Preaching Sin as a Power
Some unpublished thoughts about how we preach about sin
A few weeks ago in class I mentioned that a magazine had asked me to write an article on sin and how we should preach about it. Unfortunately the magazine decided not to publish the piece, so I figured I’d put it here!
I’ve been preaching about sin for as long as I can remember. My first convert was my little brother. Every night as we settled into our bunk beds, I would ask if he had asked forgiveness for all the sins he committed that day. A few quiet seconds would pass and then–through a yawn–I’d usually hear, “Ok. I’m good.” My batting average as a preacher back then was nearly a thousand.
I was deadly serious in my “preaching” to my little brother. I had a deep-seated fear that drove me to force even a tired confession out of him. What if this night was actually judgment day? My theology of sin was as immature as I was.
It’s true, of course, that each of us has a list of sins we have committed, for which we must repent. But this is the second thing to say when preaching about sin. It isn’t the whole story of sin. Our preaching about sin has often been too small and this is itself a work of Sin.
In Romans 5:21 Paul says that “Sin reigned in death.” Paul often attributes a sort of active agency to sin. Sin is an evil slave-master, a hostile power, that has the whole world held captive in its grip. Think of Sin like the Pharaoh in Exodus. God’s will is that his people be free to worship him. To accomplish this, though, he will have to liberate them from their bondage to Pharaoh. God will have to part the Red Sea so that the Hebrew children enter the waters as slaves but exit as children, drowning the slave-master Pharaoh in the process.
This is what baptism is enacting in the life of each believer. And when it comes to sin the first thing that has to be said is that every human being is someone who has been enslaved by an evil taskmaster who has “reigned” over us. The reason we each have a list of sins (things we have done and left undone) is because of our predicament as slaves to Sin.
When we preach about sin as though it is only an individual fault or guilt that can be reversed by a decision to repent, we are not appreciating the depth of Sin’s grip on our world. We are reducing sin to something over which we have control. The story–as we often tell it–only has two characters in it: God and us (as we try to manage our sin). But according to Scripture there aren’t two actors in the drama of the world, but three: God, humanity, and the evil powers of Sin, Death, and Satan.
The gospel proclamation is a cosmic proclamation of liberty to the captives (Lk 4:18): Christ has died and risen to defeat Sin and set us free from Sin’s tyrannical hold on us.
This should drastically change the way we preach about Sin.
First, preachers should recognize the immense power that Sin asserts over peoples’ lives. We are all slaves to Sin until the gospel proclamation liberates us. It is not within a slave's power to liberate themselves. They need a liberator outside of themselves to set them free from their oppressive situation.
This should change the way we view every person we meet. Those in our family, the people in our congregations, and even our enemies are trapped at the hands of Sin. But the deepest truth about them is that Christ has made a way for them where there seems to be no way.
Second, focusing on sin as individual guilt cements a notion of God as a judge who relates to us as criminals rather than as a Father to a child.
The courtroom illustration is used often by preachers. God is the judge on the bench and we are on trial. But is this the type of judgment God has? When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray he does not teach them to pray “Our Judge, who art in heaven” but “Our Father…”
There are many different forms of judgment. There is a type of disinterested judgment that comes from an impartial judge, but then there is the judgment of a loving father. This isn’t to lessen the judgment of God, it actually heightens it. A loving father instructs and guides his children regarding their every word and action precisely because of his love and care for them.
The Exodus narrative is again a helpful guide. God first adopts the people of Israel and makes them his son (Exod. 4:22) and then inside this covenantal relationship that he has established he gives them the law at Sinai so that his Son can flourish.
When Sin is first seen as an enslaving power that the Father has liberated us from, our congregations will grasp a deeper and truer image of their relationship to God. He is our loving Father who has “rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Col. 1:13).
He has set us free by adoption into his Son. The family room is deepest because love is deepest.
Third, understanding Sin as a power should keep us preachers from weaponizing guilt and shame to coerce people with our preaching. The gospel message is a liberating message that removes the burden of slavery so that we can freely respond to the love God has given to us in his Son.
The great evangelist and theologian John Wesley once gave this advice to preachers: “Do not drive anyone into holiness, only draw them.”
Preachers can have the best of intentions in trying to “drive” people towards Christ. There’s a kind of misplaced fear that is a love for our neighbors, but at the end of the day it is a failure to trust in the work of Christ to draw all human beings to himself (Jn. 12:32).
When we “drive” people towards Christ in our preaching, we will always end up submitting them again to “a new yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). But the work of “drawing” humanity towards Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit in preaching. The Spirit is a liberator and “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” (Lk 4:18). The Spirit gives us the freedom to speak and to hear the promise of the gospel.
Regarding the liberating power of the Spirit Paul writes, “You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I want you to understand that…no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:2–3).
You can spot an idol by its inability to speak. And Scripture is clear that we become like the idols that enslave us (Ps. 115:8). Sin enslaves us by muzzling us, making us mute. By contrast, the true God is talkative. Psalm 50:3 says, “Our God comes and does not keep silent.” When the true God comes he comes in the power of his Word, which is Jesus Christ. This is what preachers are tasked with: to proclaim liberty to slaves through the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit.
When the liberating Spirit comes to those long held in slavery to Sin he removes the muzzle that the mute idols have put on us. We are given a voice; a voice that has been freed by the Spirit to say, “Jesus is Lord.”
On the day of Pentecost the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. We Pentecostals know this well. For what is speaking in tongues except the Spirit freeing our tongues so that we can proclaim the glories of God in Jesus Christ?
This is the liberating Word God has called us preachers to preach.
