Freedom from Sin (1 John) by Kim Thoday

During much of the Cold War era, the Soviet propaganda machine constructed him as an icon of the evil and corrupting influence of Western culture. Yet to his millions of fans worldwide he was truly heroic, the king of rock and roll music; one of the few legends honoured in his own lifetime. President Nixon payed homage to Elvis Presley in 1970, elevating him as an example for the youth of America, by giving him the status of special agent of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Ironically Elvis was appointed to this position while at the time hopelessly addicted to narcotics. In the last dark drug induced years, before his premature death on August 16, 1977, the pop idol had become an increasingly neurotic, numbed, parody of his former greatness. Yet despite this tragic outcome, his great talent continues to provide joy and entertainment for millions.

At the peak of his career, Elvis would gross in a year 20 million US dollars. He lived a luxurious lifestyle and never seemed able to constructively use his immense wealth. In his final years of performing he ‘survived’ on a cocktail of drugs and even the most powerful of them could not sustain him for long and he would often emerge in a rage only able to relax with the inducements of his personal physician. There is a side of me that feels very sorry for Elvis – a man with so much talent, energy and vitality, who would end up such a tragic figure. Strangely, I see something of a Christ figure about Elvis. This may appear to be a bizarre statement because of his enthrallment with sex, violence and the occult which he incongruously mixed with his love of the Bible. Well, I mean a Christ figure, only in so far as he bore within his body the sins of his admirers. The Elvis phenomenon, for me, brings into sharp focus the reality of sin; that is, the problem of both individual and societal corruption that produced the circumstances of Elvis’ demise.

Sin is not a particularly popular subject in contemporary Western culture. Humanism has largely displaced and diffused the reality of sin and its popular counterpart: hedonism, has embraced it and justified it. The worldview of the Bible is that sin is a powerful human reality, the source of which is a pervading evil tendency within the human heart to be self-interested, destructive, oppressive and dishonest. In Mosaic terms, sin is to live at odds with God’s covenant that is encapsulated in the Decalogue. Sin embodies those human impulses that deify the ego and marginalise or even nullify responsibility to others and to God. Sin is the idol of self-love. And any idolatry is a displacement of God and therefore a barrier to the salvation of the self. One’s salvation is dependent upon the removal of the barrier of sin. And salvation is the liberation from the idol of self-love: the impulses of self-interest, destruction, oppression and dishonesty. The Gospel message is that only God can remove the barrier of sin. Only God has the power to take away sin and God achieved that through his one and only son, Jesus Christ, who bore the sins of the world in his own body.

How much is sin a product of history and societal systems and how much is it a product of individual evil? And which came first? It’s the proverbial chicken versus the egg problem. It seems rather that the problem of the origin of sin is a dynamic one; that is, it is a combination of both society/history and the individual. Whilst social evil is pervasive, we can often chose how we will respond as individuals (though there are always constraints upon us: sometimes overt ones. For instance, as an extreme example, if someone is forced to commit a crime). The Apostle Paul reminds us that the problem of sin lies squarely with humanity. In Romans 5: 12 and following, Paul argues that just as sin entered the world through Adam, so it was dealt with once and for all through the crucifixion of Jesus. God dealt with the problem of sin by becoming fully human, in the form of his son Jesus. Sin, is a profoundly human problem and is the barrier which prevents human beings from being fully human; that is, from being truly at one with God and all creation. God, in his infinite wisdom chose to deal with the human problem of sin by becoming human – an infinite God at one with a finite humanity. In this way, God demonstrated to all peoples for all time that the power of sin over humanity could be broken. Jesus Christ, the sinless One, the infinite One, at one and the same time finite and able to appeal to all humanity, now had the capacity and opportunity to take away the sins of the world. In the human Jesus, the immortal God and Creator is able to reveal the absolute character of the divine that could be grasped and appropriated by mortals. And that cosmic character, made manifest in Jesus, is unconditional love. It is the appropriation of this love that sets us free from all sin.

The first Epistle of John says that when we are in relationship with Jesus, we share in his nature. That means we share in the very character of God. In Jesus Christ, the longing of the human heart to be free from sin now becomes a reality! And to be free from sin leads to being at peace with both God and neighbour. 1 John 1:7 says: “but if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” What a powerful and reassuring message this is. Once we have responded to Christ’s call to follow him and give over our lives to him, sin no longer has its strangle hold upon our lives. The initiative to be freed from sin always lies with God. But it requires a conscious response of the human will (repentance) to heed the call of God in Jesus Christ. To put it another way, if the first step in salvation and liberation from sin is God’s initiative in Jesus, then the second is the acknowledgment of the reality of our sinfulness and indeed, the systemic sin of culture and society. It is this point that appears to be the problem for many. For how do you rescue a drowning person if they don’t at all perceive they are drowning? How can individuals be saved from themselves (that is their inherent sinfulness) when Western humanism says that sin is a religious myth and that evil is really the by-product of humanity’s evolutionary struggle to reach its apotheosis?

There is little doubt in my mind that both individuals and societies need to be confronted with the reality of sin and evil. Furthermore, the Christian Gospel always addresses the communal and the individual. Sin cannot be tackled purely at the personal level; nor can it be addressed just as an issue of social justice. The one always impinges upon the other. Responding to the sin of pornography is not only about teaching our children the dangers of its dehumanising consequences, it is also about taking political and social action to prevent its commercialisation and its societal legitimacy. It is interesting that in many of the Gospel accounts where Jesus confronts sin, he takes this two pronged approach. He deals with the systemic sin as well as an individual’s sinful state. For instance, in the account of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11), Jesus firstly challenges the political and systemic abuse of the Mosaic Law by those in power. Once he has dealt with societal sin, then he is able to address the individual by letting her know that she now has the power to chose how to respond to her own sinful nature. The writer of 1 John summarises this two pronged challenge of the Gospel to sin: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world,” (1 John 1b-2).

It may sound old fashioned, it may have been used and abused, but one of the great subversive messages of the Gospel is that we are all sinners. No matter how pious, no matter colour, creed or status, we all need to be saved from sin and one of the first steps in the process of redemption is to acknowledge (confess) the reality of both corporate/societal and individual sin. Death is not the only great leveller. Sin is an equal contender. We all need the divine initiative and power of the love of Jesus Christ to enable us to put sin to death (as the writer of Colossians articulates it, Col 3:5). Indeed, Christians have a great hope, because Jesus put the sin of the world to death within his own body on the Cross of Crucifixion.

Adolf Eichmann, a member of Hitler’s Nazi party, was one of the principle architects of the Jewish Holocaust. Was there something evil about this man that marked him out from the majority of people? Was he a madman or a maniac? Yehiel Dinur, an Auschwitz survivor, was one person who testified against Eichmann at the Nuremburg trials. When Dinur saw Eichmann in the courtroom it was the first time he’d seen him since the Nazi leader had sent him to the death camp eighteen years earlier. It was an electric moment and Dinur began to cry uncontrollably, until he finally fainted and collapsed. Sometime later Dinur was interviewed about his testimony and what had first occurred to him that day in the court. Was he overcome with fear or hatred or emotional breakdown? Surprisingly, Dinur told the interviewer that as far as he could say it was essentially none of these. Dinur explained that in that sudden moment in seeing Eichmann again, he realised that he was not at all the godlike leader who had sent countless to the gas chambers. Eichmann was a person, an ordinary person. “I was afraid about myself,” said Dinur, ” …I saw that I am capable to do this. I am … exactly like he.”

At the heart of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ is the recognition that we are all sinners. The longing deep inside every human heart is to be freed from the sin. Once we have seen our own sin, so as to stare at the terrible possibilities of that sin and once we have received the forgiving, unconditional love of God, through Jesus Christ that takes away that sin, we can only choose to live a life of deep gratitude and service to God’s awesome Grace!

Blessings in Jesus’ name,

KIM THODAY

http://www.hewett.org.au