When God Calls It Sin – Part 1 – #4 The Remedy of Sin

About this Series: “When God Calls It Sin” was originally a 5-week study I had lead in 2019 for an adult Sunday School class at my old church.

The outlines and lessons were based on Jerry Bridges’ book “Respectable Sins,” which I highly recommended for anyone serious about confronting the sins in their own hearts that are often overlooked.

For the blog, I am adapting my own notes and slides from the class and posting them almost verbatim. Since each class was an hour long, however, I will be dividing segments of each lesson into separate posts for easier reading.

Jump To:

• Part 1 (Introduction)
• Part 2 (Ungodliness || Unthankfulness || Anxiety || Frustration || Discontentment)
• Part 3 (Pride || Selfishness || Judgmentalism)
• Part 4 (Anger || Impatience & Irritability || Envy, Jealousy, & Related Sins)
• Part 5 (Sins of the Tongue || Wordliness)

Part 1 Segments:

1. Ordinary Saints
2. The Disappearance of Sin
3. The Malignancy of Sin
4. > The Remedy of Sin
5. The Power of the Holy Spirit / Conclusion

The Remedy of Sin

That is, after all, what the Apostle Paul did. Perhaps there has never been anyone more aware of their own sinfulness than Paul, the man many theologians believe to have been the holiest man that ever lived, apart from Christ Himself.

If you examine Paul’s writing, you see that from the time he was first called by Christ on the road to Damascus until his final letter, his self-awareness only seems to increase.

Paul described himself first as “the least of the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:9), then “the very least of all saints” (Ephesians 3:8), and finally as the “foremost” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15)! In other words, Paul first considered himself the lowest apostle, then the worst Christian, and then even the greatest sinner in the world!

While Christians should continually be sinning less as the Spirit works in their hearts, a strange reality starts to form: we begin to feel more and more sinful, as Paul did. And I believe that is an important, albeit unpleasant aspect of our sanctification. Why should we sometimes feel more sinful as we mature in our walk with Christ?

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A Lame Analogy

All analogies eventually break down, but perhaps this may be helpful to understand this odd situation.

And that is what the Holy Spirit does in the believer’s life through sanctification. He shines the light of Christ’s righteousness on our sinful flesh, illuminating the shadows in which we have hidden our own sinful desires. So the issue is not necessarily that we are sinning more as we grow in holiness, but that we become more aware of just how sinful we truly are!

So, what is the remedy? How do we overcome? In a word: the Gospel. And by “Gospel,” I mean the entire work of Christ in both His historical life, death, and resurrection, and His current work in us through the Holy Spirit.

Before we continue today’s discussion further, we need to take a step back and review exactly what the gospel is. Whether you know it already or not, it is important to our discussion. We cannot truly understand our sin without first understanding the gospel.

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18 LSB

All of this talk about sin and righteousness will mean nothing to you until you first understand the good news of the Gospel.

What Is the Gospel? (a brief review)

God created us in His image, to be His representatives on Earth. As such, He gave us laws to obey, both written in our consciences and in His Word.

If you have ever lied, stolen, cheated, blasphemed God, or looked at another person with lust, you are guilty of breaking God’s law. There is not a single person reading this, or anywhere on Earth, that can honestly say they have not. (see Exodus 20:1-17)

We have all willfully rebelled against the Lord and chosen to live our lives our own way. By doing so, we have forced a separation between ourselves and our Creator.

And that is bad news, for God is a good and just judge and He cannot simply let lawbreakers go unpunished. If He simply overlooked our sin and let us go free, He would be a very corrupt judge.

Romans 6:23 tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” More specifically, the penalty for our sin is eternal death in a spiritual prison that God created; a prison which He calls hell. Hell is a severe punishment, a place of never-ending torment where the flaming wrath of God is poured out upon sinners for their lawlessness. And it goes on forever; there is no escape once that sentence has been handed down to you.

But if God is so loving and kind, why is the punishment so severe and so long-lasting?

One way of answering that is to say that the punishment needs to be proportionate to the one against whom the crime has been committed.

Another analogy I heard once that I found helpful is to look at our own Earthly justice system. We can get a sense of why the victim of our crime affects the punishment:

1. If you lie to a child, so what. Nothing is going to happen to you.
2. If you lie to your spouse, you may have to sleep on the couch.
3. If you lie to the police, you could be arrested.
4. If you lie to the judge, you could go to prison.
5. If you lie to a king, you could be put to death.

Notice that it is the same crime in these scenarios: lying. But the penalty depends on whom you have lied to. When we sin, we are committing high treason against the Almighty Creator of the universe, the highest, holiest, and most powerful being in all eternity.

We sin against an infinitely good God and the punishment is likewise infinitely horrible. But God, being rich in mercy and love, provided a way for us to be forgiven and reconciled back into a right relationship with Him.

God sent His son, Jesus, to live a perfect, obedient, and sinless life on our behalf. He was tried by sinful men and executed on a cross, where God the Father poured out the full cup of His wrath and holy hatred of sin onto Jesus.

God calls each and every one of us to repent (that is, turn away from our sins) and put our faith in Jesus Christ; every sin you and I have ever committed gets laid upon Jesus. He takes our punishment and our sin onto Himself. Our debt gets transferred to Jesus “account,” so-to-speak, and our debt is reckoned as being paid in full.

That is fantastic news!

But that is only one half of Christ’s work on the cross! Not only did He take on all of our evil, He also imputed (or gave) to us His righteousness, His perfect obedience! And when He rose Himself from the grave three days later, He proved forever that the Father had accepted that payment.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

2 Corinthians 5:21 LSB

So, God’s requirement for justice is satisfied: our sin has been dealt with and we are now seen by God as having perfectly fulfilled His will, just as Christ did!

We are no longer guilty in God’s courtroom and when we die, we can approach the throne with confidence, knowing that Jesus Christ has satisfied God’s wrath and we can enter into heaven and enjoy the Lord for all of eternity!

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1 LSB

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We need to preach this Gospel message to ourselves daily, for its message is not only for unbelievers. The Gospel is necessary for all who sin, including those who have been saved: we must remember what we have been saved from! It may be foolishness to the prideful and lost, but for the believer it is our “blessed hope” and it is the very power of God at work in our lives!

But, we still have the question: as Christians, how can we go about growing in holiness and destroying our sin?

It just so happens that the Bible tells us of one very real person that was able to resist every kind of temptation His entire life: Jesus Christ Himself. Christ never sinned. He never lusted. He never lied or coveted. Not once. Not ever!

But, he was tempted! Let us look at just one of these occasions:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’”

Matthew 4:1-4 LSB

You and I can follow His example. You may say “well, He was only able to resist the temptation because He was God!” And to that, I would say “eh, yes and no.”

It is absolutely true that Jesus is God, but look at what the Word says: He was led up by the Spirit and He was full of the Spirit. Jesus was able to resist every temptation and never sin, because was under the control of, and in complete submission to, the Holy Spirit.

So, while only God Himself could have such a perfect relationship with the Spirit, only a man could serve as our representative and take our place in judgment before God the Father. Therefore, yes, Jesus is God, but He is also a man.

Have this way of thinking in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8 LSB

So, now you can see that Jesus, as a human man, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, was completely obedient to the Father’s will, to the point of death.

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