https://vimeo.com/70813396

I'm Wayne Jacobson and this is Engage. You know this is our 15th video and the first time we're actually going to talk about sin which may be surprising to many of you. Sin seems to be the focus of almost everything we do in Christianity. The idea that our sin separates us from God and even though he forgives us when we repent now as good Christians we've got to stop sinning. And yet that doesn't seem to work so well but I do get the question a lot. What do I do about my sins, my mistakes, my failures, the bitterness I have in my heart, the unforgiveness towards somebody? Do I have to fix that for Jesus to be close to me, for this journey to work? I actually want to say it works the other way around. That's why we haven't talked about sin a whole lot. Our sin gets forgiven at the cross. God's no longer holding sin against us. That's not just the sins we committed before we came to know him. That's the sins we still struggle with today. How do we deal with that? The Old Testament I think left us with this idea that the more righteous we could be the more relationship with God we could have. But Jesus says in the New Testament that isn't actually the way it works. He says apart from me you can do nothing which would mean until we know him we can't be changed. Though what's actually true is this, the more relationship with God we'll have the more righteous he'll make us to be. The transformation comes from him not from us. Dallas Willard called our religious systems sin management systems. It's all about getting people to stop sinning and living for God and working hard to do that. And yet that kind of behavioral conformity doesn't work very well. You can shame people with sin and they'll try harder. You can put them in accountability groups and they'll try harder. But transformation only comes inside the work of Jesus. It's not something we do from ourselves. And as long as we're focused on our sin we're going to feel a sense of shame and a sense of unworthiness. And it's not going to allow us to engage God in the way the cross allows us to. Sin doesn't count anymore. What counts is the invitation to come and know him and live in his life. Walking in the light, as John talks about it in his letter, is not about getting everything right. Walking in the light is not perfection. Walking in the light is I just bring the reality of my stuff to God. Where I'm broken. Where I fail. Where I'm tempted. Where I get lost. I bring those things into the light. Inside the relationship. And then as God loves me, because sin is basically this. Sin is what we do when we don't think God loves us. And therefore we've got to grab for ourselves what God is not giving us. In other words, the more loved you are the more you have a sense of God's affection for you. And the greater your trust is and his ability to take care of you, the less you'll find an enticement to sin. The less sin holds for us. That's the transformation that God wants. That's why Paul says in Romans, the mindset on the flesh is death. He's not just talking about the mind that indulges the flesh. He's also talking about the mind that seeks to abstain from the flesh. Because it's still a mindset on the flesh. So if you're going to wake up today and try to get sin out of your life and try to be better for God and measure how deep your relationship is based on how good you've been, oh, you're going to have to find another journey. This isn't going to work for you. Our transformation is like this pathway I'm standing on. It's a lifetime journey of leaning more deeply into him and finding myself increasingly free from the things that have bound up my life. God doesn't hate you because of your sin. God doesn't reject you because of your sin. What God calls sin is not the fun stuff he doesn't want us to have. What sin is, is the things that destroy us and our relationships with people around us. So even though they're forgiven at the cross, the consequences of sin in our lives still hurts us and the people closest to us. So God's not unconcerned about sin. You can't say, oh, he just loves me now, so who cares? I'll live whatever way I want. No, inside a growing relationship with him, I want to be transformed. I want to be like he is in the world and the only hope I have of becoming that is by living inside a growing relationship of affection with him which leads to growing trust in who he is, which means I don't have to grab for myself what God's not giving me. So what do we do with sin and brokenness? First thing is recognize it where it exists. Resist it if you can. If you can, just say, you know what, I'm not going to go that way anymore. We talked about scripture last week and often I'm reading scripture and Paul will talk about anger or the Proverbs will talk about integrity and something in my life will illuminate going, you know what, I'm not living there and I want to. And now confess it, take it to God. You don't confess so God will forgive you, it's already been done. We confess so that we can see it as God sees it, invite God into our struggle with it and let him fill up in us what that sin seeks to fill up and then knowing him, you're free to engage in restitution or reconciliation. If I've hurt somebody by my anger or if I've hurt somebody by my impatience, I need to go to them and say, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? Is there somewhere I can make it up to you? And then we're part of one of the most redemptive things in the world, watching God overcome sin in our relationships to each other because we're easy to ask forgiveness, ready to be reconciled where relationships are broken. Here's what's important for you to know, you are not your failures and your failures don't diminish God's affection for you. You are his beloved son or daughter. Keep living there and as you live there, this transformation of sin will take care of itself.