SINNER
“Sinner.” It’s a word commonly heard with judgment, condemnation, and rejection. We misunderstand it; maybe church people most of all.
When we understand who God is and how God uses it, it is still a painful description of us, but it is also loving, true, and hopeful.
Imagine that there was a world-renowned oncologist (a cancer doctor) who also happened to be your dad. As busy and important as he is to the rest of the world, he has always been there, present with you, your whole life. He loves you. Then one day you find out you are sick. The pain, nausea, and fever just won’t go away. Your dad comes to check in on you. He asks questions, looks at some lab results, and then sits down in front of you. He puts his arms on your shoulders – his eyes filled with compassion, hope, and determination – and says, “I’m afraid you have cancer. But I love you and if you trust me, everything is going to be okay.”
If you replace the scary word “cancer” with the word “sinner,” you’ll have a better idea of who God is and how God uses the word “sinner.” When God uses it to describe you and me, it is painful to hear and accept, but it is also loving, true, and full of hope.
History and experience clearly display that there is something wrong with the human condition. Humans and humanity are like the human body, an absolute miracle of complexity, design, form and function – but with a cancer inside. There is a part of our very self that works against and attacks our very self.
There is something wrong with you, something wrong with me, that we can’t fix because it is a part of us, and the name God gives it is sin.
Now, far too many self-righteous church people functionally define sin as “all the things I don’t do.” Importantly that is not how God defines sin. And, self-righteousness is just another symptom of the disease, signaling that there is something sick here that needs curing.
Sin, in part can be the things we do or don’t do, but mostly these things are just symptoms and not the disease. God even gave us God’s ranked top ten list of the most destructive – or on the flip-side, life-giving – behaviors (See – THE INPIRING VISION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS).
If most of these are symptoms and not really the disease, what is it that is at the heart of the problem? What is it that ails the human condition? What does it mean to be a sinner?
The answer to all three of those questions is rejecting God as God.
That is what is at the heart of all of our brokenness. It is why we lie, cheat, steal, murder, and try to set ourselves up above others. It is why we are afraid. It is why we are insecure. It is why we are morally disoriented.
What happened at The Fall with Adam and Eve? Did they have sex with someone they weren’t married to or embezzle money? No, they rejected God as God. In God’s top ten, what did God list as our primary ailment? Rejecting God as God. What did God say over and over again through Moses and the prophets was at the center of fallen humanity? A heart that is morally and relationally disoriented. What did the angel tell Joseph that Jesus would accomplish? “He will save his people from their sin.” “Sin” singular. There is a single thing that is at the heart of all of our brokenness.
A sinner is someone who rejects God as God. And I am a sinner . . . and so are you. I reject God as God through my own self-sufficiency towards God, in all the ways I try to work out my own saving and worthiness apart from God, in my fears about what I cannot control, in all the days that go by that I ignore God and give my love and attention to seemingly everything else, in all the ways I decide to try it my way just one more time, in all the ways I try to face life on my own, and in all the ways I try to pretend that I, and not God, am the hope that someone or some situation has been waiting for.
Maybe you’ve got your own list of symptoms? Maybe your list of symptoms looks a bit like mine? And only God, our Father, The Great Physician, can heal us and set us free. It is what our loving God has been offering to do all along.
Healing this sinner is a work that God has been chipping away at for a long time. Like a recovering cancer patient, I am feeling more alive and free all the time, I’m just not “There” yet. Excitingly, The Father, The Great Physician promises though, that one day I will be, and so will everyone and everything that places their trust in His capable hands.
Your Father God loves you, you are precious to Him, and everything is going to be okay.
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