SIN > Unmasked: Nuances

Is all sin forgivable?

In the context of what we’ve seen to this point, as I said, Jesus injects into the picture an astounding concept – which we often carry around as a question: is there a sin which cannot be forgiven?  Is there an ‘unpardonable’ sin?

Here I will refer to Matthew 12 and Mark 3.  Let’s consider the background to Jesus’ words.

Today, if one sees a genuine ‘miracle’ (not of the Scott Morrison election win kind), it is not uncommon for someone to ask by what power and authority it was performed.  Was it ‘magic’?  Was it ‘white magic’?  Was it ‘black magic’?  Was it a confidence trick or sleight-of-hand?  Was it purely physical (some say there is actually nothing else)?  Was it ‘spiritual’ (some say there is such a thing as spiritual life)?  The debate rages; few are ever moved in their predispositions; and within a short time, it’s forgotten – a ‘storm in a teacup’.

In Jesus’ day, it wasn’t that different, despite daily life in Israel at that time being very spiritual or religious; Israel was not entirely a ‘secular state’ and a range of religious leaders dominated daily life.  Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees – some of them lawyers’ – had a tight grip on the daily lives and morals of the people.  Sounds familiar, I know.

Factions were formed based on the beliefs and priorities of strong traditions or large personalities – much like today.  Some believed in the resurrection while others didn’t; some held that all Gentiles who converted to Judaism had to be circumcised according to the Law of Moses.  There were differing views on miracles: on what constituted a miracle; on who could ‘perform’ one; on when they could be ‘performed’ and so on.  There we differing views on things demonic – evil spirits and ‘spiritual powers’.

All that aside, the religious leaders combined held a lot of power and could make or break a person’s life.  Saul (later apostle Paul) was one of them.  He was a learned and powerful Pharisee – and his ‘big thing’ was wiping all memory and mention of Jesus and “The Way” from the history scrolls.  He terrorised Jesus’ disciples for years and had little leniency towards any who argued that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and redeemer of Israel.

On one particular day, a blind, dumb, demon-possessed man was brought to Jesus and he healed him.  The multitudes, Matthew says, were amazed and began to say, ‘This man (referring to Jesus) cannot be the son of David, can he?’  Being the ‘son of David’ [i.e. Israel’s revered King David] was a way of asking if Jesus might be the Messiah – Israel’s ‘chosen and anointed one’.

Matthew notes that when the Pharisees heard this, they spoke up and said, ‘This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons’.  That was their ‘spin’.  Jesus went on to explain the impossibility of that, but their point was clear: they attributed the miracle of this healing to “the ruler of the demons” Beelzebul.

Now, in Jesus’ mind that was blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.  The miracle they had just witnessed was done by the Holy Spirit.  In Romans 8, a redeemed, regenerated, rebooted Saul (now Paul) writes that, ‘the sons of God’ are those who are ‘being led by the Spirit of God’; Jesus was the prototypical son of God; what he did, he did as being led and empowered by the Spirit of God.  So what the Pharisees just did was attribute a work of the Spirit of God to the Prince of demons: they ‘blasphemed’ the Holy Spirit.

Note Matthew’s words (parallel with Mark chapter 3):

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.  If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself.  How then can his kingdom stand?

‘And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive them out?  So then, they will be your judges.  But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

‘How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man?  Then he can plunder his house.  He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.

‘Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.  Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come.’

By this argument, Jesus makes several points clear: 1) they are proving that Satan’s house/kingdom is divided and will not stand; 2) the demons will be their judges; 3) Jesus is demonstrating that the Spirit of God is present and working; 4) Satan is now bound and they need to choose whose side they’re really on; 5) they had just attributed a work of the Spirit of God to Satan; 6) thereby committing the absolutely unforgivable sin.

So there is an unforgivable sin!

In my lifetime, I have repeatedly heard preachers and teachers of ‘christian city’ attribute clear works of the Holy Spirit to the Prince of demons: “that’s ‘of the Devil’” they say.  Maybe at the time they had forgotten Jesus’ words!

So they’ve got it wrong on two counts: homosexuality and the like are ‘unforgivable sins’, according to many in ‘christian city’; at the same time, they appear to be totally oblivious to their own repeated blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps it’s time to answer Jesus’ question: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”  Perhaps that question prompts another: are you a 21^st century pharisee?  SELAH: pause and consider.

I find it interesting that Matthew’s record has Jesus reprising some earlier material – perhaps by way of reinforcements:

Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad; for a tree is known by its fruit.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?  For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of his good store of treasure, and the evil man brings evil things out of his evil store of treasure.  But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

There is a heavy price to pay for “careless words” that attribute works of the Spirit of God to Satan, AKA ‘The Devil’, AKA Beelzebul.  “Brood of vipers” is a worthy description.

We all need to face up to the fact that “all have sinned and fall short” of God’s standards; and that admitting and acknowledging this, in humility not hubris, places us in the very spot where “He might have mercy on us all.”  But if we insist (as ancient Israel repeatedly did, to the chagrin of God and His prophets) on claiming ‘we have not sinned; we are safe’, we place ourselves outside the gamut of His mercy and forgiveness.

The great irony of that is, those who insist that others are “going to hell” are far more likely to be the ones going there than the ones they accuse – for precisely the reasons Jesus gave the Pharisees on that day when the Spirit of God did a miracle for a broken man and the religious nutters hated it.

We’ll come back to this well-worn protest: “we have not sinned; we are innocent; we are safe”, but before we do, there is a further matter – quite similar to the one in this post – that has puzzled and divided Christians for many hundreds of years.  That’s next.

Unable to find repentance – the Hebrews 6 dilemma.

SIN > Unmasked: Dystopia

Religion Vs Relationship

Now if you combine self-righteousness and hubris, the outcome is often a rather nasty – even narcissistic – attitude towards our relationships.  Over and over again, this is what Jesus was up against from the Jewish religious leaders around him as he sought to navigate his mission.  The classic chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew’s gospel point to this, as does Matthew’s chapter 23.  The message of Jesus and what became known as ‘The Way’ (the movement that sought to live as disciples of Jesus) were incredibly divisive.  Indeed, it tended to polarise people: some – like those in the room at the first post-resurrection Pentecost – lived and died entirely devoted to Jesus and his way; others lived and died fully dedicated to seeking the end of that way of life.  Has much changed?

Jesus had some incredibly hard, even harsh, words for those religious leaders whom he saw as doing great harm to their people.  At times, Jesus’ approach to them looked and sounded very much like what their old prophet Ezekiel (chapter 34) records concerning God’s attitude towards the supposed ‘shepherds’ of that day.  And even among the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day, there were both believers and unbelievers.

Jesus was scathing of the hubris of those religious leaders.  Remember hubris: “actions of overbearing pride or presumption with an excess of ambition.”  Furthermore, he accused them of being “whitewashed tombs”: painted to look nice on the outside, while on the inside, full of dead people’s bones and all sorts of uncleanness.

He taught those who bothered to listen that they should do what the religious teachers said, but not what they do – thus indicating their duplicity: say one thing but do another; have one set of rules for everybody but another, more convenient set, for themselves; speaking with forked-tongue.  Thinking about our time and place today again, little has changed.

Then there was this commentary on his persecutors’ habit: “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”  Again – what’s changed?  The world is littered with pharisaical politicians.

In another place, he spoke to the religious lawyers – referencing their history – accusing them of making mausoleums for their dead prophets (to honour them), yet it was their fathers who killed them – and they continued the tradition of killing prophets they didn’t like in Jesus’ time.  Indeed, one of Jesus’ laments was “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!”

Even today, a popular political mantra (many politicians are lawyers) is: ‘always retain control of the narrative’.  Another way of expressing it is: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  Honour the ‘prophets’ if you must, but first they must be dead and gone and their prophecies the subject of interpretation and interpolation.

Another classic is Luke chapter 6 – especially the later section where he asks rhetorically “How can you say to your brother, ‘brother let me take the speck out of your eye’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye?”

Yet ironically, Jesus taught his disciples that it wasn’t the laws that were the problem [after all, laws are made for man, not man for laws]; it was the sanctimonious and duplicitous preaching of the law – coupled with the failure to live it – that was the real problem.  He taught his disciples that “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God.”

In other words, one cannot look at religious leaders’ disregard or flouting of the law and justify one’s own lawlessness.  Or, inside out, one cannot justify lawlessness by appeal to some religious preacher’s hypocrisy.  Jesus holds his disciples to a different – and higher – standard than those who simply practise religion as a matter of form and dogma.  This much is evident among the first thousands of disciples in the first century AD: it’s about relationship; not about religion.

This teaching raises the fundamentally critical subject of righteousness: the state of being in the mode and direction of ‘right’ – that is, right as in true and correct against an objective measure or ‘canon’; as things ‘ought to be’.  And as with sin, righteousness is both nature and product.

Now, in this context, Jesus inserts an astounding concept – which we often carry around as a question: is there a sin which cannot be forgiven?  Is there an ‘unpardonable’ sin?

Next: the unpardonable sin.

SIN > Unmasked: Broken Relationship

The Perils of Fencing out God

I am suggesting here that man lives in a four-fold relationship.  Ever, he is relating - poorly or properly - to God, the world, disciples of Jesus and non-disciples.  If he lives ‘according to the Spirit’ as apostle Paul puts it (that is, if He lives in Christ), then renewed relationships form the context of his daily life.  He is a “new creation: the old has passed away; the new has come.”  This is the redeemed, regenerated, rebooted status of humankind.

If, however, he chooses not to live in Christ, then the antithesis of those relationships is the context of his daily life.  This is the un-redeemed, un-regenerated, un-rebooted status of humankind.  And in that state, mankind continues to carry - to bear by himself - both the weight and the consequences of that four-fold relationship being out of whack.


Three key words describe and articulate that state of being in mankind’s life on earth: hostility; guilt; bondage.  Enmity; antagonism; friction; being an ‘enemy’; tend to dominate by nature and it is hard work to mollify God, other people, the environment.  The enmity is exacerbated by guilt: both real guilt (as in actual delinquency) and real feelings of guilt (as in a guilty conscience).  And hostility and guilt are exacerbated by bondage: both actually being unable to shake free and being burdened by a certain sense of helplessness or hopelessness – what some psychologists call the “generalisation of hopelessness”.

Combined (as in a venn diagram), to varying degrees, hostility guilt and bondage overlap producing a dysphoria – a state of unease or generalised dissatisfaction with life, with almost unlimited variability.  The extent to which all three overlap also varies from person to person and from time to time; but this overlap area is a definition of “sin” as a state of being – as comprising our ‘sin nature’.

Un-remediated and un-redeemed, we will always struggle to some extent; and this is, I believe, what very often leads us to conclude and to say ‘well, I’m only human’.  This dysphoria is the ‘natural state’ of human beings not redeemed, regenerated, rebooted.  Few cultures on earth have not recognised this and made varied attempts to both explain it and to remediate it.

Sadly, in our quest to stand by our conviction that “God is dead” and everything about Jesus is myth and legend, we explain all this with a vast array of philosophies, theories, beliefs and so-called scientific explanations.  Fencing out God in this way not only means we become (or manufacture) our own gods; it also means we often wander about lost, while making a lot of loud noise railing against both the ‘darkness’ and the alleged ‘light’ of others.

A few days ago, I happened upon a blog post from Phil Ressler [https://philressler.com/keeping-god-at-arms-length] – worth the read, not the least because it shines a light on a fundamental problem with our modern ‘scientific’ god-denial.

Few are prepared to suspend their unbelief and be even partially scientific enough to seek out evidence and interrogate it for ourselves.  We shut the gate on God and lock it and walk away – dressed in the smugness of our own right-ness.  And another word for our own right-ness is self-righteousness; which (the world over with few exceptions) is expressed in hubris.

A second venn diagram explains that hubris – which, as one dictionary puts it, is “actions of
over-bearing pride or presumption with an excess of ambition.”  And not only do we practise this, we actually affirm and encourage it and very often call it ‘success’ or ‘leadership’ without fully realising hubris is both corrosive and deadly.  It’s the battery acid of daily life and human relationships.

We scrabble around with “eyes wide shut” pretending that only those things we can ‘see’ (hence, ‘seeing is believing’) and scientifically prove are real.  And as we go, we call what we construct “the real world”.  But our ‘real world’ is largely made up of groping in the dark and (therefore) missing the mark and ‘falling short’, and crossing lines of demarcation, transgressing boundaries and limits.

‘Missing the mark’ is an idea borrowed from archery and javelin or spear throwing.  You ‘err’ if you miss your target – either by going wildly off course or by falling short.  In New Testament Greek, this is the word hamartia, one of the words for ‘sin’.

‘Crossing the line’ can be illustrated by reference to today’s car driving: “stay in your lane” will often be the instruction from driving instructors as you learn to drive.  Demarcation or setting perimeters is not uncommon; and going beyond one’s line of demarcation is a transgression (Latin: to go across).  In New Testament Greek, this word is parabasé.  We might hear somebody say ‘you crossed the line there’: you transgressed; you ‘sinned’.

'Living by sight’ goes to the heart of Paul’s teaching on faith.  When we ‘live according to the flesh’ (Romans 8), we prioritise ‘fixing our eyes on what is seen’ (2 Corinthians 4), which leads to our being sucked into the vortex of un-faith.  And ‘whatever does not proceed from faith is sin’ (Romans 14).  When we ‘live according to the Spirit (Romans 8), we prioritise ‘fixing our eyes on what is unseen’ (2 Corinthians 4) – which is Christ and the eternal.

To a greater or lesser degree, we are somewhat like this Russian bear.  And I not only like the picture itself for what it illustrates, I also like it because the barrel is blue – speaking to the ‘conservative’ nature of much of what we get our heads stuck in.

Sadly, we can live with our heads stuck in the blue barrel because a lot of us have a tendency to paint our worldview (our ‘real world’) on the inside of the barrel and don’t really need to have any interest beyond what is painted there.  Because such actions often do not ‘proceed from faith’, they constitute ‘sin’.

Perhaps some of us are more like this snake with its head stuck in an energy drink can: it’s a smaller, narrower world; the snake is venomous; and it’s in pursuit of a sweet artificial energy fix.

Or perhaps we’re like this spider hoping its sinister intent is hidden by digging itself into a hole from which it cannot see the rest of the world.  Not very convincing.

SIN is both nature and product; tree and fruit; spring and water.  And as apostle James, Jesus’ brother, noted in his letter (in the negative): fig trees cannot bear olives; grapevines cannot bear figs; and salt springs cannot produce fresh water.  In stating the obvious (negative) he intends to affirm the opposite (positive): fig trees bear figs; olive trees bear olives; grapevines bear grapes; ‘bad springs’ produce bad water; and ‘fresh springs’ produce good water.  Conversely, as Jesus himself noted, you can tell the nature of a tree by what fruit grows on it.


Both are intended as parable – a short story of a life illustration that teaches us something important for our lives.  Primarily, it is designed to teach us a) that if we want righteous behaviour, useful and productive for life, we have to start with a redeemed, regenerated, rebooted life (and that is God’s speciality).  Which means we need the antidote to ‘sin’; and b) that if unrighteous or self-righteous behaviour is present, ‘sin’ is still in charge and the antidote has not been administered.  Obvious and uncomplicated, one would think; but apparently not.  So many times, our hubris keeps us from exploring the possible and prevents the necessary humility from rising to the surface, thus blocking our redemption, regeneration and reboot.


The old Hebrew prophet Hosea vocalises God with all-too-familiar words: “When they had pasture, they became satisfied, their hearts became proud, and as a result, they forgot me.  So like a lion I will pounce on them.”  Giving up on God because we don’t get what we want doesn’t negate God or render His teaching redundant.  But, as Paul notes in Romans 1, deliberate acts of rejecting or shunning God do lead to the deterioration of our faculties to perceive God or be influenced by His Spirit.  The eternal principle holds true: you reap what you sow.

Next: preferring religion over relationship

SIN > Unmasked: No Place to Hide

God as Wise Parent, Driven by Love

To those who scoff at the idea of God as loving – and it’s a very popular sport – try to imagine yourself as a parent attempting to teach your children right from wrong.  At every point, no matter how tough it gets, no matter how much protesting there is, is it not true that your entire motivation is love?  It is love that speaks the truth even when it is hard to hear – or even harder to speak!  It is love that insists on not being ‘wishy-washy’ in the face of mocking and abuse.  And if you are capable of that kind of love, surely you are also capable of understanding that God can and does love you in the same way?

In my frame of reference, one of the most profound and beautiful statements of God’s love is in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Before you read it, take another SELAH (a ‘pause and consider’ break).  Are we not proving that we are a ‘corrupt tree’ (thus producing bad fruit) when we arrogantly tell God we will not listen to His words of wisdom and correction; and when we stubbornly refuse to admit that we might be afflicted by sin as we have seen it here?

And even if you don’t want to hear me out, please hear Paul out.  He understood better than most the corruption of the human heart.  Before he became a disciple of Jesus; and before he was set apart as an apostle to the Western world; he hated and persecuted Jesus’ disciples and had them thrown into prison or murdered.  Before he could be the man he needed to be, he had to admit what he then wrote down for all the world to hear: “For God has bound all men over to disobedience [i.e. we are all guilty] so that He may have mercy on them all.”  What a profound and beautiful statement of God’s love towards us!

God and Jesus and Paul well understood that there is no being healed of a sin nature without first admitting that it is real and present.  If there is a ‘real and present danger’ we all need to be aware of and terrified of, it is this: the human nature is fractured and produces bad fruit.  Most parents (and teachers) understand they don’t have to teach children bad behaviour (unrighteousness); but they do have to teach good behaviour (righteousness).  And it is not a matter of weighing scales with good on one side and bad on the other and hoping the good outweighs the bad.  Sin comes from a sinful nature.

Speaking the truth

God is more concerned about the sin nature problem; while we’re more concerned about appearances and sins (acts), while excusing the sin tree by insisting that people can’t – don’t! – change: ‘once a _____; always a _____.  So, as a loving parent, God insists that we know and experience the truth – the truth about ourselves and the truth about His love and mercy.

So... In God’s eyes, ‘we all’ have been “consigned to disobedience” so that His mercy can reach ‘us all’.  God doesn’t play favourites; His mercy is wide open to all who will own up to the sin nature within them that produces the sins in their lives – and who will act like the younger son in the story Jesus told in the gospel by Luke, chapter 15:

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.”

If we can find the humility to put ourselves on the same page as God – to agree with His assessment of us – that is a true ‘new beginning’!  Hubris is doing the precise opposite.

And God’s response is just like the response of the father in the story:

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.  The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  ‘But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick!  Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’  So they began to celebrate.”

Typically, christians don’t like God’s strategy: we want to punish ‘bad behaviour’ and deprive fellow-humans of grace, until they learn their ‘lesson’ – or maybe not at all.  Yet it is the very definition of grace that it cannot be earned – only given and received.

And one of the most important lessons for ‘us all’ to learn is that we have no right or authority to condemn when God doesn’t; and this is precisely the ‘scandal’ many simply cannot live with.  To many of us, God must be stupid; but that’s because our understanding is lacking, not God’s; we see things our way, not God’s.  [Check out Isaiah 55:8-9]

This is the journey that takes ‘us all’ from condemnation to celebration.  The Father, filled with compassion, runs to meet the son to welcome him and escort him back home.  So Paul was right again when he said, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s stop being lazy and take the journey – together – without condemnation!

Next: mankind’s web of relationship.

SIN > Unmasked: Tree and Fruit

Sin is both Tree and Fruit

>> NEW SERIES BEGINS HERE


Unfortunately for many many people the world over, sin is defined as bad behaviour; immorality; evil actions. Why ‘unfortunately’? Because, apart from its being a serious misunderstanding (and highly stereotypical), it actually works against the whole process of the good news of Jesus and against the very reasons we invoke the word in our language. Most often we use the word within a context of wanting to change behaviour – to reform actions, situations, laws, etc. But when we use an extremely limited definition like this, people very often respond in one or both of two ways: scorn the people and the ideas they are trying to communicate; retreat into a position of comparing: ‘but I’m not as bad as him or her.’

From a theological standpoint, when we define sin this way, it makes a mockery of the biblical concept that “all have sinned and fall short of God’s intent”.  All it does is take us to a place of judging and finger-pointing – both of which are specifically forbidden as acceptable pursuits for Jesus’ people.  So, when ‘christians’ measure people against this false definition of sin, they will most probably be sinning themselves by either judging or pointing the finger, or both.  Apostle Paul once said, “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12).  Is it any wonder ‘hypocrite’ is a common tag used to describe some who call themselves christians? And some such people actually wear the tag ‘hypocrite’ as a badge of honour.

Again unfortunately, this approach is mostly due to serious laziness on the part of people who seem to think they have a God-given right to be presumptuous, arrogant, obnoxious and belligerent.  Anyway, enough with the arrogant laziness!  Let me invite us all to a pause.  An old Jewish word comes to us in English as ‘SELAH’.  In poetic writing, it is used to draw the reader into a pause; to stop for however long it takes to meditate on what was written before the pause and reflect on its life implications for the reader him/herself.  Pause and consider!

So, before we waste any more time, effort and money proverbially ‘putting our foot in our mouth’, let us pause and consider.  The laziness I am talking about is the fact that many of us are far too ready to buy into someone else’s bad ideas and start preaching them because they sound appealing to us.  Indeed, they are appealing: they appeal to our lower nature; our poor self; our tendency to buy a ‘canned’ product instead of making our own.

At the root of all of this is one of the horrible traits of our human nature: to divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’.  It is the opposite of an inferiority complex – it is a superiority complex.  The words may not be there, but the attitude is: ‘I am better than you.’  There is little recognition or ownership of a ‘common humanity’: ‘I know your struggles; I am, in some ways, like you.’  Whether we want to admit it or not, the superior attitude is pride, pure and simple. Could it not be that this is an even greater ‘sin’ than judging and pointing the finger?

How do we come upon an answer to that?  My suggestion is that, when we bother to ‘SELAH’ a bit, we will not only be changed by what we discover, we will find answers to this question and much more.

And since many who use this false definition of sin go by the name ‘christian’ and call on the bible to back themselves up, I will refer to the treasured bible.

First, in the words of Jesus recorded by Matthew (chapter 7), Jesus plainly believed and taught that the actions in a person’s life are like grapes on a vine and like fruit on a tree.  You know the nature and quality of the tree or the vine by the fruit it produces.  Many Westerners do not think like this.  Instead, they insist that the tree or vine is perfectly fine (somebody told me it was ‘perfectly fine’); if it bears bad or inappropriate fruit, the fault lies somewhere else besides the host plant.  There are many applications of what Jesus was saying, but one point in particular is this: a grape vine produces grapes, not passionfruit; an apple tree produces apples, not oranges.  Likewise, evil actions come from a fractured person – despite how much the person protests their innocence.  Sin actions are the ‘fruit’ of a sin ‘tree’.  Consequently, while the actions may be nasty, the real problem is the fractured life from which they come.

Second, Paul the great apostle taught the principles of Jesus like this: “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like ...” (Galatians 5:19-21, emphasis added).  Behind every sin is, in fact, a sinful nature, just as behind every grape is a grape vine and behind every apple is an apple tree.  It is a law of nature.  And Paul didn’t stop there.  He then went on to apply the same principle of this ‘law of nature’ in the positive: what are the actions of an UN-sinful nature?  He describes the ‘un-sinful nature’ as a person pulsating with the life and the DNA of the Spirit of God: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).  When the life of God is truly present, this is the fruit – emphatically!  Then he adds a couple extra truths for good measure: 1) the fruit of the sinful nature disqualifies a person from the Kingdom of God; 2) there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit.  Have a good look around: are there laws against joy, peace, patience, kindness etc?

And what about James, the brother of Jesus?  In his words: “My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?  Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water” (James 3: 12). By implication, the presence of salt water indicates a salt spring; the presence of olives indicates an olive tree; the presence of figs indicates a fig tree; and the presence of grapes indicates a grape vine.

My point is that the popular definition of sin focuses almost exclusively on the bad visible actions of people. While this might be popular, it is profoundly counter-productive.  First, it produces little positive response from ‘them’; second, it draws ‘us’ into a position of self-righteousness on the one hand and judgement and pointing the finger and pride on the other. Nobody is better off; and ‘we’ are all worse off.

So, let’s all just stop being lazy.  Search the scriptures you say you believe and follow; and when you do, you will find another way.  A biblical definition of sin, consistent with the notion of the tree that bears corresponding fruit, informs us that there are three basic ideas involved: crossing a line; missing the mark; and living by sight.

Human nature is such that there is not a single person alive or dead who is not marked in some way by one or more of these ideas of sin.  ‘We’ are all tarnished in one way or another. Some of us have a strong tendency to ‘cross the line’.  Even when we don’t particularly want to, we find ourselves drawn to ‘break the law’; sometimes just because the law is there.  We often hear it said, ‘‘the law was made to be broken” and “the law is an ass”.

Others of us have a strong tendency to failure; we disappoint people either because we cannot believe that we have any right to succeed or because we think that success brings responsibilities we do not want or feel we are not ready for.  We ‘fall short’ so often.  We often hear it said: “that’s not good enough” or ‘‘you don’t measure up”.

And others of us regularly find ourselves asking ourselves, ‘‘why did I do that?”; ‘‘where did that come from?”  We might hear it said (or we might say it ourselves), “Jeez, you’re a real jerk!” (or something far worse).  Things in our lives come from a ‘dark place’ we didn’t know existed and do not know much about.

We have no right to be judging and condemning one another’s behaviour, yet we do it so often.  And we do it despite Jesus’ question, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”  By contrast, even though God is the one who has the right to judge and condemn, He is understanding and tender and patient and allows us the space to be honest with ourselves and admit that, on at least one of these points, we are guilty.

Whether we like it or not, we all have a ‘plank in our own eye’ but prefer to focus on the ‘speck of sawdust’ in someone else’s eye.  If we are brutally honest, we are probably guilty on all points.  Of course, some of us are truly narcissistic – which really means we have some serious blind-spots; but, as is the nature of blind-spots, other people see them but we don’t.  Are these ‘unknown knowns’?  Furthermore, we have a creeping virus in Australia: something is only “wrong” if you get caught; and its flip-side – if you can manage things to not get caught, you are a “success”.

There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’; there is only ‘we all’.

And that is precisely what our precious bibles tell us, isn’t it: “All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God” (Paul writing to the Romans, chapter 3:23).  All: not just some. All: not just those who cannot find what it takes to ‘think positively’ about oneself or who don’t have the wherewithal to buy their righteousness.

The judging, condemning, pointing the finger, proud attitude of many who say they are christians just proves them wrong – very, very wrong.

Am I saying then that we should not talk about sin?  By no means; what I am saying is that ‘we all’ need a SELAH so that God can poke His word in amongst our noise and teach us what sin really is, because ‘we all’ need that redefinition.  And whoever we are, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves (but without condemnation) if we are to be sound, sane, functional people.

Next: God as “wise parent”.

Jesus and the Old Covenant

Jesus contradicted the Old Testament scriptures at least six times.

Recommended blog post by Keith Giles

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keithgiles/2018/02/6_times_jesus_contradicted_ot/

Here’s a few really important words from apostle Paul.

When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4)

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.  Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.  Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5)

And where do we get off preaching condemnation – as the pharisees did – when ...

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.  For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. (Romans 8)

And in case we have forgotten, some words from Jesus Christ himself on how this other life comes about …

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”  Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again'. (John 3)

We love quoting and preaching John 3:16, but what about John 3:17 ...

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant - Postscript

How trying to achieve new covenant ends by old covenant means makes life rather complicated and topsy-turvy.

Postscript 1:

Being a skilled and famous rugby player does not make a person a sage when it comes to matters of spiritual life.  The Church’s standard line on heaven and hell is old covenant.  The very idea of religion as we know it is old covenant.  The notion that we humans have some need to determine that another person is going to hell, or to heaven, is old covenant.  The felt need to ‘preach’ that notion is playing to old covenant fetishes.

The church’s “gospel” is not the new covenant good news of Jesus but the old covenant bad news of judgement and hubris.  The church’s bible takes the old covenant documents of Israel and makes them a rule book for the new covenant era.  And it takes the new covenant documents and turns them into an extension of the old covenant up to the present.  Jesus is read as if he preached a new religion that is an extension of Israel’s covenant.

I remember in my mid-to-late teens being baptised by the elders in our local church and then finding this thing happened a bit like Luke’s gospel describes concerning Jesus: after he was baptised by John, Jesus returned to his home region “in the power of the Spirit”.  News about him spread and he attended the synagogue where he was teaching and being “praised by all”.  Smiles all round; this ‘son’ of theirs was not rebelling – he was baptised; he was attending synagogue; he was demonstrating a good knowledge of the scriptures; and he was taking early steps as a leader in the congregation.  The mums and dads and the synagogue leaders would be pleased indeed.

Luke notes that “all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, ‘Is this not Joseph’s son?’”  I remember being Cliff and Em’s son and being watched and followed by admiring eyes and words of praise.  But it only lasts until you say something their ears don’t want to hear.  One Sabbath, he turns up at the synagogue, reads some scripture and makes some comments – with the result that “...all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.”

We love being ‘praised by all’ in church; but it usually ends badly.  Young upstarts find ‘all’ turn on them if they stray outside expected norms, boundaries and expectations.

This is all the stuff of what apostle Paul fought against in his travels and troubles.  He was continually harassed by old covenant stalwarts until they succeeded in having him killed.  He won the skirmish in Acts 15 but, overall, lost the war: old covenant rules the Church.

A certain rugby player needs to stop listening to the pharisees who are teaching him how to be a good pharisee, and try going ‘into the wilderness’ for a while, alone with God, to be taught what the new covenant is and what it means.  That would be a good time to rip the bible into its two parts, leave the first part behind, and start reading the second part – without the alleged help of historic religion and relying entirely upon God to be instructor and teacher.

A good place to start would be Paul writing to his disciple Timothy whom he commissioned to go to Ephesus and build up the congregation there:

... remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men [rugby player maybe] not to teach strange doctrines, not to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.  [But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.]  For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion though they want to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

Beware of being instructed by such men!  If Paul could be in the same space as these men today, he would, if he were true to what we know of him in the new testament, be challenging them with the same force and heat as he challenged the pharisees of his day.  Likewise, if Aquila and Priscilla were in that space, they would be taking them aside as they did for Apollos (Acts 18) and “explained to him the way of God more accurately.”

Believing something is by no means the same thing as preaching it – or feeling the need to preach it.  They are two separate issues.  And this is especially important when what you believe is not simply incomplete but off track and counter-productive.  Luke who wrote Acts recounts Saul (who later became Paul) breathing hellfire and brimstone throughout the region until Jesus himself (post-resurrection) dealt him a severe blow, knocked him off his horse, and fully turned him around 180 degrees.  Paul himself recounts this experience when called before the authorities.

Here we are in 2019 and still fumbling around trying to deal with “freedom of religion” issues; and legal experts have weighed into the debate.  A few days after writing this section, ABC News ran a piece by their national sport editor David Mark in which he cites a number of legal eagles proposing what might come next in the Israel Folau saga.  One expert is well-known employment lawyer Josh Bornstein of Maurice Blackburn.  Bornstein is quoted as saying,

Folau will say 'the Act protects me from sacking because of my religion and that protection should extend to expressing my religious beliefs', notwithstanding anything in any contract or any disciplinary process or any social media policy that Rugby Australia or any other employer has. [My bolding added]

It will be most interesting to see how this plays out.  As a theologian and not a lawyer, I don’t accept that premise and I don’t think it is either sensible or reasonable.  But is the law capable or competent to rule against someone being in-sensible and un-reasonable?  If it were, the U.S. President would be in real strife.

However, as a supposed ‘bible-believing’ Christian, Folau ought to be able to self-discipline his tongue based on clear instructions from Jesus and new testament writers Paul, James, Peter and John.  Pet doctrines are not to be used as canonical precepts to be forced on people as means of social control.  Just because any of the new testament writers said something and it’s recorded for posterity, that doesn’t make it a subject for random, judgemental preaching.  Neither Jesus nor the first apostles acted that way.  We act as if God is incompetent and needs us to do His work for Him.

In essence, theologically speaking, believing something controversial does not convey or transmit the right to express it for the purpose of bringing other humans into conformity to it.  Furthermore, the concepts of heaven and hell as we know them are glaring travesties; and anyone not factoring in that travesty is being very disingenuous – not to mention being jingoistic and somewhat dangerous.

Like Apollos, if you keep preaching a deformed and incomplete message, that is the message your ‘disciples’ will, without fail, repeat.  God is the God of the new covenant.  If you want people to be reconciled to God, you'll be feeding them the new covenant not old covenant BS.  And I’m not the only one who has plenty of resources available online to counter the mountains of Church BS that is lying around.  See Mosaic and God Without Religion.

I urge people to stop using fame to pedal a cheap and nasty message of old covenant law that is – and has been for 2000 years – blocking and resisting the distribution of the good news of the new covenant kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.  The message of sin and hell evokes entirely the wrong response from hearers; one does not evoke adoration and worship from a message of fear and loathing, but of freedom and redemption.

The heaven and hell being preached in so many places is just a dodgy backyard version of the truth, and doesn’t carry much weight with God.   Invoking God and calling him to judge by our systems and standards is putting ourselves as much in line for judgement as those we preach at.

Try 'jumping out of the fishbowl'.