Page last updated

 

 

Click here for this Power Point Slide and others for all Sermon Titles (Title Slides Only!)
(click link to open; for download, right-click and "save as target")


to sermon series index

________________________________________________

Deadly Sins & Saving Grace
“Whatever Became of Sin?”
Genesis 3:1-19 / Psalm 51:1-12 / Mark 5:1-20
by Pastor Thomas Hall

(research notes below)

H

ieronymus Bosch painted weird pictures of them.  Chaucer depicted them; Dante walked down, down among their victims; C.S. Lewis rode an imaginary tour bus through them.  Faust sold his soul for just to enjoy them for a season.  Hollywood canonized them.[1]  But it was the Christians of the fifth century who actually named them: The Seven Deadly Sins

The Bible sometimes describes them individually, at other times lumps them together in a list.  In its pages you’ll read stories of people who had become entangled in them, but others who resisted them through the power that God provides.

          What the Bible teaches and what early Christians and poets, writers, and artists have discovered, and now social scientists are admitting is this: sin is real and sin is deadly—some sin much more deadlier than others.  So we’re going to take the Sunday mornings during Lent to think about sin and the saving grace of Jesus.

I know what you masochists are saying, “Oh boy, seven weeks of sin!  Cool!”   The rest of us are saying “Oh boy, seven weeks of sin!  Wake me up when its over!”   Let me say right up front that I have no deep attraction to sin.  In eight years as pastor of this church, that’s three hundred and twenty-four sermons, I devoted only a single sermon to sin. 

I’m part of the Woodstock generation.  I was raised with the generation that got rid of sin.  We changed the name to become “personal problems,” the result of a lack of education, or just emotional maladjustments all of which could be improved through therapy.  So, for much of my life there was no sin; sin simply did not exist.  We could overcome aberrant behavior through education and therapy alone.   I was also an early disciple of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller; I still value positive thinking and possibility thinking.  I’ve attended both of their churches.  There, talk about the power of the human spirit to overcome obstacles had replaced any talk about sin.

Then in 1972 Karl Menninger finally broke the silence.  He wrote a book entitled, Whatever Became of Sin?  He argued that when we threw out “sin” we got rid of the very language that made us take responsibility for our actions.

Two experiences changed my Woodstock paradigm.

The first was sitting in a classroom at Princeton Seminary one semester.  The class was on Domestic Violence and Abusive Behavior.  I discovered that psychotherapy and education alone couldn’t solve the problem of bad behavior.  To that point, I thought that the reason why men beat up on women was simply because they were poor or because they were not educated.   Yet I found that abuse happened just as frequently among the wealthy and among the Ph.D. types as they did among the down-and-outers.  Education and affluence has nothing to do with rage and violence.  It is sin.  And it is deadly.

The second experience was a visit to Dachau and Auswitz, two nazi work camps.  As I toured the concentration camps, I smelled death.  I went through one barrack after another observing the remains of those who were imprisoned.  One dormitory, for instance, was filled with suitcases and duffle bags and clothes.  Another was filled with human hair, cut from its prisoners to be made into Nazi clothes.  Yet another room was filled with dolls and toys—things that children had clutched as they were herded on to the trains.  Finally, the last room was filled with toothbrushes and combs mostly.  That was the last piece to remind them of their dignity.  I have seen how deadly sin can be – it can impact an entire world if not named and confronted.

In the Genesis story about Adam and Eve, we see our own story, don’t we?  Notice the progression of the story.  First, we are gardeners.  In our innocence we are in harmony with God and with community around us, and with our families.  But then we step outside the boundaries and suddenly we become rebels.  We wanted to apply for the job of God, but instead we now become fugitives, shamed and hounded by guilt, hiding from God.

The story teaches us an interesting lesson.  While there is something within us that impels us to put ourselves and our interests first, there is an outside force that plays on us with destructive power.

In Romans 7, Paul describes that same story.  He says that whenever he wants to do the right thing, something is lurking nearby that draws him to do the wrong thing.  He finally gets around to naming that power to pull him down: sin. 

So during Lent, we’re going to focus on seven of the most dangerous, deadly sins that we could possibly face.  Why seven?  Isn’t all sin terrible?  That’s what I’ve always heard.  Yes, all sin mars God’s image in us, shames us, and breaks our relationship with God. 

But some sin places us in greater spiritual jeopardy than others do.   Some sins have deep hooks that latch on to us and bind around us so tightly that they actually become part of who we are.  Theologians call this the “dispositional” nature of sin.  Once sin becomes dispositional in us, that is, it becomes part of the very fabric of our personality, it no longer matters how educated we are, how cultured we are, or how wealthy we are.   The fact is we are bound by a deadly sin that has placed us in great spiritual jeopardy.  And unless we can get help from outside of ourselves—from our community, our family, and most importantly, from the saving grace of Jesus—we will never get free from it.

The deadly sins are deadly because once we’re caught in their web it’s very difficult to be freed from them.  The deadly sins are deadly because of the impact they have on us, on others, and on our community.

But hear the good news!  I will never, ever talk about sin without talking in the same breath about the saving grace of Jesus!  These seven weeks will remind us not just about what sin can do to us or the impact it can have on others, but we’ll also discover that Jesus came to break the power of canceled sin and set the prisoner free.   Jesus said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”[2] 

As we close this morning I want to make three promises to you.  First, I will not lead you through a morbid introspection of sin; I will only talk about deadly sins in light of the saving grace of Jesus.  Second, you will learn each week helpful ways to recognize how specific sin tries to enter our personalities and lives and how to resist it.  Third, You will hear grace – helpful ways of how Jesus frees us and through us how he seeks to free our society of the seven deadly sins.  Amen.

 

[1] See for instance, the movie Seven.

[2] John 8:36.


 

Research Notes:

1.     The seven deadly sins are expressions of love bent inward.[1]

 

         “All the Seven Deadly Sins are demonstrations of love that has gone wrong.  They spring from the impulse, which is natural in us, to love what pleases us, but that love is misplaced or weakened or distorted” (34).

         These sins in the end “interrupts, and in the end destroy, one’s capacity to love other objects that are also and perhaps even more deserving . . . If the sins begin in love, they end in lovelessness.  Given that they are all loveless, they are all as serious . . . What the  . . . Seven Deadly Sins shows us is how various are the forms that this lovelessness can and does take”[2] (35).

 

2.   The seven deadly sins are more likely to become dispositional. [3]

        “Are certain sins more serious than other sins?  . . . although no sin is a trivial matter, certain sins are worse than others . . . It [the deadly sins] place us in greater spiritual jeopardy than others do” (1).

        “Certain sins are judged to be deadly because they are very likely to become dispositional, and thus relatively permanent features of an individual’s orientation to life . . . The dictionary defines a disposition as a ‘normal or prevailing aspect of one’s nature,’ . . . Thus, certain sins are more deadly than others because they are more likely to become dispositional in nature, disposing us toward a sinful orientation to life” (2).

 

3.   The seven deadly sins vis-à-vis the saving virtues. [4]

        “. . . even as we are disposed toward certain sins at given stages of the life cycle, we are also disposed toward certain virtues.  In contrast to the deadly sins, these virtues—which I call saving virtues—orient us toward life in ways that enhance human community of every kind, enable us to discern God’s intentions for the world and to contribute to their realization, and contribute to our personal well-being in its various interrelated aspects” (3-4).

 

4.   Why are some sins more “deadly” than other sins?[5]

        . . . the traditional deadly sins are “deadly” because they are terribly difficult to get rid of once they have taken hold of us.  Like a deadly cancer, they are a wasting disease that spreads, expands, and takes on new forms. 

        Capps also suggests that from these seven root sins branch out all other forms of sin.  That is, every sin is a variation of the seven deadly sins.  Every sin is a deformed, twisted version of God’s love. 

 

5.   Naming the seven deadly sins.

        Artists graphically depicted them, Chaucer personified them, Dante and much later, C.S. Lewis toured them, Goethe put them on stage, Hollywood glamorized them, but Christians of the Middle Ages named them: The Seven Deadly Sins.

        The Bible describes them individually, sometimes in combinations.  Scripture records stories of people who became enslaved to them, but others who resisted them through God’s power.

        “What the early church leaders knew, social scientists are only now belatedly admitting is this: that we are all sinners by nature and are helpless to be otherwise.”[6]

        “There is more to salvation than simply accepting the prepositional truth that Jesus died for our sins.  To experience the salvation of God, each of us must individually invite the resurrected Jesus to effect an inner transformation of our personalities.  This lifelong process through which we are radically changed is called sanctification.

 

6.   Where did the seven deadly sins idea come from?

        The seven uglies are almost as old as Christianity.  The list first probably surfaced among the desert Christians in Egypt in the 4th century.  These monks became keenly aware of specific sins that greatly endangered the spiritual life.  A man named John Cassian, who began in the Egyptian desert—a sort of early seminary for devote Christians—brought the list to France as a way of training his monks.  Then in the sixth century, Pope Gregory I adapted the list and used it to strengthen both pastors and laity alike.


 

[1] Henry Fairlie.  The Seven Deadly Sins Today.  (Washington DC: New Republic Books, 1978), p. 34.

[2] Ibid, p. 35.

[3] Donald Capps, Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues.  (Philadelphia:  Fortress, 1987).

[4] Ibid, p. 3.

[5] Capps, Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues, p. 18-19.

[6] Tony Campolo, Seven Deadly Sins, (Wheaton, Illinois:  Scripture Press Publications, 1987), p. 9-10.

 


to sermon series index