It’s time to talk about sin.
In our previous conversation about “being human,” I never even used the word “sin”! But so much of our human-ness so quickly bleeds into sin. Righteous anger is rare. Sleep-deprived people say mean things. Desire becomes lust. Hunger becomes gluttony.
Friends, sin is. It just… is. It’s not great; it’s not good. But it’s not going anywhere.
Therefore, our idea of holiness has to interact with sin. Somehow sin has to be included in what we understand holiness to be and how we understanding progress in holiness to work.
Here is something I’ve found helpful in thinking about this:
Observe with me the camp of the people of Israel. They are on their way out of Egypt and heading toward the land of Canaan. The Lord is hard at work purging Egyptian idolatry from their lives and preparing them to resist the allure of Canaanite idolatry. That’s what most of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are about: “be ye holy!” The Torah describes a most elaborate and detailed system for being holy.
But now, what is at the literal center of the camp of Israel, or at the cultural center of Israel? The Tabernacle. What is the Tabernacle? It’s the place of the operation of the priesthood, whose job it is to interface between God and His people. Specifically, they manage the operation of the altar—the place at which, among other things, sacrifices for sin are made.
In other words, sin is at the center of the operation of holiness.
But let’s press on: what do we discover as we move into the Tabernacle? The holy place… the most holy place… the ark of the covenant… and, finally, the Mercy Seat. The Mercy Seat was the most holy spot in all the world (till Jesus was born). It was where God made His presence known to His people, where He took the symbolic representation of their sin, and to where Israel looked for mercy. Not only was the mercy seat the literal geographic center of Israel’s camp and the cultural center of her identity, its operation was the center of their calendar—the Day of Atonement—and the description of its operation is the center of the Torah, Leviticus 16.
In so many ways God communicated to Israel and to us all that the life of holiness is built around the forgiveness of sins and the administration of mercy. Sin is at the center of the operation of holiness.
Interestingly enough, when Jesus came—Jesus, who is the true Temple of God—you’ll recall who it was that was most excited about His ministry: sinners. And those who were the least excited? “Holy” people. The Israel of Jesus’ day had misunderstood the holiness-project in much the same we that we are continually inclined to misunderstand it. They thought that holiness meant “stop sinning.” They thought that the point of God’s Law was to keep us from sinning.
But the point of God’s Law was not to keep us from sinning—sinners are going to sin. The point of God’s Law was to bring Israel back to the altar, to rejoice in God’s mercy. The point of pursuing holiness is to know the glory of God better and so be better suited to witness to it in this world.
People who think holiness is an anti-sin project don’t sin less. They simply shift the end-zone. They modify what “counts” as sin. For example, the Pharisees: it was this behavior that Jesus exposes in the Sermon on the Mount. The people who styled themselves as “righteous” were really filled with unrighteousness! Sinners got their hands on holiness and bent it to their designs. So the Pharisees shifted what counted as sin so that they could be considered holy. And whoever didn’t follow their modified-rules was “unholy.” Those were the people who delighted in Christ.
This is really good news because there’s not a day that goes by that we’re not going to sin. There’s nothing we do that is not touched in some measure by sin. Our idea of holiness has to deal with sin. And not by neurotically fixating on some sins; then we just swerve into other sins. And not by assigning holiness to certain personality types. And not by comparing ourselves with others using cultural norms.
Instead, we need to receive the teaching of Scripture, the model laid out in the Old Testament, embodied in Jesus and explained in the Gospel. The point of all that God does is to draw us into worshipful appreciation for what Jesus, the Father’s Son, has done. Holiness is about Jesus. Holiness is not about my (awareness of my) levels of certain sins. Holiness is about appreciating Jesus. Game. Set. Match.
Holiness is about the Altar, about the Mercy Seat, about the Cross.
Our idea of holiness has to make room for the inescapable sinfulness attached like barnacles to our inescapable humanity.
We resent our humanity; we resent our sinfulness—we become Pharisaical Gnostics. Those who look down their noses at others who aren’t as careful, as disciplined, as religious, as we are. Those who work hard to outline specific sins and their significance—which just so happen to be the sins they’re not naturally inclined to anyway—so they can decry the ways that other people are sinning. Is that holiness? Is picketing things holy? Is social-media shaming holy?
When we ignore our sin, it doesn’t go away. Everyone can still see it. Growing in holiness is not getting better at hiding sin. Sin doesn’t hide. Growing in holiness is getting better at letting sin lead us to the Altar, to the Cross, to Christ and to His mercy. Growing in holiness is growing more attached to Jesus, more delighted in all He is and has done, and living more aware of and shaped by those truths. Holiness is and always has been, being His.
Holiness does not stare angrily at sin. Holiness stares worshipfully at Christ.
Now, as Paul says—I don’t need to rehash all this—anyone born of God hates sin. You and I don’t want to sin! Good. Sin is bad and I hate it and I don’t want to do it. But I do it. Okay. Now what? Now turn and worship Christ. Every day. For every sin. And then return to life, more luminous with the joy of forgiveness, the assurance of grace.
Here is real holiness, holes filled. Here is holiness we can use, we can grow in. Here is holiness that we actually want. Human holiness that delights in Christ and pushes forward through the slough of sin. Because, again, listen: that’s just the way. We don’t fall into sin because we slipped off the path. The path is knee deep in the sodden ash of sin belched up unceasingly by anxious hearts and fallen culture in a cursed world.
Okay. Well. Come on then; let’s keep going. Fix your eyes on Jesus.
Photo by Ricardo Gomez AngelHire on Unsplash
