The common notion of sin in modern culture, and sadly much modern Christianity, is little more than “doing bad things.”
If sin is merely doing bad things, than salvation doesn’t seem that attractive or even necessary to most people.
But sin is not just doing bad things. Sin is more akin to a disease. A flesh-rotting, degenerative, wasting sort of sickness that spreads like a fungal infection. It’s a chain, a shackle to dark spirits and impulses.
Sin is slavery. It is infection. It’s like the creepy little crayfish looking thing injected into Neo in the matrix; a vile thing crawling around inside you, messing things up, spreading, making you vulnerable, controllable by the evil that put it there.
No one wants that. No one wants to be a slave to filthy degenerate overlords. No one wants a flesh-rotting disease. No one wants creatures they can’t control crawling around in their veins wreaking havoc on themselves and spreading to those around them.
That is why redemption means freedom. That is why forgiveness of sin accompanied healing from physical sickness and deliverance from demons in the ministry of Jesus.
Yes, “doing bad things” is the opening sin needs to creep its slimy tentacles in to you. But bad things are not the thing you need freedom from, sin – and the death and decay it causes – is.
I think a lot of people have it backwards. They think a thing is a sin because it is “bad”. But things are bad because they let the infectious shackles of sin in. It’s not just that some things are arbitrarily called “bad” by God or Christians, and if you do those you “sin”. It’s that some things are attached to or tainted with a real spiritual sickness – a black goo – and if you mess around with those things it quite literally gets in you. This is the structure of reality. It’s cause and effect. It’s not moralizing or arbitrary rules.
Lies are tainted with sin. If you pick one up to use it, you also pick up the spiritual pathogens dripping off it. It gets on you and in you. The more you engage, the sicker you get. Soon, lies are not a tool you use, you are a tool used by sin and darkness, because lies are a tool owned and infected by sin and darkness. They want to control you, so they tempt you by dangling a useful lie in front of you in a moment of weakness.
We need freedom from the taint of sin. And we need frequent sterilizations and purifications to get clean of new bits that attach to us.
Some people are so deeply, painfully in bondage to sin, they barely know what it’s like to breath free, pure air anymore. Those people don’t just need to be told, “don’t do bad things”, they need the freedom that only comes through asking and seeking repentance and forgiveness through Christ. The breaking of those chains is a glorious thing, worthy of celebration. Only after the freedom does the idea of “stop doing bad things” start to make sense as a preventative. An already infected person being told “wash your hands and don’t touch germs” is going to gain little from it. The infection must first be killed.
The Church’s job is not to say to those in bondage “don’t do bad things”, it is to offer freedom from bondage. To those who are already free in Christ, being reminded to avoid the temptations that allow the shackles to sneak back in is useful, but not so much to those afflicted and oppressed.
The gospel is an emancipation. It is an announcement that all the things that have enslaved and tormented you – depression, addiction, envy, lust, fear, and the demons behind them – have been defeated and you can throw off their shackles. It is a message of hope and joy.
Once free, a citizen of the Kingdom of God learns some responsibilities and practices to avoid being re-enslaved. But those come after you gain your freedom.
Until sin is revealed for what it is – the thing holding people back, the boot on their neck, the ickiness they can’t seem to escape – the offer of redemption will seem thin.