GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

The Correct Diagnosis

Back in 1986, I knew a woman named Nancylee who began to realize she was seriously sick. Nancylee had been suffering from a nagging cough, which she attributed to a particularly hard bout with bronchitis. But then that seemed to go on for over 3 months. So, she went to the doctor's office. He said she had a problem in her esophagus, for which he recommended sleeping in an elevated position. This only made her increasingly tired, and she felt no better. So she went to another doctor, who said she was just fatigued. He couldn't find the problem either, although he looked very hard. Through all these various visits to the doctors, she kept coughing. At least a year passed. She checked with all the specialists at Stanford, at one of the great medical facilities in the world ... even they couldn't isolate the problem. She kept coughing, and her energy level kept waning. Her boyfriend of seven years couldn't take it any more, so he left her for a younger, more healthy woman. Finally, in May of 1989, the doctors discovered that she had lung cancer. But their diagnosis was too late to save her. She died on September 4, 1989, just four days after her last granddaughter was born.

Why do I tell you this tragic story? Because in many ways she personified humanity in sin. Humanity is deeply sick. It continually coughs, and has been coughing since just after creation. Many doctors have come along with many diagnoses, the latest ones being Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, and others from various perspectives with differing diagnoses of the sicknesses that ail America. But like the lung cancer that eluded Nancylee's doctors, the real sickness of humanity eludes nearly everyone. Not only the sicknesses of humanity, but each of us personally has some "sicknesses," mostly not physical, but attitudinal and spiritual, that are rooted deeply in our own sin. Our real sickness boils down to S-I-N. And talking about sin is not in vogue much in the "tolerant" years of the end of the 20th century. But until each of us accepts the diagnosis of sin, there can be no hope for individual cure. To understand, accept, respect and begin to rejoice in God's great news, we have to understand, accept, respect and begin to mourn Man's great problem. Today, I want to look with you in summary over the material we have been studying over the past few weeks in regards to this sickness called S-I-N.

To begin our diagnosis of man's great problem, let's consider the definitions of sin we have been developing out of Rom. 1:18-3:20.

Definition of Sin: The Correct Diagnosis

As we have been studying, we have discovered that sin is a malady of the heart that makes us deeply self-centered, deluding us into believing we are self-sufficient apart from God. Sin is when we say to God, "I Don't Need You!" Man's self thus exchanges places with God in man's heart: God as the focal point of his worship is removed that he may worship the self; God as judge and arbiter of truth is removed in lieu of the self as judge and final authority; God as our hope and confidence is removed as we extol the virtues of self-confidence and self-sufficiency. Man is thoroughly independent and deeply rebellious, and his pride seeks everywhere to elevate the self and denigrate God. Certainly we can see this not only in ourselves, but in every sector of our culture. Our currency states "In God We Trust," but the reality of our hyper-materialistic culture is more "In Money We Trust," thus replacing the ideal of trust in God with trust in a paltry substitute.

Sin is all about "bad trades." Three of these bad trades are illustrated in Rom. 1:21-32: man "exchanged" the glory of God for worship of the self; man "exchanged" the truth of God for the lie; men and women "exchanged" natural sexual expression for same-sex relations directly anti-nature and the way they were made. Sin is the "bad trade" chronicled all through the Bible. Adam and Eve traded intimacy with God in paradise for a "blue light special" to be like God by eating some fruit: bad trade. Cain traded an opportunity to honestly relate with a God who wanted to talk with him, for a life of wandering alone in a wilderness: bad trade. Esau traded his priceless birthright in the family of faith for a bowl of red porridge: bad trade. David traded his intimacy with God and the worldwide honor given to God through him for a fling with another man's wife that resulted in the Lord's enemies blaspheming His name: bad trade. And men and women today have countless daily opportunities to listen to God, but are too tuned into TV, radio, boomboxes, the telephone and each other to ever find the quiet to listen to Him: bad trade. Satan is the worst of used car salesmen: he offers very bad trades, and accepting them is sin.

May we remember two words in the moment of temptation: "BAD TRADE." May our Lord refocus our attention on the great good we trade away when we sin, that we may not sin against Him. Joseph in Gen. 39 is the towering Biblical example of how to understand sin in the moment of temptation. And his was a mighty temptation indeed. He was a young, exiled and lonely Hebrew man probably between 18-20 years of age. He had to eat his meals alone, because the Egyptians wouldn't eat with Hebrews. I despise eating alone; imagine his intense loneliness! Yet he had experienced great success in Potiphar's household because God was with him. Potiphar was the captain of Pharaoh's guard, a high ranking official, and thus his wife was probably one of the great beauties of the world, a woman schooled in the ways of beauty and attraction. And this beauty cast her lustful eye on Joseph, asking him to sleep with her. Imagine that temptation, for a man at the peak of his hormones, a terribly lonely man; yet Joseph saw the sin for what it was. He wouldn't trade his relationship with his master, the trust placed in him as steward, and his intimacy with his God for a moment of pleasure that was sin against his God. Joseph saw the bad trade for what it was; he didn't listen to Potiphar's wife.

The problem is that we rarely see all of this as clearly as Joseph did, especially in the foggy moment of temptation. This is because sin is also revealed in the cover-up of truth that Paul mentioned in Rom. 1:18, when he said that men "suppress the truth in unrighteousness." God says that His truth is fairly trumpeted forth on a daily basis internally through our conscience, and externally through creation. The problem is that we don't listen, and eventually the insidious self-delusional aspect of sin convinces us that we are hearing nothing anyway, that absolute rights and wrongs are a thing of our overly moral past, that sin is not a fashionable term for today, etc. C. S. Lewis paints a moving portrait of the foggy aspects of sin obscuring the truth in his fourth book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair. In that book, a Prince of Narnia, a boy and girl from Earth, and a gloomy Narnian Marsh-wiggle are caught in the underground kingdom of a witch, and she placed them under a spell. The witch first made a heavy perfume fill the air, making them dreamlike and sleepy. Then she began strumming a mandolin-like instrument with a steady, monotonous tone. Then she began weaving her lies, calling into question everything they knew to be true: in their dreamlike fog she deluded them into thinking there is no sun, there is no Narnia, there is no Aslan. Sin is like that dreamlike fog, obscuring the truth about God and ourselves. To be "under sin" is to be under complete delusion.

Paul further characterizes sin as a malady that infects our entire bodies from head to toe and back to the head again. Paul diagnosed that malady like a modern physician, in his poem in Rom. 3:13-18, looking at the symptoms of sin in the throat like an open grave, the deceiving tongues, the asp-poisoned lips, the mouth full of cursing and bitterness, the feet that are swift to shed blood but cannot find the path of peace, and the eyes that have no fear of God. THIS is the correct diagnosis: humanity is deeply sick with the malady of sin, infecting each one of us individually and corporately infecting us all like the worst plague the world has ever known.

Finally, I appreciate J. I. Packer's simple definition of the depravity of man, the official name for the doctrine of sin in theological circles: "Not that in every point man is as bad as he could be, but that in every point man is not as good as he should be." This statement is truly incontrovertible: who can argue the simple truth of that clear synopsis of Rom. 1:18-3:20?

So, we have these definitions of sin, and hopefully we have had the fog removed a bit to understand what sin is. But our question in today's study is this: why is it important to understand sin?

First we will answer this question at the global level, in regards to how we view life and the human condition in our world. Then we will look at why it is important to understand sin on a more personal level, why my sin matters to me.

When we understand sin, we can understand the human condition

Scholars, philosophers, playwrights, artists, and religious men and women across time have been trying to describe the human condition. Just what is the human condition? Is it inherently good or bad, or the mixture of both? Is there anything more than what we can see with our eyes? If we change our governmental institutions or our environment, will the human condition likewise change? These are some of the timeless questions we human like to ask.

In general, most philosophers conclude either with a sense of overweening optimism, like we saw in Europe during the Renaissance and then during the Enlightenment, or with a smothering pessimism like we have seen in the nihilism of the 20th century. Let me give you two examples of how we as humans have tried to make sense of the human condition, one in the overly optimistic sense, and one in the overly pessimistic sense.

On the optimistic side, one of the most influential philosophers writing in the years preceding the American and French Revolutions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote a monumental work that fueled both of those revolutions. It was entitled The Social Contract. His work began with the famous phrase, "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains." Rousseau then outlines a governmental system of mutual respect and cooperation in which man's political liberty could be preserved. This was a very optimistic view of man: if we have the right political system, then man will flourish. And on the political plane, this has a great deal of merit. But, it never once addresses the deeper problem of the individual, the problem of sin. A political system or a governmental institution cannot change the human heart. In fact, looking at the human heart as honestly and openly as Paul does in Rom. 1:18-3:20 leads Paul to contend that man was born in sin. Thus Rousseau says "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains;" while Paul says "Man was born in sin, and true freedom comes only from faith in Jesus Christ." Thus, the optimism of Rousseau, how ever much it may have done for humanity in a political sense, has done little for us in terms of our hearts.

On the pessimistic side, Shakespeare describes the human condition as bleakly as it has been portrayed anywhere in his tragedy Macbeth:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps on this pretty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

But over and against the overweening optimism of Rousseau that fails to address the deeper problem, and over and against this "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury," is Paul's perfectly balanced and utterly realistic diagnosis of the human condition in Rom. 1-3, with God's glorious solution to that problem in Rom. 3-8. When the rest of humanity is either overly optimistic or too pessimistic, missing the truth in the middle, Paul preaches the truth of the human condition in sin and the glory of God's forgiveness of sin through faith in Jesus Christ. The truth Paul preaches is not just his own truth, contrived in his own mind; it is God's unflinching assessment of humanity, giving us this bleak bad news in Rom. 1-3, because He has revealed tremendous great news in the cross of Jesus Christ and through the indwelling Holy Spirit in Rom. 3-8. More than anything we can read from any human author, philosopher or scholar, what Paul tells us in Romans cuts honestly with the truth, both with the bad news and with the great news.

When we understand sin, we have truth to describe human evil and violence

I am an avid reader of the national newsmagazines, especially TIME. Over the last few years, I have noticed that once or twice a year, TIME will run a cover story deploring the terrible state of evil rampant in our world, and the article will invariably be filled with profound questions with few or only pithy answers. It is as though our media wrings its hands about human evil and violence, but we have lost the capacity even to describe it, much less to consider solutions to the problem.

In fact, Newsweek last year came to just the same conclusion. Here is Newsweek's reflection on Satan and sin in an article in the Nov. 13, 1995, issue entitled "Do We Need Satan?":

"Throughout most of Western history, the Devil was both familiar and feared. Jesus was tempted by him. Saint Anthony wrestled with him. Luther mocked him but trembled in his presence. For the Puritans of New England, Satan was never just a metaphor for evil: he was Evil personified, an intimate cosmic presence transcending individual sins and sinners. In Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' his story achieved the status of a Western classic.

Then came the Enlightenment, with its sunny view of human nature and distaste for the supernatural. Almost overnight, the figure of Satan vanished like a nightmare from the moral imagination of the West. (Voltaire proclaimed 'Paradise Lost' 'a disgusting fantasy.') Sin, too, gradually disappeared from public consciousness. In today's post-Enlightenment, postmodern culture, words like good and evil are often deemed too judgmental for public discourse. Even from pulpits, sin receives only mumbled acknowledgment..."

We should weep that the pulpits of America were called into account by ultra-liberal Newsweek!! But Newsweek had it dead right: when we no longer speak of sin, when we no longer have a well-defined category for human evil and a word to define the trigger for human violence, we are left wringing our hands like the writers at TIME. And it is from the pulpit that the bad news of sin needs to be spoken of clearly, without compromise. By God's grace, sin will be described Biblically, clearly, without compromise from this pulpit; it will be given more than just a "mumbled acknowledgment."

Thus, it is important to understand sin, so that we have a framework for understanding human evil and violence. As Paul tells us in Rom. 3:9, "all are under sin," and he illustrates this through the ubiquity of human violence in Rom. 3:15-17: "Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace have they not known." The key to understanding human evil and violence is understanding human sin.

When we understand sin, we can begin to understand human suffering

Since we can understand human evil and violence through understanding sin, so we can begin to comprehend human suffering through comperhending sin. Living in a fallen world marred and scarred by the effects of sin, we can see how much suffering is ushered in by sin: suffering in terms of the victims of human violence and evil such as the victims of the Holocaust; suffering in terms of the consequences my own sin brings down on my own head; suffering in terms of the pain that comes from sicknesses rampaging through humanity because our bodies are physically fallen and we live in a fallen world. Sin is the great root problem of humanity, and every human sufferer feels the direct or indirect bite of sin.

I was faced with this very personally this week as I received Steve's heartbreaking note that his medicine regulating the chemical imbalance in his brain was no longer effective, and that he was going off that medication to prepare to take yet one more new drug. Here is one of the best, most merciful and most compassionate men I have ever met facing two weeks of hellish torment. Here is his precious wife, a saint among us, having yet again to tread the road of ultimate uncertainty. Here is a man who has suffered immensely, who laments "such a dysfunctional life," as he calls it. Yet I look upon this man in whom I see the glory of Christ, and this woman in whom I see the steadfast power of Christ, and I see a king and queen under wraps, as C. S. Lewis used to say. I hate sin. I loath the fact that Steve and Kris suffer because Steve's body functions imperfectly in a fallen way in an imperfect and fallen world. I don't pretend to understand the depth of the agony of Steve and Kris' suffering; but by understanding sin, I can begin to understand human suffering.

In our last study, I listed a tally of the millions of men, women and children who have perished in the massacres and attempted genocides of the 20th century. Considering the staggering numbers, reaching almost 100 million people, we gasp and grasp for some way to comprehend the magnitude of this suffering and evil. Understanding sin, how it is the catalyst of human evil and violence, and the cause of human suffering, gives us a basic framework for beginning to understand human suffering. I say beginning here because human suffering has been truly understood by only One Man in history: a perfect man hanging on a bloody cross, a lover rejected by all whom He loved, an innocent victimized by ultimate injustice. Only He fully understands human suffering, having become sin for us on the cross.

When we understand sin, we are not confused by worldly religions/philosophies

Understanding sin also helps us to sort our way through the "vanity fair" of world religions and philosophies here at the end of the 20th century. A religion's doctrine of sin and atonement for sin is THE watershed issue separating truth from error. Most religions are increasingly vague about personal sin, if they recognize it at all. Sin has essentially disappeared in the New Age religions, and in the neo-Paganism gaining a foothold throughout our country. Other religions offer a more legalistic approach to the problem of sin, such as Islam, Mormonism, and Catholicism, where doing the right religious behaviors are meant to atone for sin. How many "Hail Marys" does it take to find forgiveness? How many prayers need to be said on a carpet facing Mecca? Does any of that really address the sin issue in the heart?

Other religions offer spiritualized solutions to the problem of sin that downplay the importance of sin. The bad karma of Buddhism that comes back to bite you may simply be a reformulation of the "you reap what you sow" principle found in the Bible. "You reap what you sow" as a stand-alone principle becomes just an ethic to follow when it is separated from the more rigorous system of atoning sacrifices of Leviticus and the cross of Christ. Furthermore, the system of reincarnating oneself into higher and higher physical/spiritual states in Hinduism sounds nice, but it doesn't treat sin very seriously, to say the least. In that system, if you are a sinner you simply get a second chance, only this time you may return as a frog and have to work your way back up the ladder. But in the end, nirvana awaits everyone at the top of the ladder. Such a "three steps forward, two steps back" system fails to treat the "two steps back" very seriously.

But Christianity and the Person and work of Jesus Christ stand alone in addressing the thorny problem of sin very directly in a historically founded and observable framework, through the four affidavits known as the four Gospels. They are eye-witness accounts of the cross of Christ, the way God chose in history to atone for all humanity's sin from the dawn of time to the end of time. Christianity alone has a thoroughgoing and historically verifiable approach to the problem of sin. Its historicity is one of its unique and crucial tenets, setting it apart from other religions. That is why Paul often calls upon the Prophets as historically rooted witnesses verifying his message. In sum, Christianity's view of sin has stood the test of time and believability, unlike any other religion or philosophy ... don't be confused by counterfeits. Whenever you hear of a "hot" new philosophy or religion, look at how sin is dealt with and you will see if it cuts straight with the truth of man's great problem. If it doesn't deal with sin at the cross of Christ, this "hot" new idea is nothing more than hot air.

When we understand sin, only then can we begin to understand life on this globe

Speaking on a global level, understanding sin is the only avenue to follow in beginning to understand life on this globe. Paul characterizes humanity as existing in a dense fog, where truth is suppressed and man eagerly seeks for his own way rather than looking for God's way. Men "suppress the truth in unrighteousness," in Rom. 1:18, and "there is none who understands, there in none who seeks for God; all have turned aside ..." in Rom. 3:11, 12. Until we understand sin, and admit that sin is our problem as well as everyone else's problem, we cannot even begin to understand life. More pointedly, until we understand sin, we don't fathom the eternal peril we are under in this life, when we are living in sin without asking forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ.

This reminds me of driving into church on Tuesday morning. I was coming in very early, from about 5:45-6:00 AM. The fog was very dense along the road, especially in the foggy bottoms when the road dipped into a valley with a creek running through it. As anyone knows who has ever driven in fog, driving in fog is tricky in two ways: first of all, your vision is greatly impaired, your visibility is limited to just a few feet in front of the nose of your car, and thus you have a difficult time in knowing where you are going. Certainly your ultimate destination is obscured from view; in fact, twenty feet ahead is obscured from your view. When you are driving in fog, your vision is severely limited. The second problem is a bit more insidious: at first you are very cautious about driving in the fog, but then you see that you are going forward the way you normally do, only with impaired vision. This gives you a false sense of security. Soon you are doing in the fog the same speed you are doing in the clear. This is where driving in the fog results in the terrible pile-ups we read about in the newspaper. Driving in the fog is dangerous, although we get lulled into thinking it is not. Driving in the fog reminds me of living in sin, without recognizing the danger of living in sin. Most people in our world are driving in the fog of sin, failing to realize how truly dangerous it is. They are careening forward at a breakneck pace; their vision is impaired; their end is obscured from view; and they are lulled into a false security that they will get where they want to go in the end. How dangerous to drive recklessly and unknowingly in a fog!

So, we have considered how important it is to understand sin on a global level, how understanding sin helps us to understand life on this globe. But what about understanding sin on a more personal level? Why is it important for me to understand my sin?

When I understand sin, only then can I begin to understand myself

First of all, the key to understanding myself as a human being is understanding myself as a human being under sin. Certainly one of the greatest tragedies described by Paul in Rom. 1:18-3:20 is how self-deluded we become because of sin. Sin leads us right into the dark room of denial, whereby we deny our sinful condition. But this dark room of denial is only the foyer to where sin really leads us: sin leads us into a hall of trick mirrors where our vision of ourself becomes hopelessly skewed toward the positive, even as the facts show the reality to be quite negative. In Rom. 1:22, Paul says that those who quit honoring God and giving Him thanks quickly developed a totally skewed, overly optimistic view of the self: "professing to be wise, they became fools." Sin deludes us into thinking we are greater than we are. Being under sin means living in a fog of self-delusion. Stated another way, until I admit my own sin, I will never see myself clearly.

About a year ago, I had dinner with a man in his 40s whose marriage was exploding apart, largely due to his fooling around with a 19-year-old daughter of a neighbor. This man agreed to have dinner with me, even though he knew I was going to shoot straight with him about himself and his own sin. At dinner I listened to his story, and what he told me was all about how his parents had messed him up as a child, and how his wife had consistently emasculated him, belittling him relentlessly. Thus, in his own mind his problems were the results of his own victimization, and he was essentially justified in his behavior. Nothing was his own problem to take responsibility for. He saw himself in a positive light, as a victim who was finally trying to get a little happiness for himself. But a few months later a friend of mine at our church began counselling this man's wife. Hearing the wife's side of the story and not knowing the husband, my friend began praying that God would reveal this man's character to her. Over the next few weeks, God sent my friend no fewer than ten people in this man's town who knew him and spoke to her about him, with no prompting from her. After talking with these ten people who knew this man, my friend could find no one who said one positive thing about that man. He was dishonest in business, a liar, a cheat, and a jerk to work under. Ten voices in his community saw the sick reality of who he was; but he saw himself only in a positive light. Such is the self-delusion of sin.

This is the great tragedy of sin: it not only twists us and ruins us, but it makes us blind to its ruination in our lives. I know this man's wife, and she struggles deeply with the great potential in this man: she often says, "but he's a good man ... a good father ... a good provider." But sin has effectively ruined this man, marring him into a twisted man in mid-life crisis, not knowing himself and trying to find some measure of happiness. Sin ruins us and blinds us at the same time. How I hate sin!!

Thus, only when I quit denying my sin and hiding from the reality of my sinful self can I come to really know myself. The path to self-knowledge can be found only through the portal of my personal sin.

When I understand sin, only then can I discern why my relationships often fail

Like the story of the man I just spoke of, I find that when I understand sin, I begin to understand why my relationships have such problems. Sin is the great destroyer of relationships, plain and simple. Paul says as much in Rom. 3:13-18, describing how we tear at each other through our vicious speech and through violence. Sin tears at relationships like a ravening wolf tearing at its victim. Sin is the enemy of relationships. It is not codependency, it is not false coping mechanisms, it is not women who love the men that abuse them, it is not men who love the women who dominate them, it is not men being from Mars and women being from Venus, it is just plain, old-fashioned S-I-N. All of our fancy titles and euphemistic language does little more than increase my fog, until I come back to the oldest but truest root of relational conflict: sin. When I understand sin is the root problem, then those fancy titles and psychological terms may be helpful to me, but it doesn't work the other way around.

It was thus in the garden: Adam and Eve had a breakdown in communication, Eve was thus deceived and she ate, giving the fruit to Adam who disobeyed in his eating, and thus sin entered their unself-conscious bliss and made them see themselves. Couples have had a hard time getting their eyes off the self and onto the other ever since, because of the same problem Adam and Eve had: sin. It makes perfect logical sense: if sin is a deep-seated self-centeredness and a pull toward self-sufficiency, think how both of those war against healthy relationships! With eyes only for the self and the meeting of my own selfish needs, how can I serve the other person and consider her needs? With a proud self-sufficiency, how can I admit my need for the help, support and love of others? Unfortunately, sin drives deep wedges in all our relationships: between us and God, separating us from Him. Between us and our spouses; between us and our children; between us and our co-workers. Sin is the great enemy of relationships.

That is why I usually conduct marital counselling along the following lines. When both the man and the woman have decided of their own free will to seek counsel, we then meet together. Then I listen to both sides of the story, which often entails the wife blaming the husband and the husband blaming the wife. After this, I ask them to go away for a week to study Matthew chapter five independently and pray and ask themselves one question: how has my own sin contributed to this problem? Then we meet and discuss their findings. Following this, I ask them to take one week to study Matthew chapter six independently and pray and ask themselves a second question: how can I forgive my spouse? This is a helpful way of dealing with marital conflict, digging up the root of sin and seeking to discover the blessing of forgiveness.

When I understand sin, only then can I know God as He really is

This is where understanding sin begins to take on a marvelously positive aspect for me personally. I find the curious paradox that the only way I can come to know my God the way He really is is to understand sin. All too often today, we create our own designer god after our own image. For many in our culture, god is who we imagine him to be: some imagine him to be like an Indian riding in the wind on a white horse; some imagine him to be like an elderly grandfather figure, the wise sage rocking on a chair on the porch ready to dispense wisdom when we ask him; others imagine god to be a god of love only, who turns a blind eye to our sin. But none of these is God the way He has revealed Himself in Scripture. Our God is a holy God, who hates sin and deals harshly with it. We mistake the fact that when love runs deep, so anger at sin runs deep. God loves us deeply, and so God is full of wrath against our sin. Paul tells us in Rom. 1:18 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Our God hates sin: your sin, my sin, and the sin placed on His Son on that terrible cross.

Throughout the Scriptures, I discover this paradox: If we see not our sin, we see not God. Likewise, when we see God, we see our own sin, like Isaiah in Is. 6:1-9 and Peter in Luke 5:1-8. We cannot relate with God according to who He really is in His holiness until the sin issue is dealt with. This is in many ways the essence of Paul's argument as if flows from the first major section beginning in Rom. 1:18 to the next major section beginning in Rom. 3:21: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness" ... "But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets." God is love, but He also is a God of wrath; God's wrath is revealed against man's unrighteousness, but God responds with His own righteousness offered to man through faith in Jesus Christ. The only way we can know God as He really is is to understand sin, and come to Him as a holy hater of sin to find His patented forgiveness of sin through faith in our Christ of the cross.

The Jews illustrate how important it is to understand the sin in our own hearts before we can truly relate with God, as Paul describes them in Rom. 2:17-29. The Jews boasted in God, but they misunderstood the sin in their own hearts. They thought that their special relationship to the Law and their special rite of circumcision gave them a special "in" with God. But they failed to grasp sin at the HEART level. Thus Paul asks them searching questions meant to reveal the sin of their heart, that they might repent and find how God circumcizes the heart through the indwelling Spirit by faith in Jesus Christ. Paul then says that the true Jew is one inwardly, by the indwelling Spirit, through circumcision of the heart, and that the Jews who claimed to know God based on external realities actually failed to know Him at all. Until we understand sin, we cannot know God.

When I understand sin, only then can I praise Jesus Christ as my crucified Savior

This is the most golden principle to me personally, because it has revolutionized my own life. Perhaps the sweetest passage in the entire Bible to me is the darkest valley of Rom. 3:9-20, set next to the shining mountain of Rom. 3:21-26, where Paul erects the cross of Christ right next to that valley of sin and shame and presents humanity's hope when humanity needs hope the most. Perhaps the sweetest two words in the entire Scripture are those two little words at the beginning of Rom. 3:21: "BUT NOW ..." By the end of Rom. 3:20, we are pronounced GUILTY!, with no recourse under the Law, our only option being to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the court and hope for an unlooked-for miracle. BUT NOW comes the great atonement of our Christ, a court appointed Advocate who takes up our case and says all penalities, fines, jail terms, have been paid up in full forever. How sweet those words are ... BUT NOW our Christ comes!!!

I have become convinced that the highest form of human expression for which we were created by God is our praise of Jesus Christ. After studying through the Psalter about a year ago, and considering how the last five Psalms, Ps. 146-150, are almost exclusively devoted to praise, I began to see that the goal of maturity is to praise Jesus Christ at all times, in all seasons, through all storms and through the sunshiny days, simply to praise Him, come what may. This is the highest form our speech can take, better than any sermon, sweeter than any song, more moving than any speech. The angels must stop and sing whenever any man, woman, boy or girl lifts their voice in praise of Jesus Christ, because it is breathtaking to see a human being expressing the glory of God vocally. But I have found in my own life that the way praise of Jesus Christ was unleashed in my own unthankful heart was through a thorough understanding of my own sin, and an even deeper understanding of the beauty of my Savior's face on the cross. That my Christ would love me at the point of my rejection of Him boggles my mind and humbles me; that my Christ would leave the glory of heaven to walk in the dung of this earth to die for me brands his love into my soul; that my Savior loves me enough to teach me this in Romans makes me want to study Romans all the more; that my Savior died for me is the glory of my life. That is why I can scarcely sing the great hymns about the cross, like "Man of Sorrows," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," etc. without tearing up. My Christ of the cross has become precious to me, and praise for Him has been loosed on my tongue, because I understood my own sin, and beheld His salvation.

When I understand sin, only then can I share the gospel effectively

The other reason I need to understand sin personally is because it makes me a far more effective witness for Jesus Christ. When we understand sin well, we develop a clear understanding of our glaring need for our Christ of the cross. The gospel takes on the quality of truly GREAT NEWS when we realize how that news alone offers us hope from the hell-on-earth of our own self-centeredness and the hell-to-come as the just penalty for our sin. Sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ takes on a new urgency when I begin to understand my neighbor's desperate need for Christ, when I remember my neighbor is driving in fog, careening toward hell. Someone needs to wave him to the side of the road and tell him news to clear the fog. In his commentary on Romans, John Stott concludes his section on Rom. 3:20 this way: "Secondly, these chapters challenge us to share Christ with others. We cannot monopolize the good news. All around us are men and women who know enough of God's glory and holiness to make their rejection of him inexcusable. They too, like us, stand condemned. Their knowledge, their religion, and their righteousness cannot save them. Only Christ can. Their mouth is closed in guilt; let our mouth be opened in testimony!" Amen and amen!!

When I understand sin and preach it, only then can I expect revival

Finally, there are many today who are praying desperately for revival in our nation as it slides more and more quickly down the slippery slope of total immorality. Don't we all yearn in our hearts to see God sweep our nation clean with true, spiritual revival?

But how will revival come? REVIVAL COMES ONLY ON THE HEELS OF SERIOUS AND RELEVANT PREACHING ON SIN. History has borne this out time and again. In fact, the greatest revival on American soil, the Great Awakening, was fueled by the famous but recently vilified sermon preached on July 8, 1741, by Jonathan Edwards, entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I read that sermon this week, and the smoke of hell seemed to waft upward from the page. It was serious preaching on sin. Moody's preaching also cut straight to the heart of sin. So did the messages of another revivalist of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield. There is a story about Whitefield, preaching in the open air to the blackest sinners in England at his time, the Kingswood coal miners. These men were terrible and violent men: they even dug up a corpse of a murderer whose suicide had cheated them out of a public execution. They were called "gin devils," "wife beaters," and sodomites. Their hearts were black with sin, and their faces were black with coal dust. It was as if they wore their sin on their black faces.

But Whitefield was touched in his heart for these poor sinners. He told a friend at dinner near Kingswood one night, "My bowels have long yearned toward the poor coal miners, who are very numerous and are as sheep without a shepherd." So, George Whitefield decided to take the unprecedented step of preaching to them in the open air near their mines. He risked imprisonment to do so. Yet he preached.

George Whitefield spoke of hell, black as a pit, of the certainty of judgment for evil done. He turned to talk of Jesus, who was the friend of tax-gatherers and sinners and came not to call upon the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He spoke of the cross, and the love of God, and brushed tears from his eyes.

Suddenly he noticed pale streaks forming on the blackened faces before him. On the young man on his right, on the old man on his left, and two scarred, depraved faces in front; "white gutters made by their tears down their black faces." Thus many of these hardened, blackened sinners were converted. It is preaching of sin, the black of the human heart set beside the white of the cross of Christ, that will bring revival. (This story about Whitefield has been synopted out of a book entitled The Family Book of Christian Values, edited by Stuart and Jill Briscoe).

Conclusion: From Diagnosis to Cure

Thus, understanding sin means having the right diagnosis of the human malady, the right assessment of man's great problem. I spoke at the beginning about all the doctors and specialists who misdiagnosed my friend Nancylee. While they were misdiagnosing her lung cancer, our gracious God was revealing to her her deeper malady of sin. Around Christmas the year before she died, she confessed her sin and she accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior. At that moment, she discovered both the right diagnosis and the only cure. That Christmas we celebrated two births: the birth of our Savior and the birth of Nancylee into the kingdom of God.

Let us take one final look at the bleak landscape of Rom. 1:18-3:20. In our Women's Bible study, Kris made an interesting observation about this whole passage: there is virtually no mention of Jesus Christ. She kept asking herself when she studied: where is Jesus in all this? She discovered a fascinating principle: Sometimes the Bible teaches us more by what it doesn't say than by what it does. In all these 64 verses describing the depravity of man, Jesus Christ is mentioned only once. Paul speaks briefly about the gospel in terms of the judgment of Jesus Christ in Rom. 2:16. What Paul paints for us in these 64 verses is a bleak landscape of a Christless world. If you have ever wondered to yourself, "What would the world have been like if Jesus Christ had never been born?", you need wonder no more. Just read Rom. 1:18-3:20. It is a spiritual wasteland of sin and self-delusion, of bad trades and rebellion against God, of human vice and violence. But it is not a world without religion: in fact, it is filled with religious moralists and those who claim to have a special relationship to God like the self-righteous Jews. It is filled with religion, but utterly devoid of Christ-filled spirituality. I travel through it like a man in the desert, desperately seeking water. How this bleak landscape makes me yearn for Christ, my Christ of the cross!

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