The Bad News We Still Need: Recovering Sin in a Secular Age – Pierce Taylor Hibbs

ABSTRACT: The doctrine of sin is frequently ignored in the secular West, replaced by self-confidence and therapeutic models of self-help. Many churches, though not ignoring sin, nevertheless treat it superficially, as if sin were a problem only of behavior and not also of thought and desire. In a biblical understanding, however, sin is the moral heart-sickness at the center of our rebellion against God. When recovered, the doctrine has significant implications for personal discipleship and preaching, challenging pastors to uphold the glory of God’s holiness and boldly proclaim the good news of his grace.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Pierce Taylor Hibbs (ThM, Westminster Theological Seminary), Senior Writer & Director of Content for Westminster Media, to help Christians recover the doctrine of sin.

What might it be like if the whole world slowly forgot the continent of North America? Ships set sail from the coasts of Europe and Africa, aiming to wander through the blue until they run ashore on Asia or Australia, but a titanic landmass keeps getting in the way. It isn’t on any of their maps. It makes no sense. The Atlantic should continue — but it doesn’t. Amnesia brings all travelers to reckon with the immovable truth.

It’s a bizarre scenario, but it happens regularly in the realm of dogma. We get theological amnesia; doctrines of the faith just slip off our radar. In our cultural moment, it’s happening with the core doctrine of sin, and we’re only just beginning to see the chaos and panic of gobsmacked travelers in the West. Let me explain what I mean, what seems to be happening, and how pastors and church leaders might respond.

‘Loss of the Consciousness of Sin’

In his classic Christianity & Liberalism, penned in 1923, J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) wrote about the “loss of the consciousness of sin.” Before his very eyes, one of the primary doctrines of Christian faith — a continent of belief — was being left behind, forgotten, cast aside. What took its place? A strange opposite: confidence. Machen wrote,

Characteristic of the modern age, above all else, is a supreme confidence in human goodness. . . . Get beneath the rough exterior of men, we are told, and we shall discover enough self-sacrifice to found upon it the hope of society; the world’s evil, it is said, can be overcome with the world’s good; no help is needed from outside the world.1

That final clause should give every Christian pause: No help is needed from outside the world. That captures the crippling amnesia of the secular West. What do we need to address the evils of the day? No God. No Savior. No Spirit. No revelation. Just . . . us. Thus commenced the forgetting of a continent.

Why did this happen? There is no simple answer. Machen thought that WWI had something to do with it. “In time of war,” he wrote, “our attention is called so exclusively to the sins of other people that we are sometimes inclined to forget our own sins.”2 True. We can stare at darkness long enough that we seem bright in contrast. But Machen knew that the answer went deeper. He saw the change in the previous 75 years in Western culture. And he defined it as the silent “substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant view of life.”3 Paganism, he said, is “that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. . . . Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.”4

Put in the plain language our neighbors might use, “We’re not that bad. We all have good things to live for and good things to chase. Let’s focus on them.” Each time this sentiment takes over in a human heart, another piece of the continent of sin disappears from view, leaving those who still talk about sin sounding outdated, detached, and even mythical.

There is now widespread amnesia about one of the biggest continents of human experience. But, of course, that doesn’t mean the continent has gone anywhere. Sin stays. Ships just run aground on its shores in defiance and call it something else. The day sin disappeared is really just the day men closed their eyes.

Of course, orthodox Christians have tried to retain their historical map, knowing how tightly linked the doctrine of sin is to other core beliefs (the doctrines of God, Christ, salvation, and sanctification, for example). While the wider Western world left behind their consciousness of sin, Bible-reading Christians held on to the concept. But even they have not been immune to the continental disappearance in the broader culture. In some ways, they have reduced the size of the continent. They have made sin less than what it truly is.

Almost a hundred years after Machen’s observation, the biblical counselor David Powlison lamented what he called “a Pelagian view of sin” within Christianity. By this he meant that many Christians viewed sin only as willed actions. Sin was simply “something wrong you do.”5 But is sin limited to outward action? Can you transgress God’s law in your thoughts? Yes, Jesus was clear on that (Matthew 15:19; Mark 7:21). Can you transgress God’s law in your desires? Yes, Paul was clear on that (Colossians 3:5; Galatians 5:16), and so was James (1:14–15). At the very least, then, sin involves not just actions but thoughts and desires. Sin is not merely “something wrong you do.” It is something inside you.

Defining Sin

So, what is sin? There are some questions that bring us to the edge of mystery and yet demand a definition. That’s what we have here. Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), summarizing the work of many faithful theologians, concluded that sin is moral heart-sickness. Sin is not a “thing” (substance) that exists on its own in conflict with God’s goodness, fighting for prominence in a sort of yin-yang battle for balance. Rather, sin is a negation introduced into God’s good creation by creatures.

Sin is “a deprivation of that which man, in order to be truly human, ought to have; and it is at the same time the introduction of a defect or inadequacy which is not proper to man.”6 In other words, sin takes something good away from us and actively introduces defects and distortions. Just as cancer both destroys tissue and multiplies abnormal cell growth, sin kills holy motivations and compounds unholy ones. Unlike cancer, sin is not a substance, a thing we can examine and measure with a microscope. It is a nothingness that eats away at us until we are so weak that we cave in on ourselves.

Scripture confirms this description and gives us many concrete and colorful depictions to help us understand sin. Some are direct and others are indirect. “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4) — that’s direct. Sin is a failure to imitate God (Ephesians 4:22–24) — that’s indirect. Vern Poythress points out over a dozen other ways Scripture portrays sin: slavery to evil (John 8:34; Romans 6:17), lack of fellowship with God (Romans 5:10), lovelessness (Matthew 22:36–40), would-be autonomy (Genesis 3:5), pride (Proverbs 16:18), unbelief (Romans 14:23), ingratitude (1 Thessalonians 5:18), rebellion against God (Romans 8:7), hatred toward God and improper commitment (Matthew 6:24), friendship with the world (James 4:4), unfaithfulness (Leviticus 26:15), and breaking harmony (2 Timothy 3:2).7 In all these examples and images, sin is relational. Powlison wrote that sin “means something that wrongs a relationship. It’s different from mistake or error or failing. It describes a relational betrayal, not just a personal failing. Sin means to wrong God by betraying love for him. Sin means to wrong other people by violating love for them.”8

In sum, sin is moral heart-sickness, any desire, thought, or action that turns us away from God and his revealed will for our lives. There is even a sort of dark logic to sin. Scripture says that sinful desires are the roots of sinful thoughts, which become the shoots of sinful actions. James says, “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (1:14–15). Sinful desires are the foundation for sinful thoughts, and sinful thoughts build a bridge to sinful actions. That is why we must be so vigilant in checking the desires of our hearts (see Matthew 5:28). The writer of Proverbs still has a message for the twenty-first century: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

The result of this dark logic of sin is our turning away from God. In turning away from God, we are left with ourselves. Sin bends us inward. We believe we are the lords of our own lives. Left unchecked, the inward bending of sin leads to death (James 1:15).

The good news is that while sin is moral heart-sickness, God offers moral heart-healing through his Son. That’s why in Christ God gives us new hearts (Ezekiel 36:26). And that’s exactly what we need. Otherwise, we remain, in Powlison’s words, “unsearchably insane.” He wrote, “The core insanity of the human heart is that we violate the first great commandment. We will love anything, except God, unless our madness is checked by grace.”9 Grace means a new heart, and new hearts have restored and holy motivations, desires, and thoughts. Why? Because of Jesus. “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). A new heart is guarded in Christ. Because of him, God’s grace-given goodness combats the deprivation and active corruption of sin. Through the Spirit and by Christ’s person and work, we respond with faith and repentance, trust and turning — movements in the heart enabled and executed by God himself.

Effects of Forgetfulness

Doctrines are systematically related, like systems within a single body. An unbiblical definition of sin has implications for other core doctrines. So, what are the effects of losing our consciousness of sin, or even having a Pelagian view of it? There are too many to list, but let me offer selected effects in relation to our view of God (theology proper) and our view of people (anthropology).

Our View of God

If Machen was right that confidence in our own goodness has replaced our awareness of sin, then that changes how people see God. In ages past, people viewed God as the holy thunder and blinding light that brought the dross of our sin to the surface and burned it away in fiery grace. But that was when sin was still a known continent. For most people today who are open to belief in the divine, God is simply more of the goodness they already have inside themselves. God is a comparative: stronger, wiser, nobler, kinder, more loving, more beautiful, more patient, more creative. God is more of the good things they have experienced in themselves.

With a comparative view of God, our focus becomes self-improvement or moral maturity. We try to act more like the God who is more than us. Salvation is not “God coming to you”; it’s “you going to God.” We pour our attention, money, and resources into behavioral transformation. Jesus, at best, is our example to imitate. That was precisely what Machen was fighting against in the 1920s.

A similar phenomenon happens inside the church when people carry a Pelagian view of sin. If sin is only consciously willed actions, then my primary goal is to have fewer of those actions. The aim is personal self-improvement. Sanctification is not “God shaping you to Christ”; it’s “you shaping yourself to Christ.” God, for all intents and purposes, is not really involved. And that is confirmed by two heartbreaking patterns in popular Christianity: a lack of prayer and the rise of biblical illiteracy. If our job is to change ourselves, we don’t need to rely on God in prayer, and we don’t need the cutting and correcting word of God. We can, in Powlison’s words, remain in our default position: functional atheism.10

Put these two observations together. When sin is a forgotten continent, the world outside the church is bent on treating people as semi-divine, as fully authoritative masters of their own fate (autonomy). Meanwhile, the world inside the church is bent on spiritual behavior modification: more quiet time, character improvement, community service. In both cases, Jesus Christ died for nothing. In both cases, the Holy Spirit is absent. In both cases, God is an add-on to our functionally atheistic lives.

Our View of People

These views of God are tethered to views of people. The orthodox view of people as dependent sinners in need of a Savior and ongoing sanctification gets replaced — but by what?

First, independence replaces dependence. For the broader world, people are not fundamentally dependent on God; they are fundamentally independent of everyone and everything. They need no outside help in order to thrive. That is how Machen defined paganism: “The world’s evil . . . can be overcome with the world’s good; no help is needed from outside the world.” People, in other words, are fine on their own. Spiritually speaking, the only needs and restrictions they have can be met and conquered by self-help literature, modern medicine, or a therapist. Each person is his own little kingdom, a sovereign state whose emotional and psychological status and judgments are unquestionable. After all, there is no higher authority than us. God, if he exists, is irrelevant. This is exactly what Satan wants. He wants us enraptured by self-salvation. Satan “is continually proposing self-salvation schemes to people that are designed to keep them from the real Savior.”11

Our utter self-reliance makes it impossible to deal deeply with psychological issues rooted in the heart, which is part of the reason for the deluge of mental health problems in the West. Powlison often spoke of a “glass floor” that the secular psychologists of the twentieth century — Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, B.F. Skinner, John Bradshaw, Wayne Dyer — hit with their theories of what ailed humanity: They all began with the fundamental assumption that sin was not the problem. The problem must lie elsewhere: with other people, with repressed trauma, with negative self-image, with social acceptance. The problem was anything but sin. And because of that, their solutions were anything but holistic. They could never get to the roots of what made people tick. They chose crippling amnesia when it came to the continent of sin.

One of the results of this amnesia was a loss of personal responsibility and moral accountability. If everyone else is the cause of our problems, then we have far less to be responsible for and no one to whom we are accountable. And the worst part? The mental health problems persist and worsen. That is part of what we’re seeing in the West.

Second, functional machines replace struggling sinners. Those inside the church who embrace a Pelagian view of sin tend to treat people as machines. They have the data input they need (the gospel, church attendance, some sense of theology). What they have to work on is the output: the behavior modification. And if that isn’t happening, there must be a problem with the input; they need a better gospel, a different church, a more engaging theology. That’s how machines work. Input equals output.

And if you go a long time with frustration over the “wrong” output, you might start to tear apart the input. You might begin “deconstructing” your faith. In this scenario, that means pointing at all the problems with the input and using that as an explanation for your “stuckness.” Whatever the case, Jesus is irrelevant now, because he’s already done what he came to do: set an example for us (though we have plenty of those aside from Jesus). And the Holy Spirit is more like a myth than a meaningful person. “He’s here,” we think, “but we’re the ones doing all the hard work.”

In both camps, inside and outside the church, Christ died for nothing and the Spirit lives for no one. Both frameworks are fundamentally anti-Christian — not merely non-Christian — in their active attempt to supplant biblical truth.

Remembering Sin

Voicing the biblical doctrine of sin and upholding a faithful view of God in theory and practice is part of the work of the church. But what is the church to do in an age when people have either lost a consciousness of sin or have a defective understanding of it? Much work is required. Two of the most important places that need to be addressed are in discipleship and in preaching.

DISCIPLESHIP

First, in discipleship, begin with a searching and prayerful examination of personal sin patterns. After Jacob wrestled with God, he walked with a limp (Genesis 32:22–32). Everyone who met him would learn the story of his struggle. His limp would lead to candid conversations about God’s work in his life. Pastors can take the same approach with their own sin patterns before discipling others. Starting with themselves, they can, as my friend says, “lead with a limp.” They can own sin as the primary problem in their own life. This first-person ownership of sin allows deep discipleship of others to happen. Examine your own sin patterns. And lead with that limp when you start discipling others.

In discipleship, pastors can carefully ask how sin wreaks havoc in another’s life. The answers will be different for everyone. Some struggle with pride and others with doubt. Some face patterns of anger and others of materialism. Every child of God should know, through discipleship, what sin patterns are most prevalent for them. Personally, I am prone to thinking too much of how others view me (fear of man). I also face ongoing challenges to avoid hard things because of anxiety. And, perhaps because I was raised in a family where money was not abundant, I struggle with materialism and trusting in God’s providence. Pastors and leaders in the church have helped me see these things. If I don’t prayerfully deal with them, my heart will stay sick, and I’ll push myself away from God.

Part of discipleship means knowing your patterns of sin and how Scripture guides you to face them head-on. Leading with a limp and discussing another person’s sin may not be comfortable or popular, but it will do the most good for people as they grow in Christlikeness.

PREACHING

Second, voice the biblical doctrine of sin from the pulpit. Now more than ever, pastors need to remind those inside and outside the church what sin is. People in the Western world need to be told that sin is deep, pervasive, corrupting, blinding, embittering, deflating, self-promoting, indulgent, and crippling. It is moral heart-sickness that turns us away from God in every conceivable way, especially in our sinful desires or what the Bible calls “the lust of the flesh.”12 Our desires are not sacrosanct; they need inspection because sin is always active. It is the main threat to human flourishing in the image of Christ.

If people don’t see sin as a great threat, they won’t see Christ as a great Savior. If no threat is perceived, no evil detected, no danger in view, then what interest will people have in a Savior? Ignorance of the doctrine of sin has made people very, very comfortable. It has made them — dare I say it — very, very pagan. And in that context, Christ is of no value. When people forget sin, they forget their need for a Savior, and they try to live autonomously. That is doomed to fail. We were not made to live in pretended isolation from God. Pastors need to delve into the doctrine of sin regularly and explore how it works in their own hearts and in the hearts of their people.

Third, boldly claim sin as people’s core problem. At one time, citing sin as the problem with humanity was commonplace in the church. Now it seems as if pastors must say something more. This might be because pastors lack a deeper understanding of what sin is and how pervasively it corrupts. They may even get bored of giving “sin” as an answer to our suffering because it’s so abstract. In a church-history class, Carl Trueman once told us that claiming sin as a cause for the world’s evil appears to yield little insight. “If someone asked you why the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, and you said ‘Gravity,’ you would be right,” he said, “but you would also reveal very little about the situation.”

It was a good point, but we can err in the other direction as well. We can focus so much on secondary causes of evil that we forget sin is the core issue. And if sin is the core issue, Jesus is the tried-and-true answer. As Powlison used to say, “There is no deeper cause for sin than sin.”13 It’s our duty to look at secondary causes for the evil around us, but never to the exclusion of the mysterious and irrational primary cause of sin working inside human hearts.

Naming the Forgotten Continent

Sin is an ever-present threat. Pride, egoism, self-defense, blame-shifting, social comparison, entitlement, self-justification, ignorance, back-stabbing, and ten thousand other vices influence the decisions people make. Knowing this to be true, the church should be the humblest institution on the planet. We should, as J.I. Packer once said, approach every situation with a healthy dose of self-doubt.14

People in the secular West ignore the doctrine of sin as a lost continent from a bygone era. And because of that, they will have a puzzled curiosity, at best, for Christians who seem to be “so hard on themselves.” And it’s precisely because of this that they will not value the person of Jesus Christ any more than they would value Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.

Somehow, someway we must start showing them the continent they have ignored, the one their ships keep running into. They will try to use different labels for that land: errors, mistakes, missteps, rash decisions, thoughtlessness. But until they understand sin the way the Bible portrays it — as moral heart-sickness — they will not have a sense of the holiness of God, they will not see their need for a Savior, and they will not know the gift of living in faithful relationship with him.

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