SPEAKER_04 0:07

Welcome to Text Support. We encourage and put people to interact with the biblical text. We're your host, Brad Lamasters and Tim Martin.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

This is a second part of a two-part series. It's a larger series that we're doing called Decoded, but on Sin. Last week we did an episode on Sin in the Old Testament. I'm very thankful to our special guest we had, Dr. Stan Wilson, who was here and did a terrific job. That one was actually videotaped. I was very nervous about that. And so we talked about sin in the Old Testament, and this week we're going to talk about sin in the New Testament, Brian. And I think it's important for us to say we are talking about that phrase, sin in the New Testament, not necessarily all the theology that's developed about sin over 20 centuries of Christianity. And there's a lot out there we could talk about. Matter of fact, we could do an entire series, if you a season, on just sin, but we're talking about sin as it was viewed by the New Testament authors and the people of the New Testament age and not maybe everything that's developed since then.

SPEAKER_04 1:09

Yeah, I think that's a good clarifying thing there. I'm glad we brought Stan on. That was a good recommendation from you, Tim. We'll have to bring somebody else on in the future as well. As we think about sin in the New Testament, and we're not going to go back and repeat everything from last week, so we're kind of like looking at a little bit of comparing and contrasting to some degree, though. Does the New Testament use similar words as in the Old Testament in describing sin and its con uh consequences, maybe the remedy? Like, or are we got like a whole new world we're looking at here?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

No, I think well, obviously there's words in English that are going to be the same. First, sin is going to be translated English the same way. Certainly different. We've got Greek words versus Hebrew words, but as we talked about with Stan last week, uh harmatia is the common Greek word that is translated sin. But you have transgressions.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

There's there's many other English words out there that have other Greek words, but I think just focusing on-cause the word that I always heard as a kid was missing the mark, which I think is the verb of that word you just said in the Greek syndical.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, I'm trying to think if the verb form of that, but really in missing the mark being. Try to like fail in one's purpose. Yeah, and just in and thinking about you know, it's hard to think about when what's what we want to think about in this word is this is not a word that was invented in the Greek language by Christians or by Jews. Uh that word is this is when the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the common Hebrew word for sin was moved into that word, but it was an existing word. So there's a concept in the Greek mind of failing to meet some sort of standard. The question is, what was the mark to them? What was the standard to them? Whereas we have a standard, we say, okay, what does the Bible teach is wrong and what the Bible teaches is right. So we have these standards. We might even say we have examples like Jesus and say, okay, we all fall short of Jesus and the glory of God. But we do have definitions of things that are right. And so, as we'll talk about later and kind of compare to our modern world, the Greeks and the Romans had standards, philosophical standards, moral, ethical standards, whatever you want to call them, in many ways very similar to what we have, and and and failing to achieve those things would have been what we call sin. Is what that's what it made my understanding. I think sometimes we we think that only Christians in the New Testament era had a concept of sin. But remember, that word is not invented by them. And so there has to be an existing mindset of of wrongdoing or immoral behavior, but there's a big difference, um, as we'll talk about, I guess, as we go forward, that theirs is not necessarily connected to a deity telling them, Here are the rules that you must do and must not do. It's not a rel it may not necessarily be a religious offense, more as it just wrongs my neighbor, or it's just Yeah, that was one of the questions I had was for Gentiles, which would be, you know, you're non-Jews, yeah, how do they understand sin there?

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Um one thing you said that I thought was important was how they view that versus like other people versus God. You want to explain or go on that?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, I mean, they would say that, you know, adultery, uh even though they committed it, and even though we don't want to maybe think about it, Jews committed adultery as well. We can't think that Jews were a sinless people in that time. But adultery damaged your neighbor. You know, it it betrayed your neighbor, it also had a lot of inheritance issues. There's a lot of negative things about adultery. Uh they would certainly not have viewed idolatry as as sin, the way that the Jews would have viewed, and the way that God views uh Gentiles uh as idolatrous is being they wouldn't have thought that was something wrong. But stealing, uh envy, jealousy, greed, these would have been immoral things, unethical things, uh not wholesome things that promoted self-control and control of the mind and the fleshly nature, and um but there's there's really was does it hurt people and does it hurt myself? Does it does it cause me to be mentally weak? Uh and I'm not an expert on Greek and Roman philosophy, but I'm thinking, you know, you want to be a better man, then you then you don't have jealousy and lust and greed and envy in your mind. You're more thinking about purer things and uh doing good things for your neighbor and philanthropy and helping out your community and being positive about things, not contaminating or allowing that side to contaminate your mind, to have self-control would be very important.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

I think part of what you said there, I guess you could say it's all interesting, but part of what you said there. Well, I was about to say part of what you said there is very interesting to me because if I took what you just said out of that context, I think it could also be applied for the secular world today. Or those that maybe are questioning uh the Christian faith and and the concept of sin may be like, hey, if this is not hurting somebody else, then why would it be sin?

SPEAKER_03 6:13

You know, like seems to have a very similar mindset.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

It's just me. It's just me.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

They understand, oh, I can't murder somebody, but why does it matter if I have some of these internal thoughts or my heart's here and you know, if I if I live in a house by myself, I can drink myself to oblivion every night, and the only people that's gonna hurt is me. That's a very rare case that sin doesn't touch anybody else at all unless you're just someone who's completely devoid of any friends or family and a and work responsibility. It'd be very hard to find somebody, but yeah, you're right. A lot of people today is it, you know, if it doesn't do any harm, what difference does it make? Who's God to tell me what's that's right, and even being jealous, people might say, well, that's not a healthy emotion to have, because it can consume you and preoccupy you, but they wouldn't necessarily view it as an evil deed. Yes, yeah. The way that they would think about murder or stealing or you know, swindling somebody out of their money in some nature. Most everybody agrees with that stuff. You know, today probably the thing there's the biggest disagreement on is sexual sin. You know, what is sexual sin? Most people would say adultery is, some people would maybe say it's not having sex before marriage, having homosexual activity, those are things that that some people don't believe are are wrong, even ethically and morally, but they might say I think adultery is. If you're going to make a commitment of promise to somebody, you ought to keep that oath.

SPEAKER_04 7:34

And not doing that is unless you're not happy, then you you could be justified in the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know any I don't know any jilted spouse that would agree with that philosophy. Well, I just meant as a culture, though. Yeah, as a culture, yeah. So there's some sometimes there there's not ambiguity in our minds, but there is ambiguity in other people. But most people believe most societies across the planet would say me coming over to your house, breaking in and taking your money is wrong. Whether they believe in Yahweh or not.

SPEAKER_04 8:02

Yeah. When I think back to last week when we talked about the ancient near wet ancient Near East and some of their interactions with their god or gods would and we we kind of talked about it being like to appease them, and it's not so much about like your transformation as a person to be good, but it's more about uh appeasing them. That seems to be also kind of true for Greeks as well, when we think about the first century, right? That their interaction with some of their gods may be more just about appeasing them to some degree, right? As opposed to like transformation or God wants me, you know, like this internal stuff.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

You wouldn't necessarily like say that Zeus wants me to transform into a better person when Zeus was a terrible person. You know, a person, you know what I mean. Yeah, a character in that sense. Uh many of the Greek and Roman deities were were very immoral. We would call them immoral today uh deities. You would not want to follow their pattern. Whereas we have a deity in God that's the only true deity, I'm I hope people understand what I'm saying, and Jesus as a human being, it's very important to say that he modeled those things as a human being and he didn't sin, which means he didn't do any wrongdoing. That had to have a meaning. When Jesus says he was without sin, that had to have a meaning. And the concept of having to have punishment or some sort of long-term punishment because of your sin, and you needed forgiveness of those sins, or you needed to be justified, found not guilty of those sins, that had to carry some sort of meaning to the Gentile audience as well, don't you think? I mean, for the Jews, they'd be like, What are you talking about? I I don't have any sin. You know, I'm a Torah obedient Jew. Paul would say that about himself. Yeah. But why would the Gentiles react to a message that says you need to be forgiven of your sins? I mean, that can have modern day implications as well. If I don't believe if I don't believe in hell and I don't believe in God, I don't have any reason to me to be forgiven of my sins.

SPEAKER_04 10:08

Yeah, and my mind is also including that element of like, oh, this is another God versus the one God as well. You know, so is it another God? Anyways, I feel like that's a a hard jump to go from where they would view the world versus Jesus being the son of God and the one that yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah, yeah. And it's something that I've often thought about is how how the Gentiles who who don't need a Messiah, they're not looking for a Messiah. And then so the message has to be about the like you we talked about earlier today, you know, Romans and being free from slavery to sin and things of that nature. Why would I feel enslaved to sin? You know what I mean? If I would have to have some concept in my mind that I am enslaved to some sort of deeds that I viewed as evil, or my society viewed as wrong. And it would be very, very hard to convince me that idolatry was one of those things. But it may not be hard to convince me that, oh, you know what? I used to and if we think about 1 Corinthians 6, and such were some of you. You know, murderous, envy, you know, all these things, people that practice, you know, we have we have m males having homosexual acts with young boys described there, it's not put in English translations, but deviant sexual sins that may have been a little more commonplace than we would like to think they are, but still viewed as deviant. And so they had to have some sort of need to have those sins absolved, or the guilt of those sins absolved. And I'm I'm sure that there's uh some way of finding that out. I just have never done the research into that.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Yeah. No, that's interesting to think about there. Want to backtrack before we go too far down that road, as we think about the Old Testament and the settings of the Jews and what we talked about last week in the New Testament, a lot changed when we open up our New Testaments from where the story gets left in the Old Testament. When you think about the religious sects, you think about uh the synagogue, you know, like a lot has changed. So my question to you, Tim, and I know you won't you'll say you're not an expert in this, but one thing I want us to wrestle with is like, did anything change in their understanding of sin? Like when we open up to the gospels, where he left off in the old testament, especially when we talked a lot about like the corporate sin and like them as like a a whole people. Um is there anything different when we open up the New Testament of like, okay, there's a different kind of perspective going on here?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I think that there is, and I would want to compare this not necessarily to the time of like Ezra and Nehemiah, where we're like in the fifth century BCE. I'd like to think about more about like the pre-Assyrian conquest and pre-Neo-Babylonian conquest of uh of Israel and Judah respectively.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Make sure people know exactly where you're landing there in the street.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Okay, just real quick, we're we're really talking about towards the end of 2 Kings, or most of the way through 2 Kings, when the northern kingdom of Israel, which had not one single king that God said did what he wanted them to do, and they were steeped in idolatry and all other kinds of misses. And eventually the Neo-Assyrians come and conquer them in 722, and then later on the southern kingdom, which only had about three or four kings that did the right thing as well, primarily because of idolatry and other associated things, whether it be child sacrifice or a lot of other things that had gotten off the wagon in 586, the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar II comes and conquers them. By the time they return from exile, when the Persian Empire allows all the exiles to return that had been captured by Babylon, I think we're in a much better place. We seem to be. They seem to be very pious individuals. Ezra, they read the law to the people, the people, yeah, people explaining it to them, people seem to buy into it.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they were very serious.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Had been devoid of it, and they all buy into it. We even see this great move of repentance in the bit into the book of Ezra with people who had been married to wives who were not uh Jews or Israelites, whatever designation you want to have at that time. Nehemiah, very pious, he comes back, everybody's all about rebuilding Jerusalem, and we're going to promote Ezra, teaching the law. What I see in Second Temple literature, and when we arrive in the New Testament period, is people who are very concerned with Torah obedience to the max. Even, and I would say also in some sects, such as the Pharisees' oral Torah obedience, meaning traditions that they believe had been handed down orally from Mount Sinai and Moses in addition to the written Torah. The Sadducees wouldn't have believed in that. But what you don't see is any idolatry. You don't see an issue with that. Now they may be stealing from widows, but that's because they're crooked. And that would have been a sin in the Old Testament as well. But to me, at least in word, maybe not necessarily always in deed, is a desire to strictly obey God's laws. And sinners are really viewed as almost this subhuman species of people, the tax collectors and sinners phrase, and they are beneath them. I think about like the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke, when the tax collector beats his chest and says, Forgive me, and the Pharisee says, Well, I sure am glad I ain't like this guy over here, you know, this tax collector. We look at it as in view looking down their noses at them, but keep in mind, I think, that many of them were well-intentioned in saying, we want to obey the law of God so we don't wind up like our forefathers. And some people believe that they thought that an era of Torah obedience would usher in a messianic age. And so I do see a huge emphasis on that. Uh, I was reading in the book of Tobit, which is an apocryphal book, uh, about like almsgiving to make atonement for sin. It's kind of like love covers a multitude of sin type idea. Um, so there was like some kind of need to absolve, you know, and abrogate what you did with sin in your life, very concerned about it. Whereas I would tell you during the kingdom period, it seems that there's just a complete ambivalence towards obeying the Torah. Look, we know they'd even have it. I mean, Josiah and the high priest, what's his name? Like Hilkiah, who finds it in, who finds the book of the law, which may have been Deuteronomy or it may be in the entire Torah, and they find it like shoved in some corner of the temple and they dust it off and they freak out because they haven't been doing anything. I mean, it's been decades since they've observed some of these feasts that they're supposed to do, and Josiah instills a lot of reforms based on that. What that tells me is they didn't care about it. When I look at the New Testament, there are people who scribes, for example. Those are people who have copied and copied and studied and studied and studied the law and they want to be Torah obedient. I think about the rich young ruler. He says, I've kept all those things. You you rattle off the the what we call the Ten Commandments, Jesus rattles off some. He said, I've I've done those things. And of course, he's not willing to give up his money and follow Jesus, but I think there's a big emphasis on staying away from sin, maybe even to too far of an extreme where they won't even associate it.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

It definitely seems like captivity did what it was supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Yeah, that's why that's why we that's why I'm comparing it not to the Ezra Nehemiah era, which is post post-exile, but uh and I think their writings are that way. They're looking forward to, you know, there's a belief in a resurrection, there's a belief in ushering in a messianic age. Uh there's a lot of different beliefs there, but I think sin is one of those things where they very, very much want to avoid uh sinning.

SPEAKER_04 17:54

Does the New Testament give additional insight or a different perspective of how sin should be viewed?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

My thinking in the New Testament, when we think about sin, we we I don't say mostly, maybe that's the wrong word. What I think we see portrayed is the long-term impact of sin, the eternal nature of sin. I I wouldn't say I'm not saying that we don't see anywhere in the New Testament teaching that my sin impacts somebody else negatively. I I know that. Yeah. But the concern is the concern is eschatological, meaning what's gonna happen on judgment day. I don't want sin in my life because I don't want to go to hell. Whereas in the Old Testament, the thing was we want to keep sin out of the community of people, and it definitely a whole lot of community-oriented stuff. Some individual focus on sin uh with some individuals, but a a lot of it is this like corporate and community thing. A lot of the sin offerings thing that you see are given are some of our individuals, some of them are corporate, is focusing on God keeping us in the land, keeping our enemies at bay, our crops growing, our animals reproducing, the land keeps flowing, milk and honey type things. Whereas I don't know that the New Testament emphasizes refraining from sin, meaning God's going to bestow a lot of blessings in this life. Matter of fact, I'd say quite the contrary. There's almost an emphasis on if you're going to be a Christian, you're going to suffer in this life because you're a Christian. And Paul would second that motion, I think. Whereas I think in the Old Testament the focus was on obedience to God or lack of sin results in physical earthly blessings. New Testament, I think sin destroys eternal blessings. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 19:43

Yeah. What do you make of like our sin list? Like when you think of like Galatians 5, 1 Corinthians 6, you know, even Romans 1, where it goes through and lists those sins. Do you feel like those are comparable to what we see like when we think of like the law of Moses? Or is there this additional layer of maybe like where some people's like the Old Testament's all about action and the New Testament's about your heart? Is there some truth in that?

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I agree with that. I think that it is. You know, we see, you know, we get to the tenth commandment and and we see covetousness, meaning I want what my neighbor has. Not that I want something like my neighbor has, or I want something identical to what my neighbor has. I want what my neighbor has. I want his possession to be my position. And that is a mental sin that we see. Now, I would also say that that mental sin would also be idolatry. You know, I'm going to believe in other gods and I'm going to pray to other gods. But there are physical actions with that. We know they made sacrifices to other gods, they built ashera poles, they built altars to Baal. But I definitely think we see more of an emphasis, even in Jesus' teachings, when He puts hedges around the law and says, Hey, you've heard it said you won't commit adultery, but I tell you, if you look at a woman with lust in your eyes, you've already committed adultery in your heart. Or same thing with being you haven't killed your brother, but if you're angry with him, you're already you've already committed murder. And I know that he's not equivocating those two things, but he's saying, hey, those are sins too. And then we look at those sin lists, and we do see some physical behavior that are in there, but we do see some mental actions, jealousy, envy, greed, uh, lust, those seem to be equated with sexual immorality, idolatry. They're all right there in that one list. And you mentioned like 1 Corinthians 6, and Paul says, And such were some of you. But you've been washed, you've been sanctified, you you've been delivered from that, and uh the fruits of the Spirit are contrasted to the deeds of the flesh that you mentioned, like in Galatians 5. But we do see a lot of emphasis, it seems, and even in our Christianity today, I think we bear a lot more guilty feelings when our thoughts go astray. That I don't necessarily know would have been the case in the minds of the people in the Old Testament. The bulk of Torah is dealing with. With some sort of action. An act towards somebody else or an act of neglect. I'm not saying not built on mental things like compassion and and concern for others, but there's a whole lot of, you know, if you do this to your neighbor's ox and you gotta pay him back another ox or you they move your neighbor's property boundary marker, blah blah blah blah. Um but I think it seems to or it seems it doesn't seem, I think there's a whole lot more emphasis on your mental what the right word is, your process. Your mind and your heart. And we talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about that in our Christianity. Um because I think what we feel, and maybe perhaps is the attitude in the New Testament, maybe even their surrounding philosophical environment, was that what you think leads to what you do. That's what we would say today. We would say, hey, and that's what Jesus was saying, if you lust at if you never lust after a woman, you're probably not going to go commit adultery with her. Uh if you're not ever angry at your brother, you probably would never kill him unless you have some sort of mental illness or something like that, and just a sociopath. But I understand that, and that makes good sense. I don't know that I see an emphasis on that early in the Old Testament, certainly not in the time of Moses. There were just really a lot of rules to follow.

SPEAKER_04 23:15

Another perspective that I see is like when I think about the Old Testament, I don't see people like wrestling with sin, like uh other than David. Like we have insight into him being called a man after God's own heart, but then we also see a lot of his mistakes and like the burden of some of those mistakes and sins and stuff. But most people in the Old Testament, it's like they're either good or bad, and we're only getting a glimpse into them, and it's like, well, Joseph's a good person, you know, yeah, yeah. Like Noah's a good person. And then you got these evil kings, and like you just don't have that wrestling with sinful nature and desires and all those different things, and still being like seen as a good person and stuff. So I think that's unique when we get to the New Testament, is you have all these different writings that's talking about like what you mentioned, 1 Corinthians 6, other ones like don't go back to those former ways that you live, like realize Satan's trying to tempt you. There's you know, like protect your heart, you know, like all these different things to where it's like, no, the righteous on a daily basis need God to be holy and pure and be people of righteousness and not go back to like evil and in a formal way of walking. So to me, that's a a a much different perspective in the New Testament than what I see in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah, you make me think about like in Romans 7. It's a very challenging passage where Paul switches to the first person and he essentially says, I do the things that I don't want to do, and I don't do the things that I do want to do, and it seems like he just gives up and says, I'm just gonna be a sinner because I can't overcome my fleshly nature. Now, there's a lot of challenging thoughts about whether or not Paul is adopting a persona there, if he's actually speaking of himself uh individually, if he is using a form of rhetoric where you substitute, you know, you speak in the first person, but you're really not speaking about yourself. But certainly what's presented there is a mind which struggles with I don't want to sin, but my my fleshly nature, I sin, I cave into it, even though I know I'm not supposed to. There does seem to be a mental struggle uh more with right and wrong that we don't necessarily see as much in the Old Testament. And certainly we see even righteous people make mistakes. Uh Abraham, for example, he lies to Abimelech and he lies to Pharaoh, uh, and he does so by saying that this is not my wife, this is my sister. And I know there's these cop-outs that say, Well, who's his half-sister? But he lied to save his skin. Um there are times even when bad people have a little bit of glimmer of something positive. Ahab is a good example of that. You mentioned David. Some people are bulletproof. Jonathan's bulletproof. Now you mentioned Joseph. I don't think Joseph's bulletproof. I think he was a spoiled brat tattletale at the beginning. He deserved to be he deserved to be thrown into slavery. But it's not kind of struggle.

SPEAKER_04 26:12

We don't see that perspective.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yeah, we don't see that as much uh in the Old Testament as well. But you got more narrative versus And you don't have one thing you don't have is personal writing.

unknown 26:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Now you do in the Psalms, for example, I think that's where you see some people struggling with right and wrong and things of God. But when we look at the New Testament, we have a lot of personal writings and revealing people revealing their thoughts and emotions and things uh that we don't necessarily have a lot of in the Old Testament writing. So I think that makes a difference too. And you yes, you're correct. I mean, we have a lot of narrative in the Old Testament um and then law code and wisdom and poetry and things of that nature, but we got some very personal revelation of people and a glimpse inside of a James and John and a Peter. Even though in the narratives, we would say that Peter sometimes he struggled with you know with you know keeping his sense about him. Um Judas is maybe had a little you know, it didn't portray a whole lot of struggle, but you're right. It does seem that, hey, the character is just a bad guy. He either wears a white hat or a black hat in the old testament, and that you they seem to be changing hats sometimes in in the New Testament, even in some of Paul's lambasting of congregations, and we think about the churches in Asia and Revelation, and so yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

It leads to this other question I want to ask is what is a healthy perspective of sin? On one side, maybe you could say one extreme view would be, oh, well, everyone sins and it doesn't matter that much, or go to the other extreme of I'm a horrible person, I can't have peace, I can't be loved by God because I keep having these bad thoughts. Where should people fall in how they view sin in their imperfection, in their need of grace? Now you get a way out of my bad. I know, I know we're we're dipping our toes in this.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

You mentioned that, and I'll tell you something I have heard just absolutely almost every time anything close to this topic comes up. Uh, for a certain generation of Christians right now, especially our older members, they really lived a life of guilt, meaning that they felt like every I had professors, some of my older professors at school, would say, Oh yes, this is exactly how we felt every sermon uh and at church. If you sinned at all that week, you you're going to hell. You know, it you just you felt guilty all the time. Uh, and I don't necessarily m think it means because there was some misteachings about grace. I think there was some misteachings about what your walk is. And and the way I understand, especially like John's writings in 1 John, is we don't need to say, hey, you know what, we're just sinners and we're gonna mess up and have an ambivalent attitude towards it and be lackadaisical about, well, I'm gonna sin, so it's just excused. Um, you know, some people call it high-handed sin. You know, I know what I'm not supposed to do, and I'm gonna do it anyway, just because I want to, and Jesus has got to forgive me anyway, so I'm just gonna do it. Uh I don't know how God's gonna handle that, but we're gonna make mistakes, but we don't need to live a life of that because we make some people will struggle with breaking old habits the rest of their lives, whether that's greed or it's lust or whatnot. Uh I think sometimes we're more tolerant of our mental sin than we are of a physical sin. Like for example, and Paul would say this, the thief don't need to doesn't need to keep on stealing. But it may very well be that the luster keeps on lusting, but he has to work on it the rest of his life, or she has to work on that the rest of his life. Somebody like myself who who struggles with anger. I'm better than I used to be, but I'm I've got a lot of work left to go uh do. And so people will will struggle with that, but I mean I understand that I, you know, I I didn't used to be a murderer. I'm not gonna confess to that right here on the podcast. Uh if I did, I obviously obviously I got away with it. But uh but I I'm not a m I've never been a murderer, but now look, if I can't act things out. If I was an idolater, I can't be an idolater anymore. Uh if I was a thief, I can't be a thief anymore. But but I still may have some temptation that comes into my mind. It's what I deal with at to me comes it for. I don't think every stray thought you have is a sin. And that's just my opinion. Um but when I dwell on it, but how do I behave? To me, how I view sin is how do I behave on a day in, day out basis, and if I am Christ-oriented and I exemplify him and my attitude and my words and my actions, and I and I'm working towards that goal, and I'm learning more every day, then I'm walking in the light. If I am don't care and I don't try to pursue Christ, I don't try to do good deeds, I don't try to help out my neighbor, I don't care about sinning, I really never do make a change in my life, I'm walking in darkness. What do I make my my living at? Because they walked everywhere they went. And so that was a way of life to them. And so that's kind of how I view it. I don't know, what do you think?

SPEAKER_04 31:20

I think you worded that well. One thought I had when you were talking about that is it's one thing to pray for forgiveness, it's one thing to it's another thing to pray for strength. And I think if you are somebody who are going to God in need, like there's a beauty and a comfort to me to know that I can live in the grace of God and that he can look at my heart and be like, Brian's imperfect, but his heart is f mine, and he's trying, and like he's dependent on me. And like I that brings me a lot of peace. Like, because it's not about my perfection. God can look at me and be like, hey, I'm weak, but hey, he's he's trying. Like so, but if for people that it's just kind of like this is just who I am, I'll ask God for forgiveness. I don't know. That that that attitude makes me more nervous. Like, and I've been there at different times in my life where I I really didn't care. You know, like I didn't I didn't want to be lost, but I also didn't care, you know, like as opposed to like, no, I I don't want to be that way. And I do believe that we are people that can be transformed by the spirit. So just because we have old habits or old things we struggle with, maybe it may be anger or lust or greed, whatever that may be, like I do believe that God tells us we can be strengthened in the spirit if we pursue him.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

So I agree. And I think God knows what we're wanting to do, what our desire is. I don't understand why we even have a fleshly desire and all that's very complicated to me. Uh I definitely think that we don't need to ever teach that grace is carte blanche permission to sin. Yes. And I think sometimes biblical grace is this. We we had a separation between us and God, and he gave the gift of Jesus Christ to reconcile that difference. That's God's grace. And by the continual cleansing of the blood of Christ, who are what people who are walking in the light, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins. I think that's a part of grace as well. But grace is not permission for your heart to for you to just do whatever you want to do and have a just have a attitude that I don't, well, I'm just gonna sin, it's just no big deal. Grace doesn't cover that to me. It does cover mistakes, I think, in your life, and and the blood of Christ does that as well. But I think sometimes we just like, well, I'm gonna just be a sinner and that doesn't matter, and God just expects me to sin. I don't believe that. I don't believe that he does that. Does God expect us to be absolutely perfect? No, but he does not expect us to practice sin.

SPEAKER_04 33:47

Yeah. No. Well said, and we'll definitely explore that topic here in some future studies when we look at like holiness coming up and some other words that we're gonna decode as well. So any other final thoughts, Tim? No, no, this is a very complicated.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah, this is a complicated topic, but I I think it's simple in the mind of the people in the New Testament. We also don't need to be in our minds uh too prejudiced against people who are struggling with sin. You know, we if we want to evangelize, we want to save people's souls, and we have to realize that these people are going to be people who are not doing things that we would do. And some of them don't know any better. And even after they become Christians, they may have to learn. And so for us, we should be patient with sinners and care about them just like somebody cared enough about us to tell us about it. Because I I was a terrible sinner. And so we also want to be careful we don't get to be like the Pharisees and others who look down their nose at people who they thought they were beneath them, but they needed to examine themselves.

SPEAKER_04 34:50

You know, they need to turn around and look at themselves. Yeah, sometimes sin can be more easily seen than others, but we're all people who are tempted, and we all are people who need Jesus. That's great. Thank you for joining us for tech support. Uh, to our fellow students of scripture, our fellow students of scripture, we hope you will join us next week.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

This is a podcast of the Mount Juliet Church of Christ. You can find more personal growth resources like this one at mountjuat.org slash resources. The Mount Juliet Church of Christ exists to glorify God and make disciples by helping people grow in Christ, love one another, and serve others.