LIE: I’m immune to the consequences of sin

Lie:      I’m immune to the consequences of sin.

Truth: Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows that he will also reap.— Galatians 6:8

The mind has cliffs. — Dallas Willard

The crimes and misdemeanors of sin come in all shapes and sizes and seriousnesses: all the way from running a red light or lifting a pack of gum, to shouting at your daughter, to murder, rape, adultery, enslavement and pedophilia.

Some appear to get away with it, others don’t. Some bully, whine, bribe or manipulate their way out; others blindly go on and are caught and pay the consequences. Still others carry on a life of crime and never (apparently) as much as get a slapped wrist. It’s true that the justice of man has many loop holes, but we have to be careful not to mistake man’s justice for God’s.

What we’re talking about here is justice and mercy. Only in God can these two be reconciled; only in Christ can they be aligned. In mercy, he, the innocent Lamb of God, died for us and paid the just penalty for our sins: death.

Most Christians understand this, but see this restoration of our right standing with God only as a legal act and don’t see or refuse to see that the same “grace that brings salvation and has appeared to all men,” is the same grace that “teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts.” (Titus 2:11-12). As Bonhoeffer in his monumental work, The Cost of Discipleship said:

Luther had taught that man cannot stand before God, however religious his works and ways may be, because at bottom he is always seeking his own interests. In the depth of his misery, Luther had grasped by faith the free and unconditional forgiveness of all his sins. That experience taught him that this grace had cost him his very life, and must continue to cost him the same price day by day. So far from dispensing him from discipleship, this grace only made him a more earnest disciple. . . . The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.[1] [emphasis mine] — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We wrongly assume that the ‘grace doctrine/system’ somehow magically relieves us of our responsibility to live as Christ did and also magically makes us immune to the consequences of our sins. But this is simply unfounded, illogical and as Bonhoeffer says, amounts to cheap grace. Here Bonhoeffer defines the term he’s famous for:

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God. . . . Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.[2] — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Paul is blunt — ‘Be not deceived, God is not mocked.’ The law of sowing and reaping is still in effect for Christians.

But why are we under such delusion, the delusion that, as Christians, we’re immune to sin’s consequences? How did we ever get here? Though this deception has always been here, the present world cultivates a more fertile soil for its deep roots. Let’s look at some of the major dynamics that fuel this delusion:

1  The apparent absence of God. The apparent absence of God and religious institutions sets the stage. The triumph of scientism and its fundamental doctrine, evolution, are the bedrock here. The ‘doctrine’ of evolution is now widely held to be true and it’s practically impossible to hold any significant scientific post without at least paying respectful silence to the university deans and dons and institutional gatekeepers. Any dissenting voice is quickly black-balled, silenced or ridiculed by his well-heeled peers.

So if God is absent or doubtful or non-intelligent, then there can be no justice and no mercy. Why believe in a system of justice that is apparently not present in reality, or is so obviously broken? In this way God becomes absent — and empty of personality — and is no longer a personal God. We must learn to see through the deep deception.

2  The Fat Cats are still in power.

‘Fret not thyself because of evildoers . . . ’

In short, if they can get away with murder, why can’t I? The amount of corruption in politics, business, education, finance, medicine, is easily in the billions if not trillions. Many, if not most, hide their crimes, both lesser and greater, with bribes, extortion, political protection, intimidation, and blackmail.

The river of evil flows unabated. The honest man either grows more blind with his own entertainments or more cynical or both. Consequently this lawless atmosphere breeds sin and a feeling of immunity from its consequence when we compare our ‘petty’ sins to those ‘fat cats.’

3  Human disconnection–system connection and the fragmentation of society. We feel an increasing sense of alienation from our fellow men and women. It’s harder to connect to people, to look them in the eye and to communicate, to find the time to be together. We feel more isolated and alone, but at the same time, we’ve grown more dependent on the systems that feed us: the entertainment systems, medical systems, financial systems and so on. The disembodied voices, the chat rooms, FaceTime, video, radio, TV, iPod music, and more, all combine to create a system of systems, a fantasy world, divorced from, or at least, disjointed from, the real, created/natural world.

How does this relate to our feeling of immunity from the consequences of sin? — by disconnecting us from the normal pathways that sin and its consequences travel. The hurt that we cause by our sin is now mediated. For example, many of our sins today are sins of omission: neglect, ignorance, blindness, prayerlessness, unbelief. It’s easier to commit these sins if we can more easily ignore the person that it hurts: ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ Consequently, if we don’t immediately sense the hurt that we cause someone, and if the one hurt is able to disconnect or ignore our hurt, we can more easily dismiss it. This evil feeds upon itself.

4  Our god-like technological powers.

It’s a tired expression, but more apt than ever: ‘We live in a push-button world.’

Here are some of the god-like powers that we now think nothing of:

• visions of global events: weather systems, ‘news,’ GPS/RPS location data, etc.
• real-time communications with full audio and video.
• sustained travel speeds of 20 to 30 times our natural pace.
• instant access to practically any knowledge – historical, technical, practical, medical, and more.
• life and body enhancements through plastic surgery, Botox and genetic modifications.
• financial security, enabling a retirement to a life of ease and constant, empty pleasures.
• instant access to practically any form of entertainment on TV, the Internet, games, gambling, music.
• instant access to custom- and ready-made virtual communities through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

These abilities are no light matter, yet even our youth now expect, and even demand such powers at ten years and younger. But “can a man hold fire in his lap and not be burned?” Granted, this power is not necessarily a power over people, but a power to consume for ourselves. It grants us god-like power to create our own worlds in whatever shape we want. Abraham Lincoln famously said:

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. — Abraham Lincoln

And if we believe that we are gods, what’s to stop us — who could hold us accountable? Our imagined self-importance will not tolerate it. Our sins are now regally dismissed.

5  Self-Administered Grace. We’ve all been hurt in life and to a large degree our life is built up (or torn down) with our responses to those hurts: disappointments, offenses, neglects, injuries, losses, etc. Hurts make us or break us. They make us when we believe that God is not mean or absent or uncaring, but that he’s actually there as a guide and a strength. But when we do not purpose to do this, those hurts can break us. When we ‘go with the flow’ and let ourselves be hurt and then nurse those hurts, we end up agreeing with the devil’s lies.

If we allow this bitterness, this cynicism, this hardening process, we’re also more likely to believe that we don’t deserve such treatment and self-justify various dalliances to help ourselves feel better, to balance the score. As long as the sins are small, or so we unconsciously reason, we’re free of their normal consequences, we self-administer our dose of ‘grace.’

At the same time, God is a God of mercy and true grace. Jesus taught us that the one who is truly in control of all things is our Father in heaven. This is the prayer he taught us:

In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen

See also the introduction to this category: Lies about sin.

[1] Bonhoeffer, Deitrich, The Cost of Discipleship, Revised Edition, MacMillan, New York, pgs 53, 55.

[2] Ibid, pg 45, 47.