The Seven Deadly Sins - Introduction

There’s a story about a woman who came to church regularly, and though her husband never came with her, they’d always talk about the sermon over lunch.

“So what was he on about today” asked the husband.

“Sin” said the wife.

“So what did he have to say about that?”

“He’s against it”

And indeed we are against it, in a general kind of way. Bot over the next few weeks as we approach and then enter Lent, we’re going to bring a little more precision to the discussion. And to do that we’re going to be drawing on some ancient Christian wisdom from the Scriptures and the teachings of the Desert Fathers. Early monastics who went out into the desert to search for holiness and found that they couldn’t run away from their own sin – they had to take it on and overcome it with God’s help.

And their shared struggles led them, over time, to speak of and classify what became known as the seven deadly sins. And they are (can you guess?)

Pride,

Avarice/Greed,

Envy,

Anger,

Sloth,

Lust

Gluttony.  

Eagle eyed might have spotted a glaring omission from that list straight away. Murder’s not there. Murder’s a terrible sin, why’s it not there?

Desert Fathers, in their wisdom, realised that people murder for many reasons. Because they’re greedy; because they’re envious; because they’re angry.

And that’s why the seven deadly sins are called the capital sins in some traditions – capital meaning ‘head’. They’re the chief sins. The ones that tend to lead to all the others. And between now and Easter we’re going to be looking at each one in turn; becoming more aware of how they might be operating in our lives and learning some practical strategies we can use to help overcome them.

But hang on Paul, some of you are thinking. Really? Seven weeks on sin? I thought Protestants didn’t believe in purgatory! Where’s your positivity?!  Give us inspirational quotes and pictures of nice scenery and kittens please! Why does the church have to keep banging on about sin all the time? It’s so negative.

Well, I take your point. Sometimes Christians do talk like sin is the beginning and end of the story; and it’s not. God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. The one to whom the whole arc of history is tending. Sin, and its bosom buddy death, do not have the last word on our lives. God has that word. God is that Word.

But sin is real, and it has consequences, both now and beyond death, and we dismiss that truth, or pretend it away, at our peril.

Asking why the church keeps banging on about sin is a bit like asking why the NHS keeps banging on about illness. It’s not because our doctors and nurses are gloomy and pessimistic! It’s because they believe in health and wholeness, and illness is what stops people experiencing those things. Health is where they want to get folk to; illness is what gets in the way.

And sin gets in the way. It divides the self, it introduces strain into our relationships, it alienates us from the God in whom we live and move and have our being, and who loves with an unfathomable love.

Read the papers; look at your community or the place where you work; reflect on your own life for even a few moments. You don’t need me to tell you where things need to change. You know it all too well.

We’re not the people we know we could be. The world is not the way it should be. Why? Because of our human propensity to screw things up! Because of sin.

  

Why do we need to be thinking about it?

Because we long for a better world and to be better people, that’s why.  And facing up to the problem is where we have to begin.

And the place to start is thinking about the word itself. What do we mean by the word ‘sin’?

Well the Bible uses lots of metaphors to talk about sin. The one we’re most used to is the idea of sin as the breaking of a law or a command of God. Don’t eat the apples on that tree. And what do they do? They go and eat the apples. Don’t worship other Gods, Don’t covet. Don’t bear false witness…. and what do we do? – we break the laws and we set ourselves at odds with other people and with God.

But that’s not the only way of thinking about sin. In the Old Testament, sin was often thought of as something that defiled – that made you ritually unclean. It was like a stain or a mark on us that needed to be washed away.

“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Words that King David wrote after he admitted sleeping with another man’s wife. 

The Eastern Orthodox church tends to see sin as an illness and Christ as the great healer. So the Psalmist says ““O Lord, have mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against you.”. And to my shame I’ve quoted this next one for years and never really thought about how it ends – Isaiah 53: “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed”

If you tend to think of God as a stern judge who can only condemn us because of son, maybe this is a helpful counterpoint to hold in tension with that. The Scripture teach that God is also the great physician who has compassion on us in our sin.

In some places sin’s spoken of as a hazard that makes us stumble - The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.(Proverbs 5:22)

“…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…. (Hebrews 12:1)”

and in other places, it’s spoken of as an enemy – actively working to create trouble for us. 

In Genesis 4, when Cain’s sacrifice doesn’t prove as acceptable as his brother Abel’s, he grows angry and God pulls him up for it. “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

So to sum all that up, we could define sin as “that power at work within us which seeks to keep us from right relationships with God, self and others.”

The Greek word for ‘sin’, hamartia literally means a falling short like an arrow missing the target, and the Bible’s uncomfortably clear that in that sense, we all sin. 

Romans 3:23 is uncompromising -

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”

And that means you and that means me. We’re all affected by this, whether we’re prepared to admit it or not. But what’s the solution? What can we do to deal with our tendency to sin?

Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? Roll your sleeves up and try harder! Make more of an effort to be pure! That seems to be the obvious solution.

And there were people who tried to do just that in Jesus’ day – they were called the Pharisees. And interestingly, they were the very people Jesus had his sharpest words with.

The Pharisees tried so hard to do the right thing. They hedged the law around with a thousand other little laws so that no-one would ever come close to offending God. They agonised over scruples; they made heroic efforts to be good. But in the end it just made them proud.

I’ll always remember being in Jerusalem on a Friday evening as the Jewish Sabbath began and the ultra orthodox Jews started making their way to the Western Wall for evening prayers. And as they did, some of the zealous younger men would make a point of stopping in the doorways of the restaurants and bars just to glower at those inside because, to them, we were sinners. We were breaking the Sabbath.

And in today’s gospel story we see exactly the same kind of self-righteousness in action.

Two men go up to the temple to pray. And one of them is full of himself, while the other one is full of sorrow.

“I thank you Lord that I am not like other men” says the Pharisee.  – robbers, evildoers and adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get”. 

I often wonder whether he said it out loud, looking round for an audience, or whether he was he just thinking those things? But it doesn’t really matter. His words tell you all that you need to know about him. His heart’s full of pride. The deadliest sin of them all.

And so it’s not him who goes home made right with God. It’s the tax collector; a man whose failings sit so heavily upon him he can’t even lift his eyes to heaven. All he can do is murmur a simple, heartfelt prayer – “God have mercy on me, a sinner”.

What’s the solution to the problem of sin? Jesus is telling us in this parable. Recognise that you’re broken and you need help. That your illusions of self-sufficiency are just that. Illusions.

Earlier I quoted from Romans 3:23  but I think we’re in a place where we’re ready to hear the rest of that verse now  – “for all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God…. and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

What’s the solution to the problem of sin? It’s not to try harder in your own strength. It’s to acknowledge your need, and  trust in what Christ has already done for us on the cross.

On the cross Jesus dealt with the guilt we feel because of sin. Paul says ‘there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Ro 8:1)

He dealt with the penalty of sin – “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him” – Isaiah 53:5

He broke the power of sin – “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Ro 8:2)

And I know that’s all theological language and it may or may not connect with you. So here’s another way of looking at it.

You’re in debt, and someone steps in and pays off your mortgage and all your credit cards.

Your child’s sick and someone steps in and pays for that incredibly expensive operation she needs that can only be done by a surgeon in Switzerland.

You’re wrongly accused of a hit and run and you’re facing a long jail sentence until someone steps in and produces dashcam evidence that proves it wasn’t you.

Can you imagine the liberation you’d feel? The gratitude?

You were in a hole. There was no way out. But completely unexpectedly and undeservedly, someone lowered a rope and hauled you out of there.

How would you feel towards them?

Hear me this morning. Christ has set you free. All that remains is whether you will believe it, accept it and live out of it with gratitude. The sooner we make that choice, the better it will go with our souls both now and in eternity.

There’s still lots to say, and we’re out of time for saying it.

I need to talk to you about Evagrius, a 4^th century monk and his insight that all sin springs from the thoughts we entertain.  The next seven weeks aren’t just going to be a list of do’s and don’ts – we’re going to be going deeper that that. What are the conscious and unconscious thoughts that subtly and not-so-subtly lead us into temptation, and how do we fight them.

But for now I want to leave you with this – Christ has saved us from the guilt of sin, the penalty of sin and the power of sin. But he hasn’t yet delivered us from the presence of sin.  It’s there in our lives, unbidden, and we need help if we’re to begin to deal with it.

So as we close today, I want you to take this thought away with you as we begin this series. Where do I most need God’s help at the moment? What is the one area I know I struggle in most?

It may be pride, envy or anger – one of the seven deadly sins.  It might be something more diffuse like anxiety or sadness or a lack of discipline. But try and get some precision on that – what’s the one thing you think God wants to work on with you over the next few weeks and months? Keep that in mind as we move through the sermon series.

Not much has changed since Eden. Sin is still crouching at the door. Wanting to trip us up and ruin our lives. 

But the good news is that if we learn to trust God we can overcome. Not because we are strong, but because his power is made perfect in our weakness.

Amen and thanks be to God for his word.