Jesus or Sin

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Hooday
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24 Jul 2014, 11:38 pm

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin. (John 8:34 )

People like to reject God, Jesus, the Bible, and any solid affirmation of a very real, specific deity, claiming this is all superstition, religion, illogical faith, and anything else that defames or demeans the real existence of God.

But these same people cannot deny the existence of sin - neither in themselves nor in anyone else. They cannot deny its presence, its corrupting power, nor their inability to walk apart from it. If sin is so unacceptable in others, why do people continue to do it themselves?

This is utterly illogical - unless, as Jesus states above, the one who continually commits sin is actually it's slave,

Of course, this conjecture is easily disproved. The one who is not slave to sin will walk apart from it. This person will not lie, will not cheat, will not steal, will not deceive, will not be selfish, and will not habitually do things he knows is wrong. The man who does not commit sin can truly say he is not sin's slave.

But what about the man who tries but is unable to refrain from using profanity, thinking lustful thoughts, and generally doing that which he knows is wrong? This man clearly knows right from wrong, but cannot refrain from it personally.

This man is a servant of sin.

The Bible states it this way:

Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey? (Romans 6:16 )

A man is servant to that which has mastered him, regardless of how he thinks about this. The one who knows right from wrong and yet habitually does what he himself denies, that man is in bondage to sin.

To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. (James 4:17 )

This is very important, because this proves that a man who sins knows he is sinning. It is a transgression of a personal code of ethics, not some amorphous or subjective concept. He knows what he has done is wrong, and in his own eyes, he is justly condemned.

This is how God will judge the nations - not by some unknown or unseen standard, but according to the personal knowledge every individual has within him.

For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with what measure you measure, it will be measured back to you. (Matthew 7:2 )

If everyone sins, how can God righteously judge anyone? If everyone is a slave to sin, (as it says, "All have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God,") how can God hold us to a standard we can not obtain? If everyone sins, who can be condemned for doing what everyone does?

This is why God sent Jesus.

By Jesus, God righteously compares the world to Him. As He did not sin, He proved that a sinless life was possible, and by comparison, everyone else is held to the same standard.

God has appointed a day in which He is going to judge the world in righteousness by a Man whom He appointed, having given proof to all, by raising Him from the dead." (Acts 17:31 )

I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is going to judge the living and the dead in accordance with His appearing and His kingdom: (2 Timothy 4:1 )

They will render an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. (1 Peter 4:5 )

So then each of us shall give account concerning himself to God. (Romans 14:12 )

God also sent Jesus into the world to destroy the works of the Devil; who has been sinning from the beginning; whose children are those who habitually do what they know is wrong.

He who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. For this reason the Son of God appeared, that He might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 )

By this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Everyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:10 )

You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you desire to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar, and the father of lies. (John 8:44 )

The one who serves sin is sin's slave. He is servant to it and will do what sin commands.

The one who is servant to Jesus walks apart from sin, and is able to keep himself from sinning by the power of God.

The one who denies God and His righteous claim on every man's life adds to his sin, and accumulates for himself even greater wrath and judgement.

But after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; (Romans 2:5 )

God sent Jesus to bring all men unto Him through repentance and faith. The one who admits he is a sinner before God, and accepts Jesus in place of his sin, receives justification and forgiveness of his sins, as well as the presence of the Holy Spirit, Who by His power can keep a man from sinning; thereby keeping him from the wrath that is coming.

A man will either have Jesus or Sin as his master. He cannot serve both.

No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:13 )

A man cannot serve both Jesus and Sin. He will either be devoted to the one and hate the other, or will serve the one and despise the other.

If you are serving sin, you are despising Jesus.

If you are serving Jesus, you are despising sin.

It is manifest - a man serves that which is his master. Either of sin, leading to death, or Jesus, leading to life.

A man's choice is manifest by what he does. By his fruit, he is known. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, (and if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.)

LoveNotHate
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25 Jul 2014, 12:23 am

Hooday wrote:

A man's choice is manifest by what he does. By his fruit, he is known. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, (and if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.)

sin it is then

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Humanaut
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25 Jul 2014, 12:47 am

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill

TheBicyclingGuitarist
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25 Jul 2014, 1:13 am

in this interview Dan Barker Debates Jason Gastrich, Dan Barker makes quite a good case for there being no need for the word sin. It's meaningless and worse than useless because of the negative effects this concept has on how one views humanity and oneself. We can throw it out. This interview is actually quite a good read for any Biblical fundamentalists or if you know any and are trying to understand their point of view.

Here I'll quote some from that article:

Quote:

Dan: Well ok, so then you're throwing out part of the Old Testament. Christians feel free to pick and choose what they like and don't, right?

Jason: No, no, no. I'm not throwing out anything, but some of the Bible is historical narrative, some of it is poetry, some of it is theology, and the section you just grabbed, I believe, was a section that was a law for the Jews.

Dan: Well, all of the Ten Commandments were laws for the Jews, so . .

Jason: Absolutely.

Dan: So what I'm trying to say is, if a sin is violating God's law, then a sin can be anything, even if humanity thinks it's something good.

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: This religion declares that their god says it's something wrong, then it's a sin. So then it's a relative thing. It's a circular argument. I think there's no such thing as sin.

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: There are actions that some human beings, who are not completely healthy, might commit that cause unnecessary harm. And so we have systems of justice, and we might call them crimes, and which we have a prison system to protect ourselves. But to call it "sin" is to strike at the core of what it means to be a human being, and it is a deep insult to humanity. There's no such thing as sin, and we don't need salvation.

Jason: Well "sin" is in the dictionary. It's a term as used by millions of people.

Dan: Yeah, so is the word "ghost." I mean, there's a lot of words that people use, but that doesn't mean that it points to a reality.

Jason: Ok. Well, "ghost" is a word that, you know, we can read a dictionary definition of "ghost" and I'm sure it would say something to the effect of supernatural . . . It could be an imagined, but sin is more of a concrete definition of a trespass, or a wrongdoing. But you don't have to admit that sin exists. What your definition of sin shows that something exists that is wrong.

Dan: I don't define "sin." I throw the word out. We don't even need it. We do have a . . . we can, as secular human beings, can describe morality and ethics based on what our human needs are, and not have to make it some kind of a religious thing. In fact, millions of good Americans live really good, charitable, happy, meaningful lives without this concept of "sin" and "salvation." But they are good people because they respect humanity, and other life on this planet, by trying to avoid unnecessary harm. Calling it a "sin" makes [it] into something above our experience. It makes it something non-human, and therefore very dangerous.

Jason: Don't you think that it makes things kind of subjective if we don't have a non-subjective authority, a supernatural authority from outside our time-space dimension?

Dan: That's the only way to be moral. In fact, making it non-subjective or absolute is very very dangerous. If there is, supposedly, this absolute morality--these principles that have to be absolutely followed that were decreed by this god--then why is it that there are no two Bible-believing . . Why is it that there are no two issues on which Bible-believing Christians agree? Take any crucial social issue of the day: abortion rights, the death penalty, or doctor-assisted suicide, or gay rights, you name it. You go down through a dozen very important things, you'll find good Christians who pray, who go to church, who read the Bible, who seek God's guidance [and] you will find them falling on different sides of those issues. There is no clear absolute moral statement within the body of Christ, which is one of the evidences that the Christian morality really is nonexistent. It still boils down to your subjective feeling of what you think about abortion, or what you think about gay rights. There's no verse in the Bible that says "Thou shall not commit abortion." It's Christians themselves making a subjective decision [about] what they think the Bible ought to be saying.

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DentArthurDent
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25 Jul 2014, 2:02 am

Hooday, who wrote the gospels?

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TallyMan
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25 Jul 2014, 2:34 am

Hooday wrote:

Jesus or Sin

You present a false dilemma. As an atheist I have no interest in your Jesus. Sin is a religious concept and I reject the concept entirely. This does not mean I am without morals. I treat my fellows as I would want them to treat me. Humans have evolved to have an inherent empathy towards each other (it facilitated living together in extended families and larger groups which were more successful). The word "sin" is a contrivance of religion in an attempt to steal the principles of morality and claim them as its own - plus the religious add a few extras which aren't immoral too and try to tie morality to their particular brand of religion e.g. regarding a requirement to worship their god/prophet/holy person and not to work on their particular holy day or to observe other specific religious rites and rituals.

So yet another false premise by Hooday who is no doubt only here to preach at us then run, rather than get his hands dirty and actually talk/debate with us.

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TallyMan
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25 Jul 2014, 3:59 am

TheBicyclingGuitarist wrote:

Quote:

Excellent post / quote; it mirrors my own opinions on this issue perfectly. :thumleft:

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The_Walrus
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25 Jul 2014, 5:55 am

Sin doesn't exist, so I guess I have no choice but to worship Jesus

Janissy
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25 Jul 2014, 8:04 am

Hooday wrote:

But these same people cannot deny the existence of sin - neither in themselves nor in anyone else. They cannot deny its presence, its corrupting power, nor their inability to walk apart from it. If sin is so unacceptable in others, why do people continue to do it themselves?

Why indeed? The book Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil by Lyall Watson gives a reasonable secular explanation.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Nature-Natur ... 0060927909

Quote:

At a time when violence threatens to become epidemic and genocide takes the place of diplomacy in many regions of the world, it is no longer enough to simply dismiss such dark behavior as "human nature." People need to know why such atrocities and horrors take place, and the usual moral, religious, political and philosophical explanations have proved inadequate.
With Dark Nature, world naturalist Lyall Watson presents a scientific examination of evil. Drawing on the latest insights of genetics, evolutionary ethology, anthropology and psychology, he takes the discussion of evil out of the realm of monsters and demons to reveal it for what it truly is: A biological reality that may be terrifying but can be controlled

I didn't just find this with Google. I own the book and highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the biological underpinnings of evil or of sin (evil's weaker and less dangerous cousin).

from Kirkus review of the book: the source of evil:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-revi ... rk-nature/

Quote:

His evil is anything that disrupts the integrity of the ecological moment--the sense of place and community--anything that disturbs diversity, relative abundance, and communication. We can understand the cellular response of killing off, en masse, strangers to the realm; we can appreciate infanticide among birds and hyenas when Darwinian survival comes into play. Even the warring of the Yanomami can be seen in terms of population flux. But how does one account for a Bundy or a Dahmer? They may well be, suggests Watson, one of those nasty by-products of the human capacity to defy the genetic imperative, to think too much, giving us poetry and music on one hand, and the Holocaust on the other. Our consciousness may occasion a break with organic and genetic evolution so abrupt that cultural controls are not in place

But the OP is talking about sin, not evil. It's a different thing (and it's also discussed in the book but I couldn't find any reviews that quote that bit because evil is more compelling). Basically (according to Watson), what we call sins are those things that are natural drives that need to exist to some extent to ensure our survival but need to be controlled in order for society to exist. They need to be kept on a very short leash. You need to acquire resources in order to survive but in order for society to survive, there needs to be a control on how much and in what way those resources are acquired. And so we have the concept of the sin of greed to rein in that impulse. And so forth, with all things considered sins.

Quote:

This is utterly illogical - unless, as Jesus states above, the one who continually commits sin is actually it's slave,

It's certainly possible to be its' slave. But I think that recognizing "sin" as "natural drive spun out of control" is more helpful for suppressing it than religious concepts. I didn't have to invoke Jesus to teach my toddler (when she was a toddler) not to snatch a toy from another kid. Teaching her to suppress that natural greedy urge was enough. Being a "slave to sin" is really just catastrophically bad impulse control.

Quote:

Of course, this conjecture is easily disproved. The one who is not slave to sin will walk apart from it. This person will not lie, will not cheat, will not steal, will not deceive, will not be selfish, and will not habitually do things he knows is wrong. The man who does not commit sin can truly say he is not sin's slave.

I disagree. A person who is not a "slave to sin" (has good impulse control) can clamp down on a lot of impulses, frequently before they even become conscious, but will still slip up sometimes, especially when biological forces have worn down the self-imposed impulse control. I can be gracefully unselfish when well rested. If I only got 2 hours of sleep last night for some reason, other peoples' problems will take back burner until I've had coffee.

Quote:

But what about the man who tries but is unable to refrain from using profanity, thinking lustful thoughts, and generally doing that which he knows is wrong? This man clearly knows right from wrong, but cannot refrain from it personally.

This man is a servant of sin.

Or rather the man is a servant of biological forces which outweigh his ability to control them through willpower. Removing willpower from the equation is helpful. Lead me not into temptation.

Some people use religion as a way to hopefully remove willpower from the equation. But it isn't mandatory.

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25 Jul 2014, 8:30 am

The Christians I know sin more than me. So that makes accepting Jesus and not sinning unrelated items.

Plus "sin" is a relative term. You may consider homosexuality a sin. I don't.

Your argument is very weak.

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25 Jul 2014, 9:15 am

Being left-handed used to be considered sinful. Now it's not. The same book was used to justify calling it a sin, and that book's text has not changed at all since then (at least for those using the KJV).

Miscegenation was also considered a sin. Some people still think it is. We call those people "racists" and "bigots."

Sin is a human invention. There are no sins-- only consequences.

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TheGoggles
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25 Jul 2014, 9:25 am

lol did you literally quote Rush while engaging in apologetics for Christianity?

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25 Jul 2014, 9:29 am

BlankReg wrote:

Miscegenation was also considered a sin. Some people still think it is. We call those people "racists" and "bigots."

I had to look the word "miscegenation" up: "The interbreeding of people of different races".

The bible sure has some nasty teachings in... and even worse some believers use those bible teachings to justify their nastiness - homophobia, racism, sexism and even murder.

Generally speaking, the majority of passionate Christians I've come across during my life were bigots, back stabbers, prudes, authoritarian bullies or generally not very nice people, especially towards non-believers. There are some exceptions though - I have a relative who is a Christian and he's a very decent human being; a bit prudish, but nonetheless a likeable person.

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Misslizard
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25 Jul 2014, 9:41 am

We had an upstanding member of the local Baptist church steal some cedar logs from us.So much for his piety.Later on a limb fell on him in the woods and he is no more.Karma maybe?Or maybe just stupidity,should have a hard hat on when in the log woods.

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kraftiekortie
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25 Jul 2014, 9:56 am

We must remember that the Bible, in addition to being a spiritual work, is also a work which was promulgated 2,000 or more years ago.

One must always use historical context in arriving at a conclusion to anything.

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25 Jul 2014, 11:47 am

kraftiekortie wrote:

Very true....

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