The Hurtful Thing of our Sin
What is it about our sins that hurts God so? Or, what is it that he finds so repulsive in our sins? A traditional answer I’ve heard is that God is a moral God, and our sins demonstrate our immoral selves, and this immorality is what God finds so repugnant. There is truth in that idea, but at times that idea can be carried too far. If we’re not careful, we can come up with an idea that God finds our sin so repugnant, that he can’t even bear to look at it (or us), or tolerate it (or us). We think God can’t stand to be around us because of our sins. Perhaps the worst part of this idea is that God is so offended by our sins that he’s not going to come near us until we clean ourselves up first. It’s as if we cannot come near to God without first taking care of our condition (as if we could do something on our own to take care of our condition, but that’s a topic to discuss another day…) That idea is not completely truthful. If that were so, how would Jesus have been able to walk around a world consumed by sin? How is it that in the Garden of Eden, God came looking for Adam? Adam attempted to cover his shame, but that was not enough, so when he heard God, he hid. Jesus tells a parable of a shepherd looking for his lost sheep – the sheep doesn’t have to absolve itself of its sin before the shepherd can stand to have the sheep in his presence.
I’m not saying there doesn’t need to be some effort on our part, but what I’m trying to focus on is that the moral nature of our sins is not the worst part of our sin that God finds so hurtful. Jesus had some parables that have numerous lessons in them, and I think the parable of the prodigal has some insight for us in this area. This parable is found in Luke 15:11-32. I mentioned the parable of the shepherd looking for a lost sheep, that story is just a few verses before this parable in Luke 15. These two parables, and a parable about a lost coin, are a trio of tales talking about how God values us, and takes the initiative to look for us. It’s easy for me to digress, so back to the topic – what is it that God finds hurtful in our sin? I don’t think it’s the moral failures. If that were the case, the emphasis of the parable would be on the son’s wild and raucous living. But that behavior takes up just one verse in the story. What the father found so dis-heartening was that the son didn’t want to be in relationship with the father. The son found things and wealth to be of more value than being in relationship with his father. The son couldn’t wait for his father to die – by asking for his inheritance at the moment, he was basically telling the father that he wished his father was dead. The relationship was ruptured. I like how Jim McGuiggan puts it in his book “The Dragon Slayer” – “Sin is not only the cause of the rupture between God and us, it is the rupture.” That relational rupture is what hurt the father.
The father knew that relationships are two-way streets. The father couldn’t make the son love him. The father couldn’t make the son value him or the relationship. The father loved the son, and desired a reciprocal love from his son. But that cannot be forced. If it is forced, then that is something, but it is not love. That would not be a desire on the part of the son to be in relationship with the father. So the father let the son be his own person and go off on his own, with the hope that one day the son would come to value the relationship and come to love his father as the father loved his son.
The day did come. The son had enough of his suffering and he knew that even servants in his father’s house got better treatment than what he was currently experiencing. The son was willing to humble himself and return to the father, but with this caveat. The son knew he’d blown it with his father. He’d basically told his father “I wish you were dead.” He abandoned his relationship with his father. He figured that the relationship was over, and there was no repairing that. He figured that maybe the father would have just enough mercy to make him a servant. Even that would be more than what he deserved for how he’d told his father to buzz off.
But we know the story – the father was delighted his son had come back. To the father, when the son had left, and had ruptured the relationship, that resulted in the death of the son. The father says as much when he orders a feast and celebration – “this son of mine was DEAD, but is alive again!” (verse 24). But the son had returned, and now he valued his father, he valued his relationship with his father, and he wanted to be with his father. The son loved his father. And this was the main thing the father wanted – relationship with his son.
There’s so much more in the parable. The son confesses, he is contrite, he is humble. The father is forgiving – oh, how he is forgiving. The father experiences a type of resurrection – he has his son back from the dead. “This son of mine was dead, but is ALIVE again!” It seems to me that relationship, and being in a oneness with us – this is what God so desires from us. Sure we will sin, and we will have moral failings, but God can work with those and handle that. It’s when we don’t want to be with him, or we don’t want to be in relationship with him that he is most distressed. Like the father in the parable, God is not going to make us love him. He’s going to give us our freedom to love what, or who, we want to love. He wants us to love him, as he loves us. He tells us to call him “Father.” But if we choose to love other things or people more than him, he will let us. And even if by our breaking relationship with him, we become “dead” in God’s eyes, he is God and has the power of resurrection, and we can be “alive” again and restored to relationship with him.
I’m not sure how to close, but maybe this bit from Deuteronomy will serve as a fitting conclusion. Deuteronomy 30:19-20. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that you and your offspring may live, LOVING THE LORD YOUR GOD, obeying his voice and HOLDING FAST TO HIM, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
-Mike Hendricks