What ever happened to
sin?
Michael S. Horton, Ph.D. This article
is a part of a collection of essays written recently by Dr.
Horton after his interview on
60 Minutes which aired on October 14, 2007.
In his interview with Larry King (CNN, June 20, 2005), Joel
Osteen said that he is not sure what happens to people who
reject Christ. King followed up with the question about Jews,
Moslems, and other non-Christians. “They’re wrong, aren’t they?”
Osteen replied, “Well, I don’t know if I believe they’re wrong.
I believe here’s what the Bible teaches and from the Christian
faith this is what I believe. But I just think that only God
will judge a person’s heart. I spent a lot of time in India with
my father. I don’t know all about their religion. But I know
they love God. And I don’t know. I’ve seen their sincerity. So I
don’t know. I know for me, and what the Bible teaches, I want to
have a relationship with Jesus.”
King (and a caller) gave him a few more chances to answer the
question, but it kept coming back to the heart: “God’s got to
look at your heart.” Evidently, the last judgment will be based
not on God’s standard of holiness and justice but on the purity
of our hearts.
Certainly there is truth in this position. God will expose all
of the secrets of our hearts on the last day. However, where
Osteen seems to think that God’s judgment of our heart (like his
record-keeping) is good news, Scripture treats it as the worst
possible report, since “The heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9). Jesus
added, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies”
(Mt 15:11). My heart has conceived and committed sins that my
hands have never carried out. Far from being a relatively
unspoiled beach of sanctity, the heart is the citadel from which
our mutiny against God and neighbor is launched. Even when I
have done the right thing as far as other people are concerned,
if my sincerity were weighed, it would actually count against my
righteousness. So to think that our trial before God’s
all-knowing justice can somehow turn in our favor by examination
of our heart or the record of our life is a dangerous mistake. I
keep thinking of St. Anselm’s great line to those who thought
that Christ’s death was not a vicarious substitution: “You have
not yet considered how great is your sin is.” Osteen’s outlook
may resonate with Americans steeped in a sentimentalized version
of the Pelagian heresy of self-salvation. But it is not
Christianity.
When asked by Larry King if he uses the word “sinners,” Osteen
replied, “I don’t use it. I never thought about it. But I
probably don’t. But most people already know what [when] they’re
doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that
you can change.” What’s remarkable is the he has not even
thought about it.
Osteen’s view of sin, ironically, is actually quite similar to
the “hellfire and brimstone” preaching of a prior generation. To
be sure, you’ll never hear him threatening, “You’ll go to hell
if you dance. Don’t smoke, or you will incur God’s judgment.”
Heaven and hell are not exactly your major themes when the
message is all about “your best life now.” But his message is
still very much about moral therapy: changing your lifestyle to
receive God’s favor. It’s not heaven in the hereafter, but
happiness here and now: but it is still up to you to make it
happen.
The older fundamentalists whom Osteen has in mind had their “sin
lists” for which you could be condemned. Not only were most of
these major “sins” never mentioned in Scripture; they reduced
sin to “sins.” Of course, sins can to some extent be managed,
especially when they are taboos that we have invented. I can
stop going to movies. It may be hard, but I can probably swear
off of a nice pint of Guinness every now and then. Such churches
were filled with people who thought well of themselves because
they had managed to shun legalism’s “sin lists.” However, the
sins that the Bible mentions are less easily managed: gossip,
envy, strife, coveting. For many of us, these vices actually
mentioned in Scripture were often more evident in the church
than they were among our neighbors. So the first thing to do in
order to trivialize sin and make it look as though our
righteousness can withstand God’s judgment is to come up with
our own sin list rather than God’s.
The second move in this trivialization of sin is to reduce it to
actions rather than a condition. If I can stop committing sin x,
then it is at least logically possible that I can stop
committing sin y, and so on, until I am at least avoiding all
known sins. If, however, sin is first of all a condition and
only secondarily actions, then no matter how many sins I
“conquer,” I’m still sinful! No matter what advances I think
I’ve made, according to God, “There is no one righteous, no not
even one; no one who understands; no one who seeks for God” (Rom
3:10-11, quoting Psalm 14:1-3; 53:1-3). “Our
righteousness”—never mind our sins!—“is like filthy rags” (Is
64:6). So now we can no longer rest confidently in our own
behaviors, standards, Judeo-Christian ethics, virtues,
discipleship, deeds of love and kindness, and pious
spirituality. We can no longer divide the world neatly into
“decent” and “disgusting.” We must take our place with the
prostitutes and publicans rather than with the Pharisees in
order to enter the kingdom of God.
Wouldn’t Osteen’s message have a lot in common with what I’ve
just said? In tone, perhaps. However, instead of considering us
Christians as just as disqualified from heaven on our own merits
as publicans and prostitutes, his message assumes that deep
down, we are all—including publicans and prostitutes—pretty good
people who could just be a little better. Ironically, he shares
with his “hellfire and brimstone” forebears an assumption that
sin is not an all-encompassing condition from which we cannot
free ourselves, but particular actions that we can overcome
through good instructions. And he too has his own lists. He may
include some of the older taboos, but the main “sins” are
failing to put God’s principles for success into practice.
There are important differences, of course. First of all, “sins”
seem to lack any clear vertical dimension. That is, it is not
obvious that sin, in Osteen’s view, is an offense against God.
That’s why he does not speak of sins, but mistakes or failures
to be all we can be. According to the Bible, it is their
offensiveness to God that makes such attitudes and actions sins
in the first place. Without that vertical (God-oriented)
dimension, even sinful actions lose their moral context.
Instead, they become translated into the therapeutic language of
“dysfunction,” unhealthy behaviors that fail to merit God’s
favor on us in our daily search for good parking spaces. But
sinful actions, in this view, even lack the usual horizontal
dimension: an offense against our neighbors. Even the social
gospel, which made sin more of an offense against our
fellow-humans rather than first and foremost against God, at
least recognized it as a failure to give to someone else the
love and service that I owe. In the increasingly pervasive
message of preachers like Osteen, however, sins become offenses
I commit against myself that keep me from realizing my own
expectations. It is therapeutic narcissism: I have failed to
live up to my potential, or to secure God’s best for my life, or
to follow the instructions that lead to the good life. Can we
even comprehend in our human-centered universe of discourse
today the God-centered orientation of David’s confession to God,
“Against you and you alone have I sinned and done what is evil
in your sight” (Ps 51:4)?
Second, Osteen does not even use the word “sin” or “sinners,” as
he himself observed above. In its place apparently is something
like “mistake.” No longer “falling short of the glory of God”
(Rom 3:23), sin is falling short of my best life now. “Is it
hard to lead a Christian life?”, asked Larry King. “I don’t
think it’s that hard,” Osteen replied. “To me it’s fun. We have
joy and happiness….I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and
stuff. I’m just living my life.”
Again we meet the swinging pendulum: recoiling from the
decidedly “un-fun” legalism of his youth, Osteen rebounds into
the arms of antinomianism (no law). No wonder he does not speak
of sins (much less the sinful condition that renders us all—even
believers—“sinners”), since there is apparently no divinely
given “set of rules” that might identify such an offense. The
standard is not righteousness, but fun; not holiness before God,
but happiness before oneself.
It is not obvious that Christ—at least his incarnation, obedient
life, atoning death, and justifying and life-giving
resurrection—is necessary at all in Osteen’s scheme. “But you
have rules, don’t you?”, King pressed, to which Osteen replied,
“We do have rules. But the main rule is to honor God with your
life. To live a life of integrity. Not be selfish. You know,
help others. But that’s really the essence of the Christian
faith.” Notice how Osteen’s happy, fun-filled Christian life
without rules suddenly becomes the most demanding religion
possible. He is certainly correct when he says that God commands
a life of integrity and helping others, not being selfish. In
fact, Jesus excoriated the Pharisees for substituting their own
petty laws for God’s commands, which actually served some good
purpose for our neighbors. However, this is precisely what the
Law prescribes. Jesus said that “the whole law” is summarized in
one sentence: “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37).
Osteen apparently thinks that this is easier than following “a
set of rules.” In truth, as the rich young ruler learned, it is
not. I may keep from literally killing my neighbor, but if I
have not sacrificed everything for my neighbor’s good, I have
not really loved him or her. Osteen thinks that loving our
neighbor is easier than “a lot of rules,” but Jesus showed us
that it’s the other way around. One may be sexually pure to
one’s friends, but God knows whether adultery has been committed
in one’s heart.
Osteen said that perhaps talk of God’s judgment “was for a
time,” a generation ago. “But I don’t have it in my heart to
condemn people. I’m there to encourage them. I see myself more
as a coach, as a motivator to help them experience the life God
has for us.”
At first glance, this sounds humble—and perhaps, compared to
some of the moralistic and self-righteous jeremiads of
yesteryear that threatened God’s judgment for drinking a glass
of wine or going to a movie, it is. However, the answer to bad
law-preaching is good law-preaching, not its elimination. The
proper preaching of the law—God’s holiness, righteousness,
glory, and justice—will not create an “us” versus “them”
self-righteousness, but will expose the best works, done from
the best motives of the best among us as “filthy rags” before
God’s searching judgment. Bad law-preaching levels some of us;
Osteen’s omission of the law levels none of us; biblical
preaching of the law levels all of us.
It is actually arrogant for ambassadors to create their own
policies, especially when they directly counter the word of the
one who sent them. Osteen seems to admit that Jesus Christ is in
some way unique and important, but he presumes ignorance of a
point that Christ made perfectly clear: namely, that he the only
way of salvation from the coming judgment.
Was Jesus’ message (however radically different from the
rambling jeremiads of fundamentalism) only “for a time” as well?
Did Jesus think that people are basically good when you look at
their heart? Did he think that sincerity and moral effort would
suffice as our clothing when we appear before the judge of all
the earth?
If Jesus and the apostles clearly proclaimed the total depravity
of the human heart and redemption by Christ alone through faith
alone, then Osteen is not being humble when he declines to
represent that central announcement. It was Jesus who said that
those who do not trust in him “stand condemned already” (Jn
3:18). That was because for Jesus, the judgment that he came to
save us from by enduring it for us had God and his glory, not me
and my temporal happiness, as its reference point. The ditch we
had dug for ourselves was so deep that only God incarnate could
pull us out of it by falling in and climbing back out of it
himself as our substitute and victor. For him, the good news is
that on judgment day God will look at our heart. According to
Scripture, that is actually the bad news. The good news is that
for all who are in Christ, God looks on the heart, life, death,
and resurrection of his Son and declares us righteous in him. It
is not a cheap gift, but a free gift.
The Bad News Is Far Worse The bad news is far worse than that we are not experiencing
health, wealth, and happiness now. It is that we are actually
dying and nothing can reverse this fact. It gets worse. Death is
just a symptom. We will all have a different “cause of death”
listed on the medical certificate. However, death itself is the
result of a condition we all share: “The wages of sin is death…”
(Rom 6:23); “The sting of death is sin, and the power of death
is the law” (1 Cor 15:56). Notice that it is not sins
(particular actions), but sin (a condition), that requires our
death. Even now, we are falling apart on our way toward
death—even if we are having our best life now.
The Good News is Far Better The good news is far greater than finding a way to mask our
symptoms. In both of those passages just cited, it is the
counter-point to the bad news: “For the wages of sin is death,
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (Rom
6:23). “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the
law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:56-57). The victory here promised
is far greater than relief from stress, sadness, loneliness,
disappointment, and even illness leading to death. It is the
victory over everlasting death through the resurrection on the
last day, as we share in Christ’s victory over the grave: “When
the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on
immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your
victory? O death, where is your sting?’” (1 Cor 15:54-55).
Christ did not deal with symptoms; he went right to the source:
the curse that his law justly imposes as the penalty for our
participation in Adam’s sin. As the first Adam brought death,
the Last Adam brought eternal life (1 Cor 15:20-24).
Far greater than living longer, enjoying ourselves and our
circumstances, is the unfathomable richness of our life together
with God, reconciled even while we were enemies, made alive even
while we were spiritually dead, brought near even while we were
strangers, and adopted as co-heirs of the entire estate even
while we were hostile to the things of God. Even now we begin to
enjoy a foretaste of this feast, as those for whom “there is
therefore no condemnation” (Rom 8:1). Through faith in Christ,
we have the assurance that the last judgment has already been
determined in our favor despite our sinfulness even as
Christians. In the midst of our suffering, pain, and even death,
we can confidently cling to the promise that Paul quotes from
Isaiah 64:4, namely that which “‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those
who love him’” (1 Cor 2:9). Where the gospel has salvation from
the guilt and tyranny of sin now and from the presence and
effects of sin in the future, Osteen’s very American message has
the gospel as salvation from the symptoms of sin now without any
clear proclamation of the far greater liberation from God’s
wrath.
Because he does not face the bad news, Osteen does not really
have any good news. To paraphrase Jesus’ description of his
generation in Luke 7:31-35, Osteen’s message teaches us to sing
neither the Blues nor the triumphant anthem. It’s more like a
steady, droning, upbeat hum that we hear on the elevator or at
the mall, keeping everything light and undisturbing.
If Osteen were a herald, ambassador, and messenger of the
gospel, he would humbly yet confidently proclaim the message
that we have been given, rather than deciding for himself what
kind of ministry for which he wants to be remembered. An
ambassador is sent with the word of his superior. However,
Osteen sees himself “more as a coach, as a motivator to help
[people] experience the life God has for us.” Not only does
Osteen’s commitment to his own message and ministry fail to
serve the interests of God’s kingdom; they fall far short of
truly serving his hearers. If he loves the people to whom he
speaks, he will give them the truth about their situation before
God and the good news of God’s grace in Christ.
Of course, it is a lot easier to say, “…I don’t have it in my
heart to condemn people,” when you are asked if Jesus is the
only way of salvation. It makes us look good. We can be the
“nice guy” in a culture that prizes being nice. But being nice
isn’t always loving. A doctor who can’t bring himself or herself
to inform you of your cancer in time to receive a possible cure
is actually selfish. We trust such informed people to tell us
the truth regardless of the personal anxiety or unpleasantness
of the news.
God’s Truth vs. Our Spin God’s love is far greater than being nice. He tells us the
truth. First, he tells us the truth about our condition. We are
not sick, but “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1); not good
people who could do better, but those who are in ourselves
incapable of meeting God’s righteous standard (Rom 3:1-20). If
we are to be judged on our own integrity, we will be lost.
Although God could have left the matter there, he freely
determined from all eternity to choose, redeem, justify,
regenerate, sanctify, and glorify a new humanity “from every
race, kindred, tongue, people and nation” (Rev 5:9). Even when
we try—in fact, especially when we try—to supplement Christ’s
perfect righteousness with our “sincerity” and our good
intentions, God says, “What, as if it’s not enough that I bear
all the burden of saving sinners, but you now want to add
something of your own and get a little glory for yourselves? You
presume to add a little bit of your own ‘righteousness’ to the
finished work of my Son?” So we add ingratitude to our explicit
violations of God’s law.
When God finishes telling us the bad news, it is not just the
non-Christians or “backsliders” who feel its sting, but the most
pious believers who recognize that their “righteousness” is
actually “dung” compared to the righteousness that God requires
and the righteousness that Christ fulfilled (Phil 3).
But God also tells the truth about the good news. No doctor can
actually assume your cancer, suffer its terrible results, and
assure your resurrection by his own victory over death. But God
has done this! As God incarnate, Christ fulfilled his own law in
our place, bore its judgments against us on the cross, and was
raised the third day for our justification (Rom 4:25). “In this
is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).
True love is exhibited in God’s act of reconciling sinners to
himself by doing what he commanded us to do, bearing the
judgment that we deserved for not having done it, and clothing
us in the perfect righteousness of the incarnate Son. Salvation
is therefore a free gift for us, though it cost God dearly.
“Nice” seems trivial in comparison to God’s love and mercy.
Osteen is certainly correct when he says that we cannot assume
God’s role in the last judgment. We cannot condemn anyone.
Nevertheless, we have no choice—if we are faithful
witnesses—other than to announce the condemnation that rests on
all who have not turned from their own claims to righteousness,
decency, sincerity, and piety to embrace the perfect
righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. It is not our condemnation,
but our clear warning of God’s just condemnation of all who are
outside of Christ, that the Lord of the church mandates.
Osteen’s message is softer, but it is not kinder. He thinks that
people who show signs of integrity and a willingness to change
are candidates for God’s blessings. He does not believe that God
justifies the wicked, but that he says, “You’re not too bad” to
those who do their best.
By contrast, the gospel is that God justifies the ungodly—even
hypocritical Christians like me. It is the good news of free
forgiveness and justification that he gives us the privilege to
announce to sinners such as ourselves. The bad news is worse
than having our worst life now. But that also means that the
good news is far better than having our best life now. “The
present sufferings,” according to Paul, “are not worth comparing
with the glory that will be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).
Fulfilling his calling to pronounce God’s judgment (“woes”) on
the nations, Isaiah beheld a vision of God in his majestic
holiness and the only words he could eek out were, “Woe to me!
For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among
a people of unclean lips.” Why? Because he has compared himself
to the others? No. “For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of
hosts!” (v 5). Integrity means having it all together, like a
seamless robe. “Lost” in some sense captures the Hebrew idiom,
but the old Authorized Version has a slightly better rendering:
“I am undone.” Undone here means “unraveled.” In other words, a
life that seemed to exhibit integrity in comparison with “the
wicked” now seems perverse in comparison with God’s holy beauty.
Yet Isaiah’s despair is only the prelude for God’s gracious act:
In the vision, a heavenly being is sent from God’s throne to
bring salvation and forgiveness. It is only because of this
gracious action on God’s part that Isaiah then cries out, “Here
I am, Lord, send me!” (vv 6-13).
It is this sense of God’s majesty, holiness, and
righteousness—his distance from us as our judge and king—that is
totally absent in Osteen’s message. God is our buddy who exists
for our happiness, not we for his glory. At the end of the day,
Osteen’s “good news” is the worst possible news. God’s blessing
on my life depend on my honoring God with my life, living a life
of integrity, and not being selfish. Not only does Osteen affirm
this; he adds, “But that’s really the essence of the Christian
faith.” If so, what makes Christianity any different from other
religions? Is the essence of the Christian faith my life,
righteousness, integrity, and helping others or Christ’s? We
meet here Paul’s absolute contrast between “the righteousness
that is by the works of the law” and “the righteousness that is
by faith in Christ.” There is no more damning criticism that one
can offer of Osteen’s message than that it takes the former
route, albeit in a more upbeat, pleasant, and cheerful tone.
Read other essays in this collection:
For additional resources on this subject visit Dr. Horton's national radio broadcast website: The White Horse Inn >>
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