Video Transcript: How Serious is Sin?

Day 71 to 80 – Unit 08 Humanity's Sin and Need of a Saviour

Video Transcript: How Serious is Sin? (Dr. Feddes) 

How serious is sin? Well, I suppose I could keep this lecture very short by saying, very. That's about the summary of it. How serious is sin, sin is very, very, very, very serious. But I'm going to extend it a little bit beyond saying just that and point out 12 things about sin. Just to make it easier to remember maybe that begin to the letter D that we find in the Bible. The first thing is that sin is disobedience, second disease, third depravity, fourth division, fifth disaster, six devilry, seventh darkness, eighth damnation, ninth despair, ten debt, eleven distance, and twelve deadness. There's a lot more that could be said about sin as well. And it's all bad too. But let's focus on these 12 clear things that the Bible teaches about the condition of humanity fallen into sin, apart from God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. To begin with sin is disobedience. 

Sin is a failure to obey God's law in our actions, or in our attitude, or in our nature. That's kind of the essence of sin. It is failure to match up with God's law, failure to obey it in what we do, not only, but also in just what our attitudes and our heart desires are. And even more than that, sinful in our very nature, and character. We are sinners by nature as well as by choice. It's not just something we wake up and decide to do. But that decision flows from the kind of persons we are. We are persons who are out of joint and out of line with God's law. The Bible often uses the phrase, you have not obey my voice or Daniel's confession here, we have not obeyed his voice. It comes up again and again and again in the Bible in various forms, not obeying God's voice. Humanity's head Adam got that all rolling. When he didn't obey God's voice, God spoke to him and said not to eat from the forbidden tree. But Adam, prompted by his wife, Eve ate from it anyway, and disobeyed God. And when humanity's head disobeyed God, all those who were involved in Adam, and who were represented by him, became disobedient as well. Sin came into the world through one man, and by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. Original Sin, or inherited sin is the doctrine that describes this, that in Adam, we all have sinned, we all inherit Adams guilty status before God, and we also inherit Adams, corrupt character. 

The status is simply how God views us and sees the human race, and he sees Adam and all who come from Adam as guilty. But of course, it's not just that God sees us as guilty because of what Adam did, but also because we are corrupt, as Adam became corrupt through sinning. Scripture uses the phrase, the sons of disobedience, sometimes sons of just is referring to what characterizes you you're characterized by disobedience. In a sense, we're also very literally sons of disobedience because we're sons of Adam, the disobeyer who started sin in the world, among humanity, and whom we have followed both in character in attitude in action. A second picture of what sin is like and what it does to us, according to the Scriptures, is found in the disease factor. Ah, sinful nation says God through the prophet Isaiah of people, laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, the whole head is sick, the whole heart faint, just this terrible sickness, of sin that grips and and rips out us and eats us up. How sick is your heart. Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor. But the sick, I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. That's the son of God's own diagnosis. We are sick sinners. And that means that when it comes to detecting disease, we need to take Jesus word for it. We do listen to what the law of God says to us. One way that we know there's a problem sometimes is just how we feel about it. If our body is sick, we may feel bad. If our overall condition spiritually is sick, our conscience may trouble us about something we've done wrong, or we may have all kinds of trouble in our life.

Another way of detecting disease is simply the doctor's diagnosis regardless of how you feel. And God gives us that diagnosis in the Bible, through his law in Scripture and through the statements about human sin. Now, we may get some sense of our condition through the inner law of our conscience. But God's written law found in the Bible is the clearest and most reliable tests, especially as we find it in the 10 commandments. Now think for a moment again of bodily sickness. How can you tell when you have a bad illness? Oh, one way is how you feel if you feel fine, you usually assume you're healthy. But if you feel pain you figure something's wrong. That sort of how the conscience works. When you feel stabs of guilt and shame, your painful conscience may be telling you that something is wrong with your spiritual health. But what if your conscience doesn't bother you? Does that mean you're okay? Have no conscience isn't 100% reliable. 

You may do something without even a twinge of conscience without the least bit of moral uneasiness, and you can still be wrong. Think of how your body works. Sometimes when something's wrong, you feel pain. But it's possible to feel no pain at all, and yet have a deadly condition. A routine checkup at the doctor may reveal cancer or heart trouble or a virus like HIV, even if you don't feel anything wrong. In the latter stages of the illness, pain may kick in. But meanwhile, the fact that you're feeling healthy is no guarantee that you are healthy. Sometimes sin can be painless for a while, in some cases, stabs of conscience may tell you something's wrong. Or you may have huge problems like an arrest and prison sentence, or a divorce or a sexually transmitted disease. And that may show you that something's amiss. But even if your conscience doesn't bother you, even if you're not facing a crisis, because of bad behavior, you may still have a deadly problem. Pain can be a warning sign, but it's not as reliable as a more objective test. The objective test of your spiritual health is the written law of God found in the Bible. Just as an objective medical test can diagnose a deadly illness you didn't know you had. So the objective standards of God's law can show your sins you didn't know you had, as one biblical writer puts that, I would not have known what sin was except through the law. The objective test of God's law shows that all of us are sick with sin and sin left to run its course, result in death, not just physical death. But what the Bible calls the second death, eternal suffering in hell. Well, it's tempting to say, no way. Can't be that bad. I'm basically a good person. Sure, nobody's perfect. But I'm better than most people. I know what really rotten sinners are like, and I'm not one of them. 

Well, suppose you're tested and confirmed to have cancer and you say, no way. I feel fine. I've seen cancer victims. I've seen how sick they get and how miserable they feel. And I'm not that way at all. I can't have cancer. Well, all of that doesn't change the result of the objective test. If you have cancer, you have cancer. Focusing on how well you feel won't help comparisons to others won't help. There's no such thing as a mild case of cancer. If you have it, and nothing's done about it, it will kill you. Sin is like cancer, you may think your sins are small. But if God's law turns up even the slightest trace of sin in your life, you have a huge problem. For whoever keeps the whole lie yet stumbles it just one point says the Bible is guilty of breaking all of it. If God's law diagnosis you as a sinner in any respect, the size of the sin or the number of sins is almost beside the point. If you've got sin, anywhere in your system, it means you're doomed. If nothing is done about it, just as a person who's got cancer anywhere in this system is doomed. If nothing's done about it. So what is the doctor's diagnosis? You're sick? That's the doctor's diagnosis apart from God's saving grace, we're all sick with a deadly terminal illness. Sometimes our conscience reminds us of it sometimes trouble in our life shows us the impact of sin But even when it doesn't, we have the doctor's diagnosis of the disease. And it's there. 

And it's terrible. number of years ago, my father went to the doctor, he felt fine. It was just time for his annual checkup, a routine test found cancer in an early stage, the doctor recommended surgery. Now, would it be foolish for somebody who feels perfectly well to go through the pain and bother of surgery? Well, my dad had the surgery, he believed his doctor, and he accepted the test results, even though he felt okay. And since then he's been cancer free. If a doctor says you're sick, and the test shows it, then regardless of how you feel you better believe it and have him do something about it. Likewise, if the Lord says you're sinful, and his law shows it, then regardless of how you feel, you better believe it and have him do something about it. Well, a third thing about sin that the Bible describes is depravity. The intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. And this was said, when there were only eight people on the earth. And they were the best of the people on the earth, people saved by God's grace from the flood. This was said right after the flood, and it described humanity even including Noah and his family, if they were just left to their own heart. They were just evil from their youth. Scripture says we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another. That's just one of the many terrible pictures of the depravity, the nastiness of human sin. 

When Scripture speaks of depravity, the theologians have come up with the phrase total depravity. And by that it doesn't mean that everybody is as nasty as they could possibly be, and that everybody turns into an Axe Murderer, and that everybody just says all the hideous things that could possibly be done, what total depravity means that apart from God's restraint, that is what would happen. And it also means that every part of me is tainted and twisted by sin. It's a very serious error to say, well, my body has sinful problems and sinful tendencies that I've got to deal with. But my mind and my spirit, now they're pure. And I just got to deal with this kind of physical sin problem. Total depravity means that every part of us is tainted, every part of us is twisted. And there's not one part of ourself that is good. And another part that is perfectly pure depravity affects every aspect of human life. A fourth aspect of sin is division. Sometimes it's just division within yourself. James four, Verse eight says cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded sin divides you, you can't be of one consistent mind. You want to serve God, maybe. 

But you definitely want to serve mammon. And you're torn in different directions, or your whole personality fragments. I've known many an adulterer who says, Oh, I don't know what to do. I love this other woman. But I still love my wife too. Well, when in doubt, why don't you stick with the one you made your lifelong promises to. But the fact of the matter is, that sin divides you and rips you in a whole bunch of different directions, and you don't even know what you want. And you can't be one whole United person. Now another aspect of the division, of course, is the division that it brings among different people, we see that right away. After the first sin, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent for tempting her. Nobody just wanted to say I'm responsible, but Adam and Eve were playing the blame game against each other. And it's been that way ever since. When something goes wrong in my life, I blame somebody else, even when it's often my own fault. Not only is there just this division in marriage and personal relationships, but also division among different peoples Scripture speaks of a wall of hostility that comes up between different people groups that is wiped out only by Jesus Christ, and by His sacrifice, but racism is a result of sin and this hatred that exists between different groups and pride of one group over against another.

Another aspect of sin is disaster. It's a disaster for us but also a disaster for the world around us. Just as Adam's sin affected the whole human race. The sin of Adam and of humanity also affected all the rest of God's earth. Curse is the ground because of you, what happened to humans by falling into sin brought calamity on the rest of creation because we were supposed to be the head of creation and to govern it well, in God's setup, Scripture says the creation was subjected to futility. It's in bondage to corruption because of human sin. And only at the restoration of humanity, will creation itself be set free from this disaster. Ezikiel the prophet put it well, disaster comes upon disaster. We often say how could God let something bad happened when a terrible disaster hits? The world is vulnerable to disaster because of human sin? That's part of the answer to the question. How serious is sin, sin is a disaster. Now, not every disaster that comes upon an individual is directly the result of their own personal sin, but the sin of humanity and the sin of Adam, and the sin of us all has made us vulnerable to disaster and has messed up the world in a way that makes it disastrous. And here's another terrible thing about sin. It involves us in devilry. It puts us in league with the devil, it puts us under the bondage of the devil. It makes us children of the devil. 

What a terrible thing to say. But I'm not the one who said it. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the one who said it. Right from the beginning, when Eve was deceived by the serpent, the Bible tells us that it was the devil speaking through the serpent. So the original sin, put us in league with the devil. Jesus said to people you are of your father, the devil, in your will is to do your father's desires. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. The whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Scripture speaks of following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Satan, the head angel, the one often called the devil, the enemy, the world leader of all the rebel angels and wicked spirits, we have gone along with him in our sin, and we are in bondage to him. And Jesus compares him to a bully, a strong man who holds his castle and keeps everything locked in his castle until someone stronger can come along and bind him and then take what he's been holding. And sin is so terrible because it puts us under the dominion and bondage of Satan himself. And only a power even greater than Satan can set us free from it. And that is not a power that I have over that you have it must be the power of God himself. So that's how bad sin is. It puts us in league with the devil and under the dominion of the devil. connected to that is sin is darkness. The god of this world against Speaking of the devil has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, people trapped in sin unredeemed cannot see the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Scripture speaks in this same way again, and again. The passages are too numerous, I'll just give a few the domain of darkness that Satan's domain and the domain of being blind to all that is good and of God at one time you were darkness not just in darkness, you were darkness. People says Jesus loved darkness rather than the light. Because, why, their works were evil. Sin not only puts you in darkness, it puts you in love with darkness. Can anything worse be said than to love the darkness. Scripture says the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for their folly to him and he is not able to understand them. When you are in sin, and unredeemed without the Spirit of God in you. You can't see the truth. You can't believe in God. The Bible says of people who are great scholars and very learned as is claiming to be wise they became fools. And they started worshipping created things rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. And so God gave them over to a dark mind. Darkness is one of the terrible things about sin, just the inability to see God to see his hand to listen to His word and have it make sense to us. The Bible will seem like stupidity. God will seem unreal or like an offense to us when we are only in our sin. Isaiah put it we grope for the wall like the blind we grope like those who have no eyes, darkness and damnation, depart from me you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 

Those are the words of Jesus Christ Himself. Do not be deceived by the liars among us who say that everybody will be saved. They are liars. Nobody in the Scripture speaks of hell more than the Son of God, the Son of love Jesus Christ himself. And he warns that a day is coming when he will say, Depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire, it was prepared for the devil and his angels, but you'll be going there too. That's how terrible sin is. If you're in league with the devil, you end up in hell with the devil, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His might. Sin separates us from God and damnation makes that separation, permanent and infinite. We're never again can we taste the good things of God. 

Now, even though we're sinners, the Lord still sends so many good things into our lives, and even preserves some good things in our character. But when damnation comes all good, around us is withdrawn. And all that remained that may have been somewhat good in us is completely gone and rotted away. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. This is the Final Doom, the destiny, the damnation, of those who remain in their sin, apart from God's salvation. Despair, what else is there? When that is our condition? When we're trapped in sin and darkness and damnation when the wicked dies, his hope will perish. Scripture describes our condition as weak, ungodly sinners under God's wrath, enemies of God, when you're in that condition, when you are an enemy of God, when God says, I am against you. We're without hope, having no hope, and without God in the world, what a terrible phrase to describe the condition of human sin of the fallen humanity, apart from God's mercy, apart from God's grace, who have no hope.

And another picture in the Bible is of sin as debt of something we owe and are unable to pay. When somebody sins, somebody pays. Even some of the Eastern religions know that the concept of Karma means when something happens, that you have done wrong, then you're going to pay for it in this life, or in some other life or in a whole bunch of different lives. But when somebody sins somebody pays, the Bible doesn't teach reincarnation and all those multiple lives. But it does teach that when somebody sins somebody is going to pay. Truly no man can ransom and other or give to God, the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly, and can never suffice, that he should live on forever, and never see the pit. You cannot be saved from the pit. Because you cannot pay the price. The it is too costly. It is never enough, the debt is too big. 

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. That's what God's word says Jesus in one of his stories, compared sin to a debt of 10,000 talents. Now 10,000 talents was equal to 100 million dinerii. And a denarius was one day's wage. So the amount of the person that he owed in this parable was 100 million days wages are about 3500 lifetimes, and that's assuming that no interest would be charged, or that he wouldn't add up any additional debt. But the fact of the matter is, we're adding more debt every day, by our sins, and even the damned in Hell will be raging against God and adding to their debt daily. So you can see why people who believe in karma and reincarnation and all those lifetimes are thinking man, it's gonna take a long time to pay off this terrible debt. Scripture teaches you can never pay that debt off. And you don't get all kinds of lifetimes. Hell is the place where people with the unpayable debt of sin go Even if the man had enough lifetimes to do it, the interest would be so big the debt would get larger because of his additional sins, that no matter how much you work, you'd never pay the debt. And Jesus says, our sin is like that debt, the price of what we owe God is beyond calculation. If there's any hope at all of paying the debt, it won't be in our trying harder and working harder or doing a few more good deeds. Our only hope is if the king would somehow absorb the loss himself and cancel the debt. Another picture of sin in the Bible is a distance a terrible distance that opens up between us and God, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. 

There is no difference as the Bible for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God falling short, that's what sin is, we fall short of the glory of God, and not by a couple inches, and not by a couple of feet. But by an infinite distance. Sin puts an uncrossable distance between us and God. It separates us from God by a distance, far greater than any ocean. If we know our distance from God, then we can't find comfort in thinking that we can save ourselves. And we can't find comfort in comparing ourselves to others. When we compare ourselves to others, we'll see some differences in our ability to do good. And those differences may be real. But from the perspective that matters, God's perspective, those differences make no difference, there is no difference, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Your efforts may take you just a little bit further than the next person. But you still fall far short of the glory of God, I think of being stranded out in the middle of the ocean. One person can't swim at all. And if he's stranded in the middle of the ocean, he'll go down like a rock and drown. Another person knows how to dog paddle a little bit. He's a better swimmer than the first one. But if he's stranded in the middle of the ocean, he's going to go down and drown. The third person is a superb swimmer, a certified lifeguard. But if he's stranded in the middle of the ocean, he's going to drown. When you're stranded in the middle of the ocean, you don't need swimming lessons. You need a ship.

There is this terrible distance. And because of that distance, we don't need just swimming lessons. We need a ship. We need God to provide a way and there is no use comparing ourselves to others. Because it doesn't matter how good a swimmers we are. And there's no use trying to just save ourselves. We can't do it, we cannot swim the ocean, we cannot cover the distance by which we fall short of the glory of God. And the final one, and in a sense, the worst is simply sin is deadness. You were dead in your transgressions and sins dead in our trespasses Ephesians two makes that very clear, just dead, dead in your trespasses. If you didn't get it the first time or the second time. There it is the third time dead, a person who lives for pleasure is dead, even while she lives. This picture of sin as deadness what an awful picture of our condition. Now, not everybody is equally decayed. But all are equally dead in sin apart from rebirth. 

That's a grim picture and we can see again why it makes no difference to compare ourselves to different people without God All are dead in sin and one dead person is no less dead than another. One corpse may be a little better condition than another but so what Dead is dead. A person who dies of a sudden heart attack and whose body still looks okay is no less dead than a person whose body is mangled in a car crash. A person whose dead body has barely begun to rot is not any less dead than someone whose body has rotted away leaving only a skeleton. One dead body may look better than another. But Dead is dead. There are decrees there are degrees of decay, but not degrees of deadness. People in sin are dead. You might protest that lots of people without Christ still have a lot of good in them. And you might wonder how anybody can say such people are spiritually dead. But we've just seen the answer to that. The degree of decay and corruption may differ from person to person. Some are utterly rotten and do all sorts of horrible things. 

Others look okay and don't seem all that bad. But all are equally dead in sin, equally unable to live forever in God, equally helpless to make themselves alive and healthy again. If we're ever to have life, it will have to be a life that comes from outside us. So how serious is sin? Very disobedience, disease, depravity, division, disaster, devilry, darkness, damnation, despair, debt, distance, deadness, it's bad. What a downer. And we need to face these facts because without knowing this bad news, we'll never understand the good news. This 12 D picture of sin is horrifying and none of us likes to hear it. But it's the truth. It comes straight from the pages the Bible straight from the mouth of God Himself. There is no other view of life, no other religion that takes such a grim view of human potential and possibilities. Christianity is the most pessimistic of all religions. Well, not quite. Christianity is also the most optimistic of all religions because it bases everything, not on our potential and possibilities, but on the power of God. To save us, sin is a 100% disaster. But Jesus is a 100% Savior. There was a bumper sticker awhile back, Jesus is the answer. And another bumper sticker came along if Jesus is the answer, what's the question? We need to know what the question is. And in order to know what the question is, we need to know how serious sin is. And once we've grasped the dreadful seriousness of sin, then we will see the wonder and glory of the Savior. One of the great challenges to evangelism today is people do not understand the nature and depth of their sin and the pastors aren't willing to tell them it.

They will never truly embrace the Savior and His wondrous salvation, if they do not know they need him in the first place. And when we know the depth of sin, then things begin to click and this is a matter for ongoing studying for the study of the good news, but I'll just quickly race through it. Disobedience is one a dreadful thing about sin. But justification or being declared right or obedient in God's sight is one of the benefits of salvation. Jesus obeyed perfectly, as one man's act of disobedience brought sin into the world. So one man's act of obedience, Jesus Christ brought life and justification. Sin is a dreadful disease. But Jesus Christ is the great physician who brings healing to our souls, and resurrection in life and eternally healing to our bodies. Sin is depravity, corruption, and salvation brings sanctification the renewal and cleansing and making pure of our lives gradually, until finally we stand without spot in the assembly of God's elect. Sin brings division Jesus Christ brings unity, unity within ourselves as he unites our heart to focus on God. Unity in our relationships so that we don't blame others but take responsibility for ourselves. Unity in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, a barbarian, Scythian. He brings unity among different groups of people, as the Bible says. The disaster of sin is counteracted by the re-creation, not only of humanity, but of the whole world, the whole creation is groaning in its bondage to decay, but it's looking forward to the glorious redemption of the children of God. 

That's what Romans eight teaches. And that's why salvation is such good news that Christ un-does the disaster, the terrible devilry of being in league with the devil being ruled and dominated by him is counteracted by deliverance. Jesus Christ has bound the strong man, he has cast Satan down. He has set free all who trust in Him for their salvation. He triumphed over the rulers and authorities on the cross and in the resurrection. That's not very good news, unless you knew that you were a slave and under the bondage of the devil in the first place. And so Jesus just un-does the damage of sin that what shows him to be such a tremendous savior. The darkness is counteracted by the light Jesus says I am the light of the world. The Holy Spirit brings illumination to the heart and to the scriptures, so that what seemed dim and unbelievable, suddenly makes perfect sense as God illuminates us instead of damnation. Christ brings salvation. God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish shall not be damned, but shall have eternal life. So experience salvation instead of despair, hope, and hope is not just wishful thinking, hope is a certain confidence. It is an assurance that we are headed for glory with Jesus Christ. It is the complete opposite of the despair of sin depths that we could never pay in a million years, or in a million lifetimes. 

A debt that cannot be paid by US has been paid. And that's what the word redemption is all about. To redeem is to pay the price. And when Jesus had finished his suffering, he said, It is finished to tell us tie a word that meant finished or paid on the bills that were written back then if the bill was all paid off, you wrote it was done. Redemption, what great good news. That is, the distance has been covered. And we're brought back together and close to God through reconciliation, that terrible thing that separates us from God is removed by Jesus Christ, and we can come near into His presence again, and our deadness. We cannot respond to God, we cannot come to God on our own but regeneration, rebirth, to as many as believed on him, he gave the power to become children of God. Jesus says, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless you're born again. You cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you're born of water in the Spirit, you must be born again. All of these statements of the gospel make no sense unless we know how serious sin is.