, creates a system where the owners of the automation accumulate wealth while the masses have no economic means. This is a question of structural sin we may have to face in the days ahead.

E5. All have sinned.

Now the fifth and final post in the third section of theology in bullet points on the nature of evil.
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"All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23, my translation).

1. Wesleyans would distinguish two areas in which we might consider sin. The previous entry discussed the one, what we might call a "sin nature." We argued in the previous entry, however, that it would be more Pauline to speak of a Sin power that exists over the world. Humans have a propensity to sin because our flesh is weak and Adam's sin brought Sin as a power over the world.

This Sin power is a consequence of Adam's sin in traditional theology. But we are not judged for Adam's sin, since we did not commit it. We merely experience the consequences of it, serious as they are. We all commit sin acts because our default state is one of susceptibility to sin. We are guilty because we do the same acts Adam did, not because we have inherited guilt from him. [1]

The theory of evolution presents some problems for this traditional analysis. So many Christians who object to evolution do so on the basis of Genesis 1. But Genesis 1 is a poetic presentation of creation in dialog with other ancient creation stories. It is probably an incorrect reading of it in the first place to think it is in dialog with such theories at all.

The question of evil is by far the greatest theological problem in relation to evolution. If a person believes that Adam was a literal person at the end of a long evolutionary process, who still literally sinned and brought the power of Sin into the world, the greatest theological question has to do with the nature of the world before Adam. A previous article brainstormed a little in relation to this question. Basically, death might be seen more along the lines of Genesis 3 itself, where eternal life was apparently something that would have been added to Adam rather than something taken away.

Presumably one might interpret the weakness of human flesh in a similar way. Perhaps one could say that the power to overcome self-interest was always something the Spirit needed to provide for humanity. One might say that Adam's sin prevented the Spirit from doing something he was going to do rather than taking away something humanity intrinsically had before.

The idea that the Adam story was a poetic expression of the human propensity to sin, but that he was not a literal person, presents our theology of sin (our "hamartiology") with the greatest challenge. Now we would have to suggest that the human propensity to sin was somehow part of the fundamental set up, apart from Satan and his angels. This is no problem for the hyper-Calvinist, who thinks God has directly commanded every sin anyone has ever committed anyway.

For the Wesleyan-Arminian it is more difficult. Perhaps we would have to say that God created us all with an impulse to do that which is in our own self-interest. This impulse would be a good impulse in many respects, because it would motivate us to self-preservation. It would motivate us toward excellence. We would have been created to walk with God and thereby to receive the moment by moment power not to violate him or others in our self-interest.

The fundamental problem of Sin would then come from our default separation from God and from his power to do the good, not from something that changed in our nature. Further, the collective separation of humanity would then exacerbate our propensity toward self-interest over God and others even more. The fundamental dynamic of salvation then becomes one of reconciliation and re-empowerment.

Whatever the source, it is clear that "human nature" currently has a propensity to act in self-interest over and against God and others. We can call this, somewhat figuratively, our "sin nature."

2. As a result of our sin nature, we commit "sin acts." We have hopefully begun to get some sense of what sin is in the articles that precede. Sin "properly so called" is an intentional act of mind or body that is contrary to the love of God or the love of others. We know the good we ought to do and we intentionally do not do it (Jas. 4:17) or we know we shouldn't do bad and we intentionally do it anyway.

We can, of course, wrong God or others without intending to do so. We can harm another human being by accident. We can try to take over God's rightful authority without thinking about it. True, there are those who would rationalize their behavior and their intentions. There is a human tendency to say, "I didn't know" or "I didn't intend" or "It was an accident" when in fact we are guilty of intent.

God is not fooled. The fact that we cannot always tell a person's true motives--indeed, the fact that we are prone to self-deception--does not negate the fundamental definitions. God knows, and that is all that matters. God is the one who can divide soul and spirit, who can judge the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12).

Sin is thus not to fall short of absolute perfection. It is defined in contrast to God's true standard in the New Testament--love of God and neighbor. And it is judged primarily in terms of intention. There is such a thing as unintentional sin. But our moral culpability before God is overwhelmingly a matter of intentional sin. In our previous article, we argued that self-interest stands at the heart of most if not all sin.

There are thus also degrees of sin. The greater our intention to act contrary to God and others, the greater the sin.

3. All humans act in their own self-interest. Even self-deprecation is a twisted cry for less pain. Even suicide is an act meant to relieve oneself of life's burdens. We are tempted to sin when our self-interest conflicts with the rightful interests of God and others.

There is a kind of depravity that gets pleasure out of the pain of others. This, and full defiance of God, are the most atrocious of sins because they are most in violation of God and others. These highest of high handed sins approach the domain of what is often called the unpardonable sin.

Theologically, we might rather say that those who commit such sins have entered a territory of evil from which they will never return. Theologically, it is not that God would not forgive them if they repented. It is that they are incapable of repentance. God has long withdrawn his offer of empowerment for repentance because they have scorned and rejected it. There is a special category of justice for such deprivation.

All have sinned. We have all, at some point or another in our lives, crossed the line between what is ours and what is God's or what is our due to others as people created in the image of God. We have lost the glory God intended us to have. We have instead become shameful. We stand separated from God and the power to move beyond our self-interest.

All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God.

[1] This is somewhat of a departure from the traditional way of speaking of inherited guilt. But it is both truer to Paul and more coherent theologically.

1 John on Sin

A few years ago, I wrote a little piece on 1 John and sin. I don't think I have it uploaded anywhere, but in the past Chris Bounds used to use it in some of his theology classes, I believe. I've heard he is actually writing a book on sin for Wesleyan Publishing House.

1 John used to be a strange book to me. I always felt like there was something concrete hiding behind the incredibly vague, circular, general, and abstract comments that fill it. Rightly or wrongly, I have begun to fill in the "novel" that is reconstructing the meaning of a book like this one. Here is my section called, "Don't Sin," in the book I'm writing on Hebrews, the General Letters, and Revelation.
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1 John’s comments on sin are not just the timeless musings of a theologian. There is a concreteness hiding behind them. We can now begin to fill in more concretely what John had in mind when he said things like, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (1:8).

First, if the Docetists who left his community did not believe Jesus had come in the flesh, then they were nullifying his sacrificial death. They were eliminating the very mechanism whereby they could be forgiven. 1 John was likely written several decades after the temple was destroyed. We hear no trace in this letter of the temple as a means of atonement.

What may have been a somewhat new thought at the time of Hebrews was presumably well accepted by the time of 1 John. "If anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (2:1-2).

But if someone did not believe that Jesus had come in the flesh (4:2), if someone did not believe that Jesus was even the Messiah (2:22), that person had no chance of forgiveness. Such a person has cut off the only means whereby their sins can be atoned.

Their denial may have been both theoretical and concrete. The concrete denial may have gone something like this: "We haven't wronged you. You are in the wrong." Obviously John did not agree. They had been hateful toward their brothers. They had wronged their brothers and sisters.

"All wrongdoing is sin" (5:17). Even more God's fundamental command is that we love one another and those who left violated this "law" on the highest level. "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness" (3:4).

"No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God" (3:9). This statement, ripped from its context as a memory verse, may miss John's concrete point. John's point is surely that we must eventually question whether those who concretely continue to live in a way that harms others, especially Christian brothers and sisters, is truly born of God.

We remember what James said about the person who looks at himself in the mirror and then forgets what he looks like (Jas. 1:23). God's word, his seed, is planted in you (Jas. 1:22). It should bear a certain kind of fruit (cf. Gal. 5:22-26). If it doesn't, there is something wrong, no matter what creeds we confess or prayers we have prayed.

On a theoretical level, to say that Jesus had not come in the flesh was to say you did not need his sacrifice. Perhaps the departed Gnostics did not consider the deeds of their bodies to be actions for which they were responsible. Perhaps they thought their spirits would be fine because they were not to blame for the things done with their bodies? Perhaps they said that they--the real them--had not sinned?

They certainly would have denied doing wrong to John's community. "We have not sinned." Are these the arguments that stand behind 1 John 1:8 and 1:10? "If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us" (1:10). The Greek perfect tense here suggests that John is speaking of someone who would deny ever having done wrong.

The perfect tense has the sense of something that is completed in the past, whose results have continued to the present. "I have been married sixteen years" means that I became married in a completed sense sixteen years ago and I remain married. So John speaks of someone who would say I have never, ever sinned such that I would ever need Christ to atone for my sins.

Once we have clarified what John is saying, we can understand 1 John 1:8. Many people read this verse to say that if we deny sinning all the time, we are deceiving ourselves. But this is not what John says. John is speaking of someone who denies "having" sin, such as the person in 1:10. He is saying the same thing. If we deny needing Christ's atonement, if we deny that we have ever sinned in the past such that we "have" sin from the past that needs Christ's cleansing, we are deceiving ourselves.

Again, John is not writing a theology textbook. He has the concrete situation of his community in mind. Those who left denied their need for Christ's atonement. They thought that Christ had only come "by water only" at his baptism. But Jesus had come "by water and blood" (5:6). Christ had not, as the early teacher Cerinthus had taught, just taken possession of Jesus' body at his baptism, only to leave before the crucifixion. [1]

We can thus reconcile 1 John 1:8 with 3:9. "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves," yet "No one who is born of God will continue to sin." The second quote speaks of the ongoing way a believer lives. The first has to do with someone who would deny even needing Christ's atonement.

The bottom line, however, is in 2:1: "I write this to you so that you will not sin," where John fundamentally defines sin in terms of not loving others in a very concrete way. It is also safe to say that John considers opposition to the truth about Christ as sin. "There is a sin that leads to death," John says (5:13). Presumably he believed that those who left had committed it. Like the fate about which Hebrews warned its audience, John probably does not hold out much hope for those who have left and turned away from Christ.

But there is still hope for others in the community. "There is sin that does not lead to death" (5:17). Like those mentioned in James 5:20 and Jude 1:23, there are those on a dangerous path who can still be saved. John writes in hope that those who have remained will move forward in confidence.

[1] See Irenaeus, Against Heretics, books I and III.

Greatest Common Denominator: The Fallen World

Previous posts were:
God
Creation

Now, the fallen world.

1. I have never really thought this question through in its potential complexity. I know the Augustine/Wesley schtick, of course, the one we read in all the theology textbooks and Wesleyans used to preach. God created the world perfect. Adam sinned. Sin came on all the world, both the creation and humans. We now have a sin nature that makes us sin. Christ's death atones for the sin acts we do, the Spirit removes our sin nature so that we do not have to sin any more.

This is a mixture of Paul, Augustine, and Wesleyans. What Paul taught, I believe, is that the creation has been under the power of Sin since Adam. With regard to the world, it became subject to corruption and decay. With regard to humanity, the weakness of our flesh makes us susceptible to the power of Sin. The Spirit empowers us to live righteously and fulfill the law of love.

But is this the greatest common denominator of Scripture? It is the model that won out in the Western church, the Catholic side. It is the model that has dominated Protestantism because Luther's base camp was in Paul. But Paul is only one voice in Scripture and the West is not the whole church.

2. Adam plays no significant role in the theology of the OT itself. That is to say, Genesis 4 through Malachi do not use Adam to make any argument at all. He is generally absent from those pages. Here you have to remember that most of us do not read the Bible for what it actually says. The question of Adam's significance for the OT is not debatable--he simply is not given a thought from Genesis 4 on. But we might read him into the pages because of the glasses we wear when we read the OT.

Similarly, Adam plays no clear role in the NT outside of Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, and possibly Hebrews 2. Again, most people--including pastors--don't read the Bible. They read into the Bible. We have no evidence that Adam featured at all in the theology of Matthew or Mark or John or James. Our default reading of the Bible is through theological glasses, and we see things that weren't originally there.

Did Jude believe in Adam's Fall? We don't know. He quotes 1 Enoch, and the Fall in 1 Enoch came not with Adam but when angels sleep with human women in Genesis 6, had giant offspring, from whose dead bodies the spirits of demons originated.

I'm digressing simply to point out the extent to which our organization of Scripture is dependent, not on Scripture itself, but on the traditions of organization we have inherited growing up in the church.

3. What most Scripture does assume is that we are separated from God and in need of atonement and redemption. Even here, however, the assumptions of Leviticus are one strand within the OT and one that stands in some tension with the prophetic strand. Jeremiah 7, Micah 6, Isaiah 1 all deny the importance of sacrifice over and against a more fundamental obedience to God in relation to how you treat other people. In the NT, Hebrews makes explicit the end of the sacrificial system.

The proximity to God in Scripture still varies. In the OT, Israel stands closer to a right standing with God than the pagans do. The NT sets us on a trajectory in which all people stand equally close to such a right standing. It is not that humanity has come closer to God but God has come closer to humanity in Christ.

So we can at least say that the common denominator of Scripture is that the default state of humanity is one of separation from God. It is a state of sinfulness in need of reconciliation and redemption.

4. But what is this sinfulness? In the OT Law, the need for sacrifice primarily has to do with "ceremonial impurity." Theoretically, "high handed" sins resulted in death, and since most of the OT does not have a conception of an afterlife, death was the ultimate purging.

I don't think there is any evidence that the standard of sin was absolute perfection. This perspective comes from a couple obscure verses in Paul, lifted to inappropriate centrality. The standard of sin, in the NT, becomes motive in relation to love. Jesus points in this direction in the Sermon on the Mount. John's writings support this perspective. Paul's writings support this perspective.

The Greatest Common Denominator of Scripture might thus view the understanding of the Law so prevalent in Christianity today as an immature one that has not fully grown into the NT. Sin has always been, for God, any act of will that wrongs another, including God. One can wrong another person both intentionally and unintentionally, but it is the intentional ones that most concern God.

Sin and Sickness

Another missing piece from the first Jesus book...
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Before we leave the topic of the miracles Jesus did, I should mention a connection the New Testament sometimes makes between sin and sickness that may seem strange to us today.  For example, in John 9 Jesus and his followers come upon a man who had been blind from birth. The disciples immediately assume that it was the result of someone's sin.  "Was it him or his parents?" they instinctively ask.

In this case, Jesus denies it.  The man was not blind because of anyone's sin. But the New Testament does not deny that physical sickness can result from sinfulness. We have a tendency today to "demythologize" such things.  Sure, if you are promiscuous, you are bound to get some disease. Sure, if you are completely self-indulgent you are likely to get liver disease or lung cancer.

But this is scientific, normal cause-effect thinking.  The biblical writers saw a potential connection between sin and sickness in a way that would not normally occur to us.  For example, Paul tells the Corinthians that some of them have become sick and some actually died as a punishment for the divisive spirit and cliquish spirit they have shown when eating the Lord's meal together (1 Cor. 11:30).

James 5 makes this same connection when it talks about praying for the sick.  The elders of a church are to pray for the sick. "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven" (Jas 5:15).  James doesn't explicitly say that some sickness results from sin, but it seems implied.

The same connection may be there in Matthew 9 when Jesus first pronounces the sins of a paralyzed man forgiven and only later heals him.  The nearby teachers of the law believe Jesus is blaspheming when he thinks he can pronounce the man's sins forgiven. [1] However, the fact that Jesus also heals the man presumably shows that Jesus does have the authority to forgive sins.  After all, if the man's sins were connected to him being paralyzed, then the authority to heal presumably implied the authority to forgive sins.

There are great dangers with associating sin with sickness today.  We can fully believe in healing as Christians and yet strongly affirm that it is not God's will for every sick person to be healed.  If sickness were always--or even primarily associated with sin, then forgiveness would often involve healing.  It just doesn't seem to work that way.

Jesus has also made it clear that it is not our place to judge the intentions of people's hearts (Matt. 7:1). There are many overt actions a person may do that are obvious enough.  A person is planning to blow up something and accidentally blows up himself.  But it would be very wrong indeed to presume that someone is sick because of some sin he or she had done. Indeed, such an approach to sickness would likely reveal an evil heart on our own part, a hateful spirit.

So while the connection is real in the Bible and we should not say it cannot be so, we are probably right, in the end, only to connect sin with sickness when there is a natural, cause-effect relationship.  For example, anger, rage, and bitterness can indeed facilitate high blood pressure and heart disease. Gluttony and overindulgence can indeed lead to diabetes and many other sicknesses. Any other connection is best left to God.

[1] This is a little puzzling, since presumably priests pronounced people's sins forgiven all the time after they offered the appropriate sacrifices.

What is sin? 2

I want to shift my blogging energies a little, so may finish this one more intermittently... maybe on Sundays.

Where is God?
Questionable Explanations
What is evil?
Pain is not Evil
What is sin? 1
What is sin? 2
Does God tempt? 1
Does God tempt? 2

What is sin continued...
It is also important for us to recognize the standard by which these intentions were measured.  The New Living Translation imposes later theological categories on Romans 3:23 when it translates it to say that all have fallen short of "God's glorious standard," as if the problem is the fact that we cannot be perfect.   More likely, Paul was saying that human lack the glory that God intended them to have in Psalm 8.

There are at least two respects in which the rhetoric many Christians use in relation to sin is out of focus.  First, we have a tendency to put more emphasis on one argument Paul makes than I am convinced he himself did.  This is the "no one can keep every law their entire life; therefore, we are entirely guilty" argument.  True, Paul does say all have sinned in Romans 3 and Galatians 3:19 does seem to make an argument something like this.

But Paul's purpose here is not to give a systematic theological statement.  He is backing up his claim that we all need Christ's atonement--little more.  He certainly is not saying that we are guilty of every law (a mistaken interpretation even of James 2:10).  He is not saying we are totally depraved (that there is no good in us whatsoever). He is simply stating something everyone would have agreed with at the time--all humanity needs atonement.

Those who say they do not are deceiving themselves, are making God a liar (1 John 1:8, 10).  That is what all these statements amount to.  Later theologians like Augustine and Calvin systematized and absolutized passing arguments in Paul.  However, we will inevitably get Paul out of focus if we use such passages as the starting point for understanding God's character in relation to justice.

A second difference to keep in mind is how introspective modern Westerners have become in our individualistic, post-Romantic context. We can self-analyze our motives and intentions in a way that neither Jesus or Paul came close to assuming.  Even the level of Christian perfection John Wesley had in mind went far too introspective for the standards of Jesus' day, causing not only many Wesleyans since but Wesley himself sometimes to torture themselves in an unhealthy inward focus.

The result is a lot of distraction with regard to what is important about the category of sin, which is one's intent to do wrong or to do things contrary to a heart devoted to God.  Sin and evil are most meaningful concepts when we are talking about our intentions toward others and the extent to which we filter our lives through true devotion to God.  Sin as any imperfection, as unintentional wrongdoing--these have a place in a systematic treatment but are not particularly helpful in sorting out how to live a righteous life.

This also leads us to a massive myth that is widely circulated these days--that all sin is sin.  This idea has absolutely no biblical basis at all in terms of the life of a believer.  True, when we first come to Christ, any sin we have in the past amounts to breaking our relationship with God. In that sense we might say that all sin is sin for our pre-Christian past.  But the New Testament nowhere treats all sin after justification as equal.  Not only does Paul dispense different consequences for different sins, but some sins can keep a person from inheriting the kingdom of God (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:9-11).

The key once again is intention, a fact usually missed by the pop notion that all sin is the same.  As in a relationship with other people, some wrongs can break a relationship while others only damage it a little.  There is a vast difference between forgetting an anniversary and having an affair.  It is this way in our relationship with God.  There is a vast difference between losing our temper with someone because we have not had enough sleep and murdering millions of Christians in the name of atheism.  To suggest these two sins would be the same in God's eyes is patently ludicrous.

By the same token, emotions are not, in themselves, sinful.  As someone once said, "Emotions are neither good nor bad; they just are."  True, you can choose to act in a sinful way because you are angry--"Be angry and do not sin" (Eph. 4:26).  And you can subtly err by setting yourself up for wrongdoing because of your emotions.  You can miss sleep or food.

The level of intention is again the measure of the degree of wrongdoing.  If you know certain courses of action make you more susceptible to do wrong and you do not change, then your intention is involved.  And if your intention is involved, then we get into the realm of morality and evil.

This discussion relates to the question of evil and suffering because it gets in front of us exactly what we are asking.  The questions of evil and pain are questions about God's intentions, not questions of how bad these things feel or how horrendous an effect they have.  When we consider evil and sin in terms of the consequence, measured against an absolute standard of perfection, we are not asking the right question.  These are questions of God's intentions.  Suffering and pain in themselves, the effect of moral evil, are not evil.  They are just rather unpleasant.

Next Sunday: Why does God allow evil?

What is sin? 1

I decided that the "Clean and Unclean" post was interesting, but probably distracting from a booklet.  I'll try to combine several things into one post called, "What is Sin?"  Below is where I'm thinking it would go, although I think this will take two posts.

Where is God?
Questionable Explanations
What is evil?
Pain is not Evil
What is sin?
Does God tempt? 1
Does God tempt? 2

Perhaps the most popular definition of sin amounts to anything short of perfection.  We say it is to "miss the mark" and the mark in question is often defined as any mistake or imperfection whatsoever.  The picture of God behind this definition is a God of justice who must and wants to punish the slightest infraction.  If we say we have no sin, 1 John 1:8 is quickly produced, we are deceiving ourselves.

There are immense problems with the preceding paragraph--and there would be troublesome implications for the problem of evil and suffering.  For one, while we do find the category of unintentional sin in Scripture, it certainly receives little attention in the New Testament.  To define sin as missing the mark is usually based on an atrocious word fallacy.  This is arguably a misinterpretation of 1 John 1:8 and the father who represents God in the Parable Son knows nothing of this understanding of God's attitudes.

Sin in its most meaningful sense involves intention.  We are defining evil as active intent against loving God or one's neighbor and the actions that follow.  So sin in its most meaningful sense is active intent or action that violates love of God or neighbor.  The two prove to be very closely related.  An evil intent is a sinful intent, and evil done is a sin done.

What then of unintentional sin?  To sin is to wrong another person or to do wrong defined as action or intent against God or one's neighbor.  You can of course wrong another person accidentally.  And you can do wrong out of ignorance.  We can certainly find places in the Bible where these things are called sin.

However, these categories apply much more to the Old Testament than the New.  It is the Levitical parts of the Old Testament that have the categories of clean and unclean.  One can become stained simply by touching the wrong thing.  In Numbers 15:22-31, clear instructions are given for a person who sins unintentionally, but there is no hope for the person who might sin defiantly and intentionally.  We know from the stories of the Old Testament that God often did forgive such individuals.  Our point here is that the function of sacrifice in Leviticus has to do with unintentional wrongs done and thus that the Bible does have a category relating to unintentional sins or wrongs done in ignorance.

But this is not the dominant category of the New Testament.  In fact, this category is only discussed in the past tense.  The Day of Atonement used to be about sins committed in ignorance (Heb. 9:7).  From Adam to Moses people died because of their wrongs done, even though those sins were not technically charged to their account (Rom. 5:14).  What is important for the New Testament is intentional wrong: "If someone knows the good to do and does not do it, it is sin" (Jas. 4:17).  In perhaps the most helpful statement about sin in the New Testament, Paul says that "Everything that is not from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23).

This last statement is an excellent picture of what we are saying about sin and evil.  It has to do with one's attitude and intention.  Sin has do with why you do what you do and with what your intentions are toward God and others.  This sense of God's interests does not only come in the New Testament.  We find this same sense from 2 Samuel 16:7 where God tells Samuel not to focus on how the sons of Jesse look--God looks on the heart.  In Mark 7:15, Jesus similarly was not worried about what made a person clean or unclean externally, but about what was in their hearts.

It is also important for us to recognize the standard by which these intentions were measured.  The New Living Translation imposes later theological discussion on Romans 3:23 when it translated it to say that all have fallen short of "God's glorious standard," as if the problem is the fact that we cannot be perfect...

Unintentional Wrongs

So is it possible to do evil without knowing it or without intending it?  It is certainly possible to wrong another person without knowing or intending it.  The Old Testament certainly has a category of unintentional sin.  In fact, the Levitical system of sacrifices primarily provided for unintentional sin (e.g., Num. 15:22-31).  We can infer from the stories of the Old Testament that there was atonement for intentional sin (e.g., when David sinned with Bathsheba), but this fact is not at all clear from the sacrificial instructions of Leviticus and Numbers themselves.

However, the New Testament shows little interest in this category.  The "sins committed in ignorance" in Hebrews 9:7 relate to the time before the audience was "enlightened" (e.g., 6:4), before they experienced the Spirit and confessed Jesus as Messiah.  The kind of wrongdoing that is of interest to the New Testament is not a vague violation of anything that "misses the mark" or anything short of absolute perfection.  Rather, it is wronging others, particularly intentionally, and knowingly doing wrong.

Paul puts it this way, "Everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23).  What he means by that is when you are seriously unsure something is okay for you to do before God and you do it anyway, you are sinning.  You are doing wrong.  The knowledge of what you are doing is key.

Similarly, James 4:17 gives us a classic definition of what we might call "sins of omission," when you do not do something you know you should. "Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin" (NRSV).  In both these cases, the key to what it means to sin or do wrong is not so much the violation of a rule but the intent to violate a rule. [1]

The point is that sin is overwhelmingly a question of intent and motive in the New Testament.  It is not primarily some legalistic measurement against an absolute standard.  One can wrong another person unintentionally or unknowingly.  These kinds of incidences can be called sin, but they are important to God because of what they do to the other person rather than as a matter of great concern for God in relation to you.

Biblically, one can also unknowingly or unintentionally do things that are wrong according to God, even though they do not wrong your neighbor.  It is important to recognize this category as very obscure in the New Testament.  The NIV 2011 of Romans 5:13-14 says, "sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam."  Paul seems to say that there were consequences for such sinning, even though God did not consider such individuals guilty in a moral sense.

In other words, Paul seems to support our claim even here, namely, that the question of guilt and the question of morality has to do with knowingly doing wrong.  Unintentional wrongs we might do are thus not evil, even though we can consider them wrongdoing, even sin.  A person could unintentionally kill someone in an incredibly tragic way.  But if it was truly unintentional--and not involving any inappropriate choices on our part--then technically we would not call it evil. [2]

It is also clear here that the popular notion that "all sin is sin" is also unbiblical to the core.  If by the idea that "all sin is sin" you mean that, before God forgives our past sins, one sin drives us to God's forgiveness just as much as any other sin, this would be correct.  However, since God looks at sin primarily in terms of our intentions, it would not be true to say that God looks on all wrongdoing the same after we have believed.

As an example, you can wrong your spouse in many different ways in a marriage.  For example, a husband could forget his wife's birthday.  But this "wronging" of your spouse is of quite different moral significance than a husband cheating on his spouse with another woman. [3] The level of intention and actual wrong to the wife is of a completely different level.  The relationship can easily survive missing a birthday.  It may or may not survive an affair.

In the same way, both God's evaluation of wrongdoing and the consequences of wrongdoing can vary widely.  Paul does not kick the arrogant and spiritually immature out of the Corinthian church.  He does, however, kick out the man sleeping with his step-mother.  The level of the sin correlates with the intensity of the wrong done and the level of intentionality.

The ancient model of patrons and clients gives us great insight into how such things likely worked in Paul's mind.  Words like grace (charis) and gifts (charismata) from God are terms of patronage.  You did not earn the graciousness of an ancient patron.  The gift was always disproportionate to anything you might do for the patron.  But you could solicit patronage.

Similarly, gifts of patronage technically came without payment, but this fact does not mean there were no expectations.  There were informal rather than formal strings attached.  At the very least, the patron expected to be praised and given honor for his or her giving.  If you were ungrateful, you certainly would not continue to receive patronage.

This model corresponds well to what we find in Paul.  Our right standing before God is a gift of grace from God.  We solicit it with our faith but we cannot earn it.  God does have certain expectations of us thereafter.  Those who do not press on will not win the prize of God's "upward call" in resurrection (Phil. 3:14).  Those who do not discipline their bodies to win the contest will be disqualified (1 Cor. 9:24-27).  Those who insult the Spirit of grace will find themselves with no sacrifice for sins left (Heb. 10:26-31).

The notion that "all sin is sin" is thus unbiblical when applied to wrongdoing after individuals are forgiven their past sins.  Sin rather becomes almost entirely a matter of one's intent to do wrong.  It becomes a relational issue.  Some wrongdoing, such as sins of surprise, are more a matter of neglect than high intention and have less immediate effect on one's relationship with God our divine Patron.  Other sins may involve such a high level of intentionality in wrongdoing that they would revoke God's patronage all together and sever our relationship with God.

Accordingly, unintentional and unknowing wrongs do not fall under our definition of evil.  Things that happen and things that are done unknowingly can have very bad consequences.  But for them to fall under the "problem of evil," they must be things a moral agent intends to do on some level.

[1] Here it is probably worth pointing out a common misinterpretation of Romans 3:23.  The New Living Translation interprets this verse to say that all have sinned by falling short of "God's glorious standard."  But in fact, what Paul is saying is that all lack the glory of God, a glory God created humanity to have at the beginning (cf. Ps. 8:5) and that we hope to receive when Christ returns (e.g., Rom. 5:2; 8:18).

[2] In our world, drunk driving almost always does involve inappropriate choices.  So if a person were to kill someone else unintentionally while driving drunk, such a wrongdoing is a moral act because it has involved a prior choice to drink and drive.  It falls under Wesley's category of a "sin of surprise."

[3] On the other hand, a one time "sin of surprise" in forgetting your spouse's birthday can become more an more of a "high handed" sin if you do not do something about it.  Sins of neglect, when not addressed, quickly become sins of intent.