In our culture today, we don’t like to talk
about sin. While most of us have a deep sense that something is off, that
something is wrong with ourselves and the world, and many know or feel that
they are guilty of something, this kind of talk is avoided. Instead, we
evaluate ourselves by our own standards over against other people. We still
have a measurement of right and wrong, but we make it up.
But the cross functions like a mirror held
up before our eyes, showing us the full reality and the complete gravity of our
sin.
On Christ was laid “the iniquity of us
all.” “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross” (1 Pet 2:24). God
“made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21). In the crucified messiah we
see the full horror of our act of violating the boundary between us and God.
In the cross, we also see the consequences
of our sin. This is why Jesus was “wounded” and “crushed.” The wages of sin is
death—physical as well as spiritual—and we see the death sentence carried out
against all humanity on the cross (Rom 6:23).
While we prefer to avoid talking about sin,
opting instead to set up our own measurements of good and evil, by doing so we
are actually reinforcing the core sin from which we need to be freed. We get
false worth through our sinful judgments of self and others as we use a false
standard. Instead of seeing the true standard, we live as though we can make up
the standards of good and evil.
But God himself is the standard. He wants
nothing less than perfect union with himself, for this is the purpose for which
God created the world. Anything that disrupts this union misses the mark, which
is the definition of sin (harmartia).
Every act and every thought that does not
flow out of trust (faith) that God is who he reveals himself to be—everything
that is inconsistent with the purpose for which God created the world—misses
the mark; it is sin.
The standard is perfection, as God is
perfect (Matt 5:48). Everything we do, think, or say that is not perfectly
consistent with the character of God condemns us. Whenever we fail to love God
with all our heart, mind, and body, we stand condemned. Whenever we judge
others instead of loving them as God has loved us, we stand condemned.
While we my develop our own standards by
which we judge others, and some religious groups do this by coming down on
certain sins that they happen to avoid while minimizing or ignoring the sins
they routinely commit, the cross forces us to see something much more severe.
We all stand equally condemned.
This is harsh reality and while it might
not be popular, it’s true nonetheless. And it’s a truth that sets us free.
Only by becoming hopeless about our ability
to live in perfect union with God on our own efforts can we begin to recover
perfect union with God by simply being who God created us and died for us to
be. Only by accepting that the gulf between us and God is unbridgeable through
our own efforts can we stop trying to live up to some human-made standard
through which we judge God, ourselves and others. And then we can simply accept
the union God has sacrificially established with us in Christ.
The unsurpassable severity of our
condemnation in Christ frees us to live in the unsurpassable love God has for
us in Christ. The cursed tree on which Christ hung destroys the forbidden tree
from which we ate. —Adapted from Repenting of Religion, pages 150-154 – Greg Boyd
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