Whatever Became of Sin?
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
In the mid-1970s a psychiatrist named Dr. Karl Menninger wrote a bestselling book titled Whatever Became of Sin? Its premise was that society had slowly but steadily rejected, to its detriment, the concept of sin. In its place it had substituted such things as mental illness, inappropriate responses to trauma, antisocial behavior, and environmental factors. What this had done, according to Menninger, was shifted the responsibility from the individual to society. Those things that used to be considered sinful behaviors were not seen in this light any longer. It was the dysfunction of society that was at the root of the problem rather than the actions of the individual.
The problem that Dr. Menninger identified has not changed. Culture, except in church circles, continues to underuse and disdain the term “sin.” One almost never hears it from any secular source. This is, of course, purposeful. A society that wishes to do as it pleases does not want anything, or at least only a very few things, to be considered sinful. No wonder our moral slide as a culture continues. If nothing can be called sinful, then immorality has no governor to slow its acceleration, no fence to warn of limits, and no lighthouse to signal impending disaster.
From where does sin come? The scriptures teach that God created human beings with the capacity for relationship with him, with his law written on their hearts so that they have the ability to worship him in love and obey him by living holy lives. What happened to this grand design in creation? The biblical answer is that sin broke our perfect communion with God, thereby corrupting God’s original plan. When Adam and Eve fell from grace, it ruined their perfect communion with him and, in addition, ruined it for their posterity.
What has the Fall changed? Since the Fall, our natural tendency is to hate God and our neighbor. We worship idols of our own devising rather than the one true God. As a result of sin, human life is poisoned by everlasting death. Is this an overstatement? No. We hate God because he demands of us an obedience to his laws that no sinful human can meet. The more stringent his demands, the more our sinful hearts resist his demands. Because our lives are self-absorbed without our Maker’s presence, we treat our neighbor as an obstacle to our happiness or an object to be used for our satisfaction. We make idols in our own hearts to fill the void inside that God ought to occupy. The result is that our lives are poisoned by a spiritual darkness that leads to emptiness, loneliness, alienation, and spiritual death.
It is important to understand the reality of sin and important to call it by its name. Without naming sin, there is no personal responsibility and no incentive to repentance. What we need is not more excuses for our sin but the accountability to recognize it, acknowledge it, and bring it to the cross for forgiveness.