Sin and Mortality

by the Rev. Peter C. Cage

What is the sin "in me and around me" (original - what we inherited from Adam, and actual - the disobedience we add every day) really like? If sin isn't too big a problem - if it's only a bit of unpleasantness, like the flu, not truly life threatening - then you can overcome it, do certain "healthy" things and be done with it until the next outbreak, or perhaps even inoculate yourself against it. But if sin is like a cancer with a 0% survival rate, your sin translates directly to death. Serious.

Many people, Christians included, think sin is no worse than the flu­something they can overcome with more sanitary living or holy precautions. They believe that since our sins haven¹t caused us to drop dead yet, that, sure, sin might indeed be "bad" - like flu is bad‹but not quite deadly. At most, they might say sin is some kind of "unfortunate flaw" for which we need to make a personal decision for a little self-improvement, but certainly not a resurrection from death!

Sin is far more serious and deadly than that. We don¹t really know the enormity of sin if we think we can self-medicate or "let it pass." A drive by the local cemetery reminds us that dead people don't need fluids and bed rest. They need resurrection. Sin isn't just "bad things" I do. It is my constant disposition away from God and those I'm commanded to love towards myself, leaning towards evil and what evil gets, death.

Add to this predicament that even Christians can hardly recognize sin any more because we learn too readily from the culture that "right and wrong" comes down to whatever I decide it is. We see this in the latest re-defining of marriage away from one man and one woman, the long-standing practice of taking children's lives in abortion, and by the insistence of our omnipresent entertainment and media culture that there is "sexuality ... without God" - that lust and sexual craving are ideal for advertising to young and old alike, and there is no downside. What? Is there no cost of emotional pain, physical disease, psychological loneliness, and "inconvenient" babies?

My self-interest. My self-absorption. My feelings. Entertain me. Serve me. Please me. All this is my sin in my culture. I underestimate its power, damage, and cost. It¹s not the flu but a disease unto death. Deadly serious.

It sounds, and is, pretty bleak, but it is not so different from the world into which Christ first came and is coming still. Christians in the city of Corinth were fighting the same things in themselves that they had seen and even experienced in the city life around them. Was it really all that bad? St. Paul could answer, "Do not be deceived [because some of you are being deceived!]," and then rattle off a description of the sins besetting and still drawing the Corinthian congregation: fornication, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, thievery, covetousness, and drunkenness (I Cor. 6:9-10). Lest I think that only other or only those people do such terrible things, the common denominator of this list is that even though Christ was among the Corinthian church as their Savior-Servant (Luke 22:27), all these sins are about serving and getting [sex, money, power, fun] ... for myself. Each one is an evil example of one person gratifying himself at the expense of someone else‹another person for whom Christ also died.

But for our deadly sin, as for theirs, St. Paul points away from our easy self-indulgence to Christ, to God¹s saving in Baptism, to the Kingdom of Heaven: "And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus [Son] and by the [Holy] Spirit of our God [Father]. ... And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power" (I Cor. 6:11, 14). God baptized you, made you holy, and declared you righteous in and by His death, and even raised you at His resurrection‹made it your resurrection.

Don't be deceived! Sin is worse than a sickness. Indeed, sin is "doing" death to you even now. Dead people don¹t resurrect themselves (!), but are spoken back into life by Christ alone. By Baptism. By His forgiveness. By His Word. "In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." A resurrection from the dead, because we were dead in sin and Christ died for us, and "we were buried with Him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:4), miraculous Baptism! It is by His resurrection from the dead, and our Baptism also into His resurrection, that we too may live a new life, Christ¹s life. For you are washed, sanctified, and justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

The Rev. Peter C. Cage is Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Muncie, Indiana.