Understanding A Dichotomy: Sin and Righteousness

One of my coaching sessions deals with what I call 'half beliefs.' It's not that what we believe is wrong, but only that it's often incomplete. It's often a partial truth. Thus it can be called half a lie: beLIEf.

An Early False Belief

It's this this way with sin. One of our earliest half beliefs is that it was sin that was keeping us out of heaven. Like I just said, it isn't a totally wrong belief, but neither is it what we lawyers call "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

It is true that sin was keeping us out of heaven.

But we tend to think it was OUR sin keeping us out. It was because we were boozers - or druggies - or adulterers - or homosexuals - or anything of this nature, that we weren't going to heaven. But ask yourself this: If you stopped doing all those bad things, would you go to heaven? The answer is NO. The only way you go to heaven is by belief - saving faith in Jesus.

Yes, it was sin keeping us out of heaven. But Romans 5 says it was not OUR sin that was doing so, but ADAM'S sin.

Lord, that's not fair! It's not fair to hold me accountable for someone else's sin. I've got enough sin of my own to get to hell all by myself. I don't need Adam's help. This is often the way our minds work.

But the truth is this: God doesn't hold us accountable for our sin. It was this way before the law was given. "Until the law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law." Where there is no law, there is no sin (Rom 4:15). Sin is transgression of the law (I John 3:4). Because of what God has done with the law, as his ambassadors, we have diplomatic immunity on earth when it comes to sin - if we trust in Christ's finished work.

Hebrews says that God doesn't even remember our sin (Heb 8:12, 10:17). You see, we do sin. We sin every single day of our lives in some way - if not visibly, at least covertly. Self-righteousness, anger, lust, greed, covetousness and many other 'invisible' things are sin. But when you have diplomatic immunity, you can't be charged with it. Now think about the judgment seat of Christ. Are we going to be judged for our sin? Or is judgment about something far more basic - our beliefs?

David Saw This Truth Before the Cross

This is one reason David is 'a man after God's own heart.' He saw this as Paul reports: David described the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputes righteousness without works saying, "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin" (Rom 4:6-8). This is one thing both the prophets and angels searched so diligently to try to understand - the GRACE to be given to us (I Pet 1:9-12).

Is Sin A Verb, or A Noun?

When we think of sin, we think of it as being a verb. To us, it describes action: something we do. But to God sin is a noun. It's a state of being. It's a condition we exist in. We are either sinners in Adam, or we are righteous in Christ. It doesn't depend on what we do.

The Same Thing Is True About Righteousness

We see sin as what we do wrong, and we see righteousness as being what we do good. But to God, righteousness is a state of being. It is a spiritual condition we are in, rather than something we do. Like sin, to God righteousness is a noun - not a verb.

One place we see this is in Romans 9:30-32: "The Gentiles, who did not follow after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, who followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they didn't seek it by FAITH, but by WORKS of the law."

The gospel is the revelation of God's righteousness in us (Rom 1:16-17). Too many Christians today still try to attain it by the works of the law too - even though the law was never given to us (Rom 2:14).

Understanding Sin and Righteousness

We really can't understand sin and righteousness if we live in law. We can never understand how we can be made righteous - without doing things right - until we first understand that Jesus was made sin - without doing anything wrong.

What About the Holy Spirit?

Another false belief that gets us into trouble is believing the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin. Many preachers love to preach this one hard. It comes from one passage in John 16:8-11. I'll let you read it. But if you read it very, very carefully, you can see that the Holy Spirit convicts us of our righteousness in Christ - because we believe Jesus is with the Father. He doesn't convict us of sin. If he did, he would be alienated from Jesus who says he won't accuse us at all (John 5:45).

I don't even think the Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of their sin - but of the ONE sin of not believing in Jesus. How much less believers?

Let me ask: could it be blasphemy against the Holy Spirit if we accuse him of accusing us - when he's really protecting and defending us - revealing to us our righteousness in Christ? In John 5:45 Jesus says there is only ONE who accuses us: Moses and his law. Do you think he forgot about the Holy Spirit?

Summing It All Up

Jesus came to put away sin (Heb 9:26). He became sin for us (II Cor 5:21). Faith in him should produce no more sin consciousness - we should have no more consciousness of sins (Heb 10:2). NOTE: This was the desired goal of the Old Testament, but it was impossible to fulfill.

Isn't it a dichotomy to say we should now confess our sins daily - when the blood of bulls and goats dealt with sin for a whole year? Even Catholics have it better than this - they just confess their sins weekly. Doesn't something sound a little bit whacky? Somebody has something all mixed up.