It Takes Training To Be a Sinner
The movement from Adam to Christ is the movement from being born from below to being born from above. It’s the movement into becoming truly human as God is human.
But that movement involves a death. Paul puts it succinctly in Colossians 3:1—11. We have already died and our lives are hidden in Christ, but we must continue to take off the “old human” (Adam) and put on the “new human” which is being renewed in the image of the creator. Becoming truly human begins in a death (“you have died” Col. 3:3), but that death is an ongoing process (“Put to death, therefore…” Col. 3:5). That process is what the old Puritans called “the mortification of sin.”
The problem is sin. But what is it? How do we come to know what it is?
In talking about sin we have to be incredibly careful. But this is an area in which many of the teachers we’ve learned from have not been careful. Many of us have not been careful or prayerful in the way we’ve taught others about sin. Or as Chris Green memorably puts it, “Nothing is more sinful than what we’ve said about sin.”1
To say the same thing another way, most of us have been given a doctrine of sin that is sinful.
The problem—as usual—is that we do not start with Jesus in our understanding of sin. Most of our doctrines of sin begin from our own abstract ideas of what sin must be and then we try to squeeze Jesus into those already-fully-formed ideas. But a doctrine of sin constructed this way makes it so that our ideas of sin are setting the terms for Jesus to fulfill, rather than letting Jesus show us the truth. The result is that we’ve cut Jesus down to the size of our own ideas of sin.
Stanley Hauerwas says that becoming a Christian is being “trained to be a sinner.”
“To be able to confess our sins is a theological achievement that our baptisms have made possible. For sin, as Karl Barth maintained, is only known in the light of Christ. Thus from Barth’s perspective, our fundamental sin consists in the presumption that we can know our sin without having become a disciple of Christ. In short, to be a Christian means we must be trained to be a sinner.”2
We assume that because we are sinners we must know what sin is. But do we? Does an addict caught in the throes of their addiction really know the extent of their situation? Can they see their addiction and its dangers with any clarity? No! Only in the light of sobriety can an addict fully know the danger they were in.
Misdiagnosing Sin
Misconceptions about sin abound (but grace does much more abound!). Many of us will have been taught that sin separates us from God, or excludes us from the presence of God, or that God cannot even look on sin.
If we begin with Jesus we can see that none of these definitions of sin can be right. In fact, the gospel itself would make no sense if it were true that God cannot be near sin. Jesus—the one who is both truly human and truly God—is called “a friend of sinners.” When you read through the gospels not only do you find God constantly hanging around sinners, but it seems like that’s where he prefers to be.
This makes it all the more puzzling that so many theologians, pastors, and teachers continue to define sin as separation from God. If you read through a theology textbook (like Wayne Grudem’s systematic theology), you will find statements like “sin separates us from God” or “God cannot look on sin” and those assertions are typically followed by parentheses containing a Bible verse. (This is what people in the business call a biblical prooftext.)
It is true that there are many texts in Scripture that are difficult and require us to wrestle with them. But when you look up these texts that are often cited to prove sin separates us from God, what you typically find is that they aren’t difficult at all. In fact, they are usually making the exact opposite point.
Myth #1: “God cannot look on sin”
Habakkuk 1:13 is almost always cited in definitions of sin. “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”
But when you read the book you realize that Habakkuk is complaining to God because of sin and injustice. He begins the first chapter saying, “‘How long O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?' Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!; but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?” (Hab. 1:2).
Habbakuk feels like God is making him look at and tolerate injustice. He knows God doesn’t like it, and he thinks God shouldn’t look on it either. But God tells him to watch. When we come to the infamous verse 13 that seems to say God cannot look on evil we find there is more to the story. “Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, you will never die. You, Lord, have appointed them to execute judgment; you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish. Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?” (Hab. 1:12-13).
Habakkuk is crying out to God, knowing he is a God of justice. He says, “I know you are the Holy One and that your eyes are too pure to look on evil and you cannot tolerate it. So, why do you tolerate it?”
In other words, Habakkuk is saying, “God, you can’t look on/tolerate evil, so why do you?” The text is actually bearing witness to the exact opposite point.
What Habakkuk has to learn is that God’s holiness is not what keeps God from coming in contact with sin, but actually it is what makes it possible for God to be with sinners, cleanse them, and make them whole. That’s what makes him holy.
The point is not that God cannot look at sin, but that it is the “looking” of God that frees sinners from their sin.
In his lecture on Genesis 1:3—5, Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes that God creates by his word and then “looks” at what he has created and calls it good. Bonhoeffer argues that God’s “looking” at creation is what upholds it and preserves it in its goodness. God’s looking at his creation is what keeps his creation from falling back into nothingness. If God turns his gaze away from something he has made, it ceases to exist.3
God’s “seeing” is never a passive act. He is never a voyeur. He is not surveilling us. God’s “seeing” is active. It is a grace. When God sees his creation what he sees is the truth of what he has made: that it is good. Bonhoeffer’s point helps us to see that God never looks away from us, even in our sin. He continues to uphold and preserve us in the truth and goodness in which he made us.
Myth #2: “Sin is exclusion from God’s presence”
Genesis 3-4 are often cited to show that sin causes us to be excluded from God’s presence. Adam and Eve sin in the garden and are exiled from Eden. But as you read the text you find that God has gone into exile with them. The same holds true for Cain in Genesis 4.
Later in the story, when many of the Israelites are taken into exile in Babylon, it is again assumed that those in exile have been excluded from God’s presence. Those who are left in the promised land declare that wicked have been removed from God’s presence into exile because of their sin. But the prophet Ezekiel disagrees.
“Ezekiel responds by declaring exactly the opposite, namely that those in exile—though neither obedient nor virtuous—are in fact the preserved remnant (11:16–20), even going so far as to depict the presence of YHWH leaving the temple and Jerusalem and heading east, as though YHWH was joining his people in exile (11:22–24), where YHWH will himself be ‘a little sanctuary’ (11:16) for the exiles… YHWH remains present among the exiles. On this point, Dalit Rom-Shiloni observes, ‘exile does not [for Ezekiel] bring separation from God.’”4
Myth #3: “Sin separates you from God”
We read in Isaiah 59:2 “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”
But, again, when you read the whole chapter you find that Isaiah is making the exact opposite point. Isaiah 59:1 says, “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.”
Isaiah is not saying that God is cut off from sinners and can’t reach them because of their sin. He is saying that God can get to sinners even though their sins cut them off from their awareness of him.
The passage goes on to say that we are blind and cannot see justice, we look for justice but find none, our deliverance is far away. We have turned our backs on our God.
Isaiah 59:15–17 “15 Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. 17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.”
The separation from God is in our perception, our awareness, of God. It is true that our awareness is fractured, but Isaiah is saying that even when we are in this kind of sin and injustice, we are never outside of the reach of the hands of God. Because his arm is not too short (Isa. 59:1). What else can “his own arm achieved salvation for him” be referring to other than the cross of Jesus Christ? Jesus is the arm of the Lord that is “not too short.”
This, then, is the point of Isaiah 59: even if it feels like you are outside the reach of righteousness, you are never outside of his reach of his right arm.
Myth #4: “Hell is separation from God”
There is one text in the New Testament that seems to explicitly say that hell excludes us from God’s presence.
2 Thessalonians 1:9 “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…”
But things are never that simple. The book of Revelation seems to say the opposite. Revelation 14:10 “They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.”
The text forces you to make a decision. Either we have to read 2 Thessalonians in light of Revelation or we must read Revelation in light of 2 Thessalonians. Are sinners shut out from the presence of the Lord in hell or are they in the presence of the Lamb?
If we start our understanding of who God is and what sin is with Jesus the answer is clear. Is Jesus God or isn’t he? This brings us directly to the heart of the idea that sin separates us from God. At the end of the day what this suggests is that Jesus is not fully God.
But the church teaches us to confess that Jesus is everything that God is and everything that we are—in one person. If we hold to that confession then we can see that the gospels witness to the fact that God himself has gone into God-abandonment (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). But he has done this so that we can know that he is present especially where he seems to be absent.
If God has gone into God-abandonment, then there has never been anywhere to hide from him.
As the psalmist says, “Where should I go to flee from your presence? If I go to the highest mountain you are there and if I make my bed in hell you are there!”
This is the promise of the beautiful gospel. In Christ we can hear God saying, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here. I gave you my one and only Son and you murdered him, but I transfigured that evil act into resurrection and the salvation of the whole world. I refuse to separate myself from you, and I refuse to allow you to separate yourself from me.”
Or as Lincoln Harvey has it:
“The only way the creature could separate itself from God is to take him in our hands and kill him. But God has always already chosen the event of separation as his life in Jesus Christ… And this means that nothing can separate us from the love that God is, because the event of the creature’s attempt to separate is the definition of his life.”5
This is the true meaning of grace. No matter what you’ve done or will do, God will never leave you or forsake you. The truth is that you cannot separate yourself from him. That’s good news.
But the beauty of the mystery deepens: if God is to be true to himself, he cannot separate himself from you. In Jesus Christ, God has so tightly bound himself to you that to deny you would be to deny himself.
Chris E.W. Green, Being Transfigured, p. 97.
Stanley Hauerwas, Minding the Web, p. 267.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, p. 45-46.
Jason Staples, The Idea of Israel, p. 136 (emphasis added).
Lincoln Harvey, Jesus in the Trinity, p. 163.
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