Transcript: Lesson 10 - The Story of Sin

Friends, Welcome back, it's good to be with you. Again, this is a little bit different venue. But as we go  into this next part of our discussion, we want to think about the story of sin. Now we've looked at how  the story of creation affects how we think about who we are as God's image bearers as male and female,  family, sexuality. And so as we look at scripture, though, what we see is that not only does God create us  good, but we see that sin affects everything. And we see this from Genesis 3 onward in Scripture. And so  part of what we're wrestling with here and trying to think through is, what is it that is good, that God has  created good, that we need to value and hold up, and what has been distorted? What has been corrupted  in terms of our sexuality, our practices, how we think how we operate in this arena of life. And so it's  very crucial to try to sort through this distinction of what is good, and what is sinful, or what is fallen.  And so when we think about trying to navigate this maze, some some questions that can kind of  highlight the nuance of the distinction that we're trying to make here. A number of different questions,  something like is sexual pleasure, the result of the fall? Now you might think, obviously, yes, or maybe  you might say, obviously, no. But what we're trying to get out here is you clearly sexual pleasure is  something that a lot of people value that they might value above many other things. That how do we  understand this? Is this something good? Is it fallen? How do we explore that dynamic? Or something  like this? Do calls for modesty, unfairly make women responsible for men's sin? In other words, that we  might often put the blame on women and say, You need to dress modestly, or men for that matter, right?  You need to dress modestly. What exactly the problem is the problem here? Is that a problem with  clothing people wear? Or is it a problem of how we look how we see other people trying to navigate this  is important sort through these things? Questions like, how should we think about various forms of  nudity? Something like public breastfeeding, or paintings or sculptures, right? You might go to an art  museum, your your kids might be in a art history section of school, and thinking, Oh, this is kind of  strange. This is not normal, that we would see naked bodies, but yet, it seems to be a part of what we see  in the history of fine art. Or even think about what kind of movies what kind of TV, you watch. How do  we distinguish a kind of nudity that maybe points to the goodness of creation, versus nudity that draws  on the distortion that comes there, because of our sin, because of the the way that we look at people as  objects to, to grasp, to use for our own ends, rather than understanding people as image bearers created  in God's image? closely linked here is again, what's the problem with pornography? Is the problem there  that there's nudity again, a lot of times that's maybe how we often portray that. But what is the issue  here? What is it that makes this something that is wrong, and something that is problematic? And again,  it has to do less with just the simple fact of nudity or nakedness? Because as we saw last time, you know,  in the beginning, Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed. So it's not nakedness, that's a problem.  What is the problem? How do we understand that? Our questions like, this is one that you know, when I  teach us with my college students, you know, ages 18 to 22, especially, this kind of boggles your mind a  little bit, because especially if they grew up in Christian circles, so much of the focuses on sex and  marriage go together. And so, of course, if you're married, sex could never be wrong, right? That maybe  strike choose a strange question. But when is sex within marriage wrong? We'll try to unpack this and  think through what this question means, what it's getting at as we think about what is good, and what is  fallen. Now, as we launch into this, I want to be sure that we're clear about what is actually wrong. And  there's a danger here of misdiagnosing the root problem. In other words, what I mean by that is, own  when we think about what has gone wrong in God's world, and what Scripture teaches about that,  sometimes, sometimes we pick some good dimension of God's world and we say, you know, if we could  just fix that, if that was just out of the picture, then everything would be okay. So again, let me give you a  couple examples. You know, some people might say the root problem here is that we have bodies if we  didn't have bodies, bodies that are sexed bodies, male and female, if we didn't have sexual desire and  bodies, just get that out of the picture, then everything would be, okay. So the root problem that some  might identify is bodies. And we do this in the broader culture as well, where, you know, think about an  arena where somebody might say, you know, if only we got rid of this area of life, everything would go 

well. So for example, somebody might say, you know, again, my emotions are always internal, you know,  human beings just didn't have emotions, we wouldn't have this problem. Or conversely, you might say,  We're too, too rational people are too just logical or cold when they think about those things. And so  maybe if we were rooted more in our emotions than our logic and reason, then our problems would go  away. Or maybe we pick again, a dimension of human life, maybe politics for once in politics is so  divisive, it's so troublesome if only politics were just removed, if any question of political authority or  somebody being in charge that could just be removed, then everything will be okay in human life. And so  we need to be really careful, as we are thinking about, particularly what it means to be sexual beings  created in God's image, we have to be really careful that we don't misdiagnose the root problem. And so  we want to be sure that we are understanding what Scripture teaches about the root problem and how  sin, rebellion against God, living out of line with God's intentions for human life and for human  flourishing, how that is at the root here, so that we don't misidentify even our bodies or sexual desire in  and of itself as somehow this is the root cause of sin and evil. So we need to be careful that we don't  misdiagnose the root problem. Related to this is this idea of the interpretation of suspicion, in other  words, that how we interpret the world or especially how we interpret sexuality, how we interpret sex  and bodies, we interpret it through this suspicious lens, sort of always seeing it as corrupted, that we  can't, we can't imagine a love, including sexual love, that is truly loving in the way God intends that, that,  you know, we always see things as affected by sin. And so, you know, it makes it hard for us to imagine  God's good intentions for his world. Now, again, to be fair, human life is broken, we are fallen, we are  corrupted by sin. But when we think about what God wants to do in us, and how God wants to work in  our hearts and lives, we have to recognize that there is this possibility of as we walk in tune with Jesus,  by the power of God's Spirit, actually living life as God intended it actually walking according to his  calling. So that we can get beyond this suspicious view that there's just always looking for the sinful  dimension, always looking for the fallen, or broken dimension. That there is the possibility of real love of  real sanctified Christ, like love, that shows up even in our marriages, our sexual relationships, or our  singleness. And so we need to make sure that that's why last time we laid this foundation of  understanding creation, the importance of creation, so that we can see the goodness that's there and not  just always be looking through this suspicious lens, as we think about what Scripture teaches. And so  part of what's wrong here. When we think about how the biblical narrative sets this up in, in Genesis, is a  refusal of God's Word and God's good, God's good gifts. In other words, refusal of God's Word that God  comes to Adam and Eve and says, here's the world that I've made, here's your calling in this world,  here's what I'm giving you to do in terms of your responsibility and your relationship to each other. But  God calls him to trust Him, and says, You can eat of all of these trees, but don't eat of this tree. Now,  again, it's really important to get this not because this tree or its fruit was evil, or somehow bad in and of  itself. But God has set this aside for them, perhaps in God's own timing, to allow them to have this. And  so God sets these boundaries and he calls him to trust Him, to follow what he says to live out his ways in  the world. And what's wrong here is that they see God's good gifts. They see the good work. The God has  made they hear God's word, calling him to live as they're supposed to. And they refuse that, they say, we  will determine how we are going to live in the world. We will make the rules. We will be the ones who  set forth how we're going to live, and what we're going to what we're going to do. And so really, you  know, part of what that involves, is this, almost this idea of self creation. In other words, instead of  accepting who God says they are, they're going to try to make a name for themselves, they're going to try  to say, I'm going to create or invent myself rather than receiving and understanding who I am, as God  has made me to be. Now, the tragedy of this is that when we cut ourselves off from God, and who God  says, We are as, as image bearers as, as his creatures, self creation is actually death, because we're  cutting ourselves off from the Creator, and the source of life. And so this flows into every area of human  life, including sex, and how we use our bodies that we say, I'm going to be and do what I want, without  listening to who God has made me to be. And to understand that, that true fulfillment and joy and 

happiness comes from walking in the path that he has made me to be, rather than trying to create myself  in that way. And so what happens in is that we begin to use other people use the good gifts that God has  given to us, rather than really love them, that we start to see things as objects that we can sort of decide  what they are or what they're for, rather than understand that God has already set that up. And so we we  use things rather than love them. And so as we move forward in this, again, it's crucial that we properly  diagnosed the problem, the sin and the rebellion that refuses God's word and God's good gifts. So that as  we go forward, we can diagnose how that's working itself out in our own hearts and lives, and  understand how the ultimate goal here is, is not just to get rid of sex or getting rid of bodies. No, in fact,  God's work of redemption has to do with redeeming our bodies redeeming sex and think about how that  looks. And so in the next time, we'll continue though, to think about what's wrong and getting a better  sense of how to diagnose this and understand what's gone wrong and how that works itself out, in our  lives in our sex in our bodies. So until next time, blessings