The Inconvenient Truth We Avoid

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 (NKJV)

A leading psychiatrist wrote a book called "Whatever Became of Sin?" He wasn't even a Christian, but he was asking better questions than most preachers. He wrote: “[Sin] was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles…? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? … Wrong things are being done, we know… But is no one responsible, no one answerable for these acts? …has no one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?” [Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorn, 1973), 13.]

That's a great question. Where did sin go? Simple answer: We renamed it. David Jeremiah writes, “Sin is still in; only the names have changed. Debauchers have been replaced by ‘compulsive personality types.’ We don’t hear much about iniquity, but we do make plenty of references to ‘unproductive personal habits.’ Nobody…is actually wicked today - just a lot of folks with ‘behavioral disorders,’…If anyone in our society does something socially unacceptable, just blame the chemistry and find the right prescription drug. If we can’t eliminate sin in practice, we’ll change its name and talk around it until nobody recognizes the problem.” [David Jeremiah, Captured by Grace (Franklin, TN: Integrity Publishers, 2006), 27-28.]

Even in churches, we've gotten afraid of the word "sin." Some popular preachers never mention it. They say people already know what they're doing wrong. But knowing you're doing wrong and knowing you're a sinner facing God's wrath are two different things.
If we can't eliminate sin in practice, we'll change its name and talk around it until nobody recognizes the problem. But God hasn't changed His mind about sin just because we've gotten more creative with our vocabulary.

The problem is, you can't be saved until you know you're lost. And you can't know you're lost if nobody will tell you that you're a sinner. It is the bad news of knowing our lost condition without Christ that makes the good news of the gospel so good.

Reflection Question: In what ways have you seen sin "renamed" in our culture? How has this affected the way people respond to the gospel?

Dear Heavenly Father, forgive me for trying to make sin sound less serious than it is. Help me to see sin the way You see it, not the way our culture has redefined it. Give me courage to speak truth about sin, even when it's uncomfortable. Don't let me be more concerned about people's feelings than their souls, in Jesus' Name, amen.

This is adapted from The Vanishing of the Gospel: https://a.co/d/09DKujRi