FAMOUS PASSAGES
RESPONSE TO SIN
DR. JIM DIXON
NOVEMBER 11, 1991
1 JOHN 1:5-2:2
Gulliver was the name of a character created by Jonathan Swift in his fantasy written in 1727 called Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver took four journeys, and on his first journey, you might remember, Gulliver went to the land of the little Lilliputians, a diminutive people, 1/12th the size of normal human beings. And on Gulliver’s second journey, he went to the land of the Brobdingnagians, a land of giants with massive people 12 times as large as normal human beings. And on Gulliver’s third journey, he went to a number of places. Through these first three journeys, Jonathan Swift satirized various segments of the 18th century English society. He poked fun at the religious and political leaders and even the scientific community. For instance, on Gulliver’s third journey, he went to the Academy of Lagado where scientists spent all of their time trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.
Now, Jonathan Swift knew that science was important. I mean, he knew that and he believed that scientists did some worthwhile things, but he also believed (at least it seemed to him) like a lot of scientists spent a lot of time doing a lot of strange things that were not particularly meaningful.
Now, virtually all scholars agree with this: the fourth journey of Gulliver was the most important for Jonathan Swift because in the fourth journey Jonathan Swift revealed his feelings about humanity and he satirized humankind. Now, you might recall that Gulliver on that fourth journey went to a land where there were two groups of beings. There were the Houyhnhnms, and there were the Yahoos. Now the Houyhnhnms were kind and they were gentle and they were wise and they were kind of fun to be with, but they looked a lot like horses. The Yahoos were not so kind. They were not so gentle. They were not so wise. In fact, they were kind of foolish. They had every fallen passion imaginable, and they looked a lot like human beings.
Now, Gulliver didn’t want to hang out with the Yahoos because they weren’t very pleasant. He wanted to hang out with the Houyhnhnms, but the problem was that the Houyhnhnms were kind of suspicious of Gulliver because he looked a lot like a Yahoo. Now you might remember that when Gulliver left that land and he returned to England, he didn’t want to hang out with people anymore because they remind him of Yahoos. He spent all of his time hanging out at the stables where he could see horses that reminded of him of the Houyhnhnms.
Now, Jonathan Swift was not a misanthrope. He was not a hater of humanity. Jonathan Swift loved people, and Jonathan Swift believed that there was some good, some kindness, some gentleness, some wisdom in all human beings. But you see, basically Jonathan Swift did believe that all human beings are Yahoos. Jonathan Swift was a Christian minister, and he knew the Bible. He knew Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” All are Yahoos. “There is none righteous, no not one. All we, like sheep, have gone astray.” The world is filled with Yahoos.
This has been a difficult message for the world to accept in any generation because there are a lot of people in this world who just don’t want to accept their fallenness, don’t want to accept that they’re riddled by sin. I think in the world in which we live there basically are three responses to sin. First of all, some people try to overlook sin. In fact, I would say a lot of people seek to overlook sin.
Now, when I was in college, I hung out with a group of guys. There were about 7 or 8 of us and we were buddies, and we did a lot of things together. We even signed up for the same elective courses because we wanted to take the classes together, and we coordinated our schedules. And a lot of evenings we were out kind of late because we were trying to have a good time. It was just kind of incredible to be away from home and be free. Some nights we were out till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and that made it real hard to get up the next day. Sometimes we didn’t. We had trouble making it to the dining commons for lunch.
One of the biggest troubles we had was making it to early morning classes. We tried not to sign up for early morning classes, but we had to take a few of them. And I remember we took this one class in English literature. It was an elective. We took a class in English literature from a man whose name was Dr. Donald Beacher. We would go into his class so sleepy. It was a small class. In fact, it only had 4 rows. Not many people chose this class. My buddies and I would kind of wander in there half asleep and we’d all sit in the front row. Dr. Beacher was only about 10 feet in front of us. Then he would begin to lecture, and we would begin to sleep. It was really embarrassing as, you know, our heads would kind of begin to bob, our eyes would begin to close, and we’d try to stay awake and we just couldn’t. It was super embarrassing for us, but I’ve got to say, it was more embarrassing for Dr. Beacher who was a very nice man. He never said anything to us, but what he did was he began to just overlook us. He began to overlook us, and that’s how he coped. There were only four rows. We were in the first row. We were all going to sleep. He just looked over our row, and he’d make eye contact with anybody but us. He’d look over our row, and he’d find people who gave him some response and some encouragement and some reinforcement.
Now I’ve got to say, I think you know maybe one of the reasons the Lord called me to the ministry into preaching is so people could pay me back for what I did to Dr. Beacher. But I think that’s human nature there. I mean, it’s human nature not to want to look at what is unpleasant. It’s human nature to overlook what is not pleasant.
You know, when they came to Al Capone’s mother and they said to her, “What do you think of your son?” You might recall she said, “Al is a good boy.” Now you know, Al might have treated her great, but I think it’s safe to say she was overlooking a few things. You know, like murder and theft and drug trafficking, prostitution, and income tax evasion. “Al’s a good boy.” She was overlooking. Everybody in the world tends to overlook sin.
I think it’s most tragic when we do it with ourselves. I mean it’s most tragic when we overlook our own sin, and I think in the evangelical Christian community, we have a tendency to do this. I think we tend to identify certain sins as horrible and stay away from those and then just overlook all the other sins.
I’d like to read for you a little quote from C.S. Lewis in his book, Mere Christianity. Lewis writes this: “If anyone thinks that sexual sin is the supreme sin, he’s quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are in some ways the least of all sins. All of the worst pleasures are spiritual rather than physical. The pleasure of putting people in the wrong, the pleasure of bossing people around, the pleasure of patronizing people, the pleasure of back biting, the pleasure of gossip and slander, the pleasures of power and the pleasures of hatred. This is why the cold self-righteous prig who goes to church regularly may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But of course, it is far better to be neither.”
Now I don’t know how you feel about that little statement by C.S. Lewis. Personally, I think he’s treading some dangerous turf when he begins to compare sin like that and draw comparison between what he calls physical and spiritual sins and weigh them. I think that’s dangerous, but I think he’s right. I think he’s right in observing that some Christians tend to think certain sins are horrible and then just kind of overlook the other ones. If you’ve come to this church for a while, you know we don’t downplay sexual sin. Sexual sin is serious, but we really don’t want to downplay any sin because all sin is serious. And God doesn’t want his people to overlook sin. I mean there are some sins we may never fully overcome in this life, but the answer is never to overlook them.
Some of you have heard of the African white ant. The African white ant is rarely seen because it spends most of its time under things or in the midst of things, and in Africa the African white ant is a little bit like the termite. People on the African continent build homes sometimes out on the open plains. They build those homes of wood. And sometimes the homes, you know, look great from the outside and the months go by, and the homes continue to look great, like there’s nothing wrong with the house. But after a few months, things begin to fall apart. I mean the walls begin to crumble, and the rafters begin to come down. When they look at some of the wood, it has become like hollow tubes. In fact, some of the beams, you could take your little finger and push right through because of what these African white ants have done.
People in Africa have learned not to overlook those little white ants. They’ve learned not to overlook them because even though they can’t see them, they know they’re likely to be there. They treat their wood. They make special preparations, and they take special precautions to deal with the problem of the African white ants. I think that sin in the life of the Christian is very much like the African white ant. You rarely see sin. You don’t look in the mirror and see your sin. It’s easy to overlook sin, but if you just overlook it and pretend it’s not there, eventually you’re going to pay a price. It’s doing damage to your soul and to your spirit. You’re going to pay a price, and if you don’t pay a price in this life, you’ll pay a price at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ. Don’t overlook sin.
Well, I think too there are people in our world who try to overpower sin. They think that in their own strength they can overpower sin.
In Watsonville, California there is a little river, a little creek, called Salsipuedes Creek. It is said that years ago, early in the 19th century, a Mexican laborer was trapped in this creek because the banks of the creek are quicksand. And this Mexican laborer was trapped in the quicksand at south of Salsipuedes Creek, and he couldn’t get out. Now this Mexican laborer was known to be an arrogant man filled with pride. He’d always said to people, I don’t need you. A Spaniard came by on a horse and the Spaniard knew the Mexican laborer. He offered to help him, and the Mexican laborer said, “I take care of myself, don’t you know. Don’t bother.” And he was actually sinking, and it’s said that the Spaniard got on the horse began to ride off and he shouted back “salse puedes,” which roughly means, “Get out of it yourself if you can.” That’s why the creek was given that name.
Now I think sin is very much like quicksand, and every single human being on planet earth is caught in it. We’re all in this quicksand and there’s actually people in this world who have so much pride and so much arrogance that they think they can deal with this quicksand called sin themselves. And yet the Bible says that all people are slaves to sin. And the human predicament is described by the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 7, where the Apostle Paul says, “I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” That is a description of the human predicament. Apart from Christ, when we try to deal with sin in our own strength, it just isn’t possible.
Perhaps you’ve heard of severe combined immunodeficiency disease. The disease is better known as SCID. One out of every 400,000 babies was born with severe combined immunodeficiency disease, and tragically these babies do not have an immunity system and cannot defend themselves against disease and against viral and bacteriological infection. They have no defense system. And so, for these babies, life is very precarious, and of course, life is very short.
Now, spiritually speaking, every single man and woman on planet earth is afflicted with severe combined immunodeficiency disease. Every one of us, because we are fallen, we do not have an immunity system when it comes to sin. Our defenses are just inadequate, and we’re not able to ward off the world of flesh and the devil no matter how hard we try.
Yet incredibly, there are people in this world who seem to think that by their self-discipline and by their self-control, they can attain victory over sin. In the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, it was the Pharisees who thought like this. I mean, the Pharisees thought that by their self-discipline and by their self-control they could defeat sin and they could find victory. They knew all the lists of sin in the Torah and the Pentateuch, and they itemized those lists of sins. They described the actions associated with each one of those sins, and then by self-discipline they tried to stay away from any such actions. And they had great self-discipline, and they had great control and overcame a lot of sins. And no group of people were more condemned by our Lord Jesus Christ than those Pharisees because in the midst of their effort to overpower sin, they had become self-righteous. They had forgotten love. They had forgotten mercy. They had forgotten grace, and the Lord Jesus Christ actually wound up telling them that their sin was the greatest of all. In fact, Jesus said to them that when it came to sin they were straining out gnats and they were swallowing camels. And that’s what happens to people when in their own effort, in their own power, they try to overpower sin. You just can’t do it.
Of course, there’s a third response to sin in this world. I think some people try to overshadow it. In fact, I think this is the most common response to sin by people in this world. Some people overlook it, some people try to overpower it, but most people, most people in this world try to overshadow it. They do this through good works. They think, if I can just do enough good, it’ll overshadow the bad. If I can do enough good works, if I can make that stack up high enough, the shadow will cover, you know, the stack of sins.
I think this is true of the religious systems of this world. All of the religious systems of this world believe in overshadowing sin. Certainly, it’s true of the world of Islam. In Islam there’s no atonement for sin. There is no sacrifice for sin. And in Islam, the subscribers, those who believe, are told that through the five disciplines, which in effect are good works, they can attain salvation. Through these five disciplines, somehow even though sin cannot be atoned for, somehow through all these good works, they’ll come out all right.
That’s what all the religions of the world teach. That’s true of Hinduism and Buddhism. I mean, karma is at the very root of Hinduism and Buddhism, and they’re looking to have good karma that overshadows bad karma. And this all works, and there’s no atonement for sin in Hinduism or Buddhism, just the hope that your good karma might somehow overshadow your bad karma. And of course, much is at stake in their religious belief system because they believe in reincarnation (or, more accurately, transmigration). They believe that the way you’re going to come out in the next life basically depends on your good works and whether your good karma overshadows the bad. If you do well, you might come back as the Dali Llama. If you do poorly, you might come back as some kind of flea on a dog’s back. A lot is at stake.
Frankly, I think overshadowing sin is the religious belief of every man and every woman. Even those people in our world who don’t consider themselves very religious and maybe they’re not sure whether God is there; maybe they don’t know whether there’s a heaven or a hell, but they just hope; it seems reasonable to them if they do more good things than bad things, if the good stuff piles up higher than the bad stuff, they’re going to come out all right when they stand before God (if there is a God) and they’re going to go to heaven (if there is a heaven) and stay out of hell (if there is a hell). And that seems to be how the world thinks. It’s deception because the Bible tells us God’s a holy God and He cannot overlook sin. It doesn’t matter how many good deeds we do. Sin must be dealt with.
Of course, I believe some people try to overshadow sin not so much by good works but by great pain. I mean, have you ever met people whose pain seems to be kind of precious to them? They put it on the shelf. They want to almost protect it. They’re in their own private purgatory. They’re doing penance, and they somehow hope that great pain will overshadow their sin. They don’t want you to take away their pain, and that too is deception.
The way to deal with sin is not to overlook it, not to overpower it, and not to overshadow it. The way to deal with sin is to confess it, and that is what our passage of scripture today is all about. We’re all Yahoos, we’ve all sinned, and we’re all sinners. The only solution to sin is to come to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and confess that sin and come in repentance, and then we overcome sin. We overcome sin not by our power, not by our works, but by His power and by His works. When we come in confession and in repentance, we overcome by the blood of the lamb.
Now, I don’t think there’s any doctrine in the Christian church more misunderstood than the doctrine of confession. I mean, every single one of us knows that we’re supposed to confess, but I don’t think we understand how we’re supposed to confess. I think most of us seem to feel that if we would just confess our sin to God and come in repentance before Christ, that’s all we need to do. And my guess is that most of you think that’s all you need to do. Just confess that sin to Jesus Christ, come in repentance, and you’ve overcome sin. Well, I must say biblically, if you come and you confess your sin to Jesus Christ and you come in repentance, he will forgive you. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, but you won’t necessarily overcome that sin. You won’t necessarily have victory over that sin unless your confession reaches further than that. See, the Bible says, we’re to confess our sin to one another. I mean, isn’t that a hard message? The Bible says we’re supposed to confess our sin to one another. I think it’s easy for most of us to confess our sin to the Lord. You don’t have to humble yourself a whole lot to confess your sin to the Lord, but it’s really hard to confess sin to a brother or sister in Christ.
See, the Bible says that as Christians we are called a royal priesthood. The Bible says each and every one of us as Christians are called to be priests. I think the modern Christian church at the end of the 20th century has absolutely abandoned the priesthood. You know, the priesthood, biblically, is centered on sin. It was instituted, it was established, to deal with sin, and the high priest, as you well know, on the Day of Atonement went into the Holy of Holies. And there he sprinkled the blood of animals on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. And why did he do that? He did that to deal with sin, hoping to atone for the sin of the people. And the high priest on that same day, on the Day of Atonement, took the scapegoat and he vested the sin of the people upon the scapegoat, and he sent the scapegoat out into the wilderness. And why did he do that? He did it to deal with sin, symbolically removing the sin of the people from them. The whole priesthood existed to deal with sin. It had many purposes. I mean, the priests of Israel studied the law, and they sought to discern the divine will. But the primary function of the priesthood was to deal with sin. And it wasn’t just the high priests; all the priests of Israel administrated the sacrificial system, which dealt with sin.
The Roman Catholic Church has understood this. And so, priests in the Roman Catholic Church seek to deal with sin. They enter the confessional, and they hear the confession of sin, that they might pray for a brother or sister in Christ, that there might be healing.
As Protestants, we understand that all Christians are called to be priests. As Protestants, we understand the biblical teaching that each and every one of us are called to be priests. But when do we go into the confessional? When do we ever confess our sins to one another and pray for one another that we might be healed? James 5:16 says, “Confess your sin to one another. Confess your sin to one another, and pray for one another that you might be healed.” Do you ever wonder why the church of Christ at the end of the 20th century has no power? We have abandoned the priesthood, and we don’t confess our sin in the biblical sense. We confess that only to the Lord seeking forgiveness, but we don’t seek overcoming and we don’t seek victory. The power of Christ is not fully released in our life because we’re not willing to humble ourselves and confess to one another.
It’s what the priesthood is all about. You’re a priesthood of believers. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another that you might be healed. The power of the Lord can be released, and we’ve abandoned the priesthood. Does it seem curious to you that so many Christians have changed so little? Does it seem curious to you that you’ve changed so little? Does it seem curious to you that some people accept Christ as Lord and Savior and you see them 30 years later and the same sins, the same character flaws, the same lack of sanctification is there that was there 30 years ago?
It’s not enough. I tell you biblically, it’s just not enough. It’s awfully safe, but it’s not enough to confess your sin to the Lord. You are a priesthood. I know this is a very sensitive subject and I know it’s a dangerous one. I know the priesthood of believers can be abused. If you’re a man and your sin is lust or you’re struggling with some sexual sin, you need to confess that to another man, a brother in Christ where there’s confidentiality, and you know he’ll pray for you. And the power of the Lord can begin to be released for overcoming, and there will be accountability. If you’re a woman, you need to find a sister in Christ. And of course, your spouse is probably an exception. We need to be careful, but we can’t abandon the priesthood or there’s no power, no sanctification, no overcoming. So, we need to find, each of us, a few brothers and sisters in Christ who love us and love Jesus and be priests together. That way the power of God might be released for sanctification and healing.
We’re all Yahoos. Don’t overlook sin. Don’t think in your power you can overpower sin. Don’t try through your good works to overshadow sin, but overcome sin by the blood of the Lamb, confessing your sin and repentance to Christ. And then as the Spirit leads, confess your sins to one another, and pray for each other that you might be healed.
Let’s close with a word of prayer. Lord Jesus, You are the holy one. In You there is no sin. You knew no sin, and yet You took the sin of the world upon Yourself. You took our sin. You took my sin. You love us that much, and Lord Jesus, we will always marvel at how You went to Calvary’s cross and shed Your blood and paid the penalty for us. Lord, we confess to You that we are fallen and we are sinful. Help us never to overlook sin or to think that in our strength we can overpower it or, Lord, by our good works, overshadow it. But Lord, help us to come to You, believing in You as Lord and Savior, and confess our sin to You in repentance, knowing that You’ll be faithful and just to forgive us. And then Lord, for victory, for overcoming, as Your Spirit guides, help us to be willing, humble enough, to confess our sins to each other and pray for each other we might be healed. We pray these things, Lord Jesus, in Your great and matchless name. Amen.