Sinner!

Has the Church got the way it talks about sin completely wrong?

As I write this, it’s getting close to a year since the “Andrew Thorburn issue” hit the press and although the news cycle has moved on, I’ve continued to reflect and continued to be unsettled by the situation. Perhaps not in the way you might first suspect.

For background, in case you missed it, and to particularly frame my context, let me take you back to the beginning of October 2022. I had just returned home from a family holiday and was in my last week of leave and so had a little more time than usual to watch, read and follow the events of the week. One of the big news stories was that the recently appointed CEO of Essendon football club had resigned after it had come to light that he was a member and chairman of the board of the church “City on a Hill” which, although being a multi-site church which is not everywhere denominationally affiliated, in Melbourne is very much part of the Anglican Church, my tribe. The fact that he was a member of a church wasn’t the issue it was that it was reported that this church had a “conservative view” on homosexuality and evidence of information and teaching to this effect had “come to light”.

Before you jump to any conclusions or assumptions, please let me make two things clear. Firstly, this is not an opinion piece on human sexuality. Although a current and divisive issue within the Anglican Church, I do not consider that I have any particular new insight, revelation or wisdom to bring clarity or consensus to what is an important ongoing journey and discussion within our denomination and, I’m sure, other Christian churches and other faith-based groups.

Secondly, I’m pretty sure that it would not shock the average reasonable thinking person that some religious groups, including some Christians and some Christian groups struggle with human sexuality on multiple levels. This in and of itself isn’t new and isn’t news, at least I would have thought not.

So back to October 2022 where I was watching morning television and this was a topic of conversation for a segment where two social commentators are moderated by one of the hosts of the show. During the segment one of the commentators, who was Melbourne based, expressed a view that some Christians thought gay people were sinners and going to hell, which in her perspective was archaic and unconscionable… at least that was the view I was left with.

About a half an hour later one of the hosts of the show interviewed the Senior Minister of Andrew Thorburn’s Church who, from my recollection had been interviewed years earlier celebrating his ingenuity in opening up a church in a pub. What followed was an accusation that this minister believed that all gay people were going to hell because homosexuality was a sin. Despite his attempt to qualify, explain and contextualise, in my very biased perspective, he wasn’t given the opportunity to explain or defend his position, even though he openly admitted that he wouldn’t use the same expressions that he used in a sermon that investigators had dug up from years and years earlier. Whether I agreed with what he said or not wasn’t the point, to me this seemed like “gotcha journalism”, at least that was my feeling in that moment.

As an aside, most of my sermons are or have been publicly available and I’m sure without context and background a sentence or two could be used to justify a point I was never trying to make. As another aside, I have never preached on human sexuality. It’s a complex issue and I’ve made a personal decision to always approach it pastorally, situationally and/or relationally rather than from the pulpit.

As the interview finished I was overwhelmed with outrage. Everything within my being wanted to pick up the phone or keyboard and inform the show that I’d seen the worst piece of journalism in all my years watching breakfast television. But something in me said, no, Stew, you’re still on holidays, you’ve got a tee time booked in this morning, go and play golf and settle down.

I’m glad I listened to that niggling inner voice, not because I played good golf, I actually have no recollection how I played that day. What I do remember clearly, was thinking from that moment all the way until I’d hit my tee shot on the third hole, how could this commentator make such an ignorant accusation? If you sin, you’re a sinner and sinners go to hell. That’s not what any Christian believes. Yet that was the clear message that I heard coming across that morning. How could they get it so wrong?

As I hit my tee shot on the third hole and walked to put my driver in my golf bag, something clicked, and my heart sank at the realisation. How could they get it so wrong? How would they get that perspective of sin? Who talks about sin? We do, the Church, and it is our fault! They think that way because of the way we’ve been talking about sin.

You could easily argue that far right Christian Churches in America protesting funerals with placards haven’t helped, or sports stars posting unhelpful memes on social media have been part of the problem, but I want to suggest it runs so much deeper than the isolated extreme action and that it’s something that we as individual Christians, and as the Church collectively, particularly in the western world should have a good hard look at.

I don’t want to assume that only Christians will read this piece, I hope and pray it might be of interest outside of the Church. Incidentally when I use the term “we” I am only referring to a collected grouping of Christians and not referring or intending to refer to those outside the church. It might be important, in that light, to clarify why I found this journalistic perspective so off the mark. Fundamental to Christian faith, regardless of denomination or theological perspective are the ideas of forgiveness and grace. I don’t think it’s news but, in case it is, surprise: Christians have, do and will continue to sin. As a Christian, I don’t believe that past, present and future sin will send me to hell because I have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and I have, am and will continue to say sorry for my sins and accept the forgiveness and grace I believe is freely offered to all.

Where did it go so wrong that forgiveness and grace, these overwhelming dominant foundations of our faith, could be overshadowed by the idea that “all sinners go to hell”?

I think we as Christians and us as the Church need to take responsibility for this. We have got it wrong, big time!

The Christian Church has been around for around 2,000 years and began very much as an underground, counter-cultural movement. At some point, most historians point to around the time of Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire and as such became institutionalised and enculturated. If you’d like to explore the influence of Christianity on the framing of the Western world view then I would highly recommend ‘Dominion’ by Tom Holland (the historian not the actor who plays Spiderman).

Up until recent times, Christianity has held a place of prominence in many, if not most western cultures, including Australia. We’ve never had a church of the state in Australia but the Anglican Church has been the closest thing we’ve had to one. In 2023, however, the influence of the church across mainstream society has significantly weakened and the Anglican Church is, in many cases in steep decline in both numbers and influence.

Many lament the loss of influence, many rail against the erosion of so called “Christian values”. I on the other hand prefer to see this as an opportunity to reset what might have gotten us off the rails rather than rail against. And when it comes to sin I want to suggest we’ve de-railed and it’s caused a lot of carnage and for this we need to call what we’ve done sinful and repent and accept the forgiveness and grace we are supposed to believe in.

You see I think we’ve just continued to assume that everyone is a Christian and understands what a doctrine of sin is. Newsflash! Our recent census shows Christians are not in the majority anymore, even in a nominal way. Yet we continue to speak of sin like everyone gets it. Newsflash! Even people within the church continue to wrestle with the complexities of what is and what isn’t sin. What hope do those outside the church have? And that is my main point.

In John’s gospel Jesus says:

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. (John 16:7-11)

A common paraphrasing of this passage is that “the Holy Spirit will convict you of sin”. (The New King James Version of the bible translates verse 8 as “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”) 

If the Holy Spirit is the one who reveals what is sin, then surely the ones who have the Holy Spirit within them, followers of and believers in Jesus, should be the ones being convicted right? And herein lies my big question: why are we holding to account a world, a people group or even a specific individual that has no understanding of or relationship with the Holy Spirit? Especially when as I’m loathed to ask, whether those who understand and have a relationship with the Holy Spirit are reluctant to have the Holy Spirit reveal what is both individual sin and corporate sin within the community of believers… our failure to do this leaves us looking nothing less than hypocrites and I seem to recall some strong words from Jesus about hypocrisy within the religious of his time…

I took a deep dive into “sin” and “sinner” in the bible with a particular focus on the 4 gospels and the letters attributed to St Paul (not that the Old Testament or the other New Testament letters have nothing to say on the issue, it’s just that I felt that focusing on the writings which have had the greatest influence on the shaping of Christian thinking was a good place to start, and to be honest I do have a day job and this is a rabbit hole you could easily lose yourself down). 

Sin or sinner (or variations of the words) are found, depending on translation, around 1,077 times. Which is a fair bit, but interestingly “sinner(s)” is only found 114 times. Which makes me ponder, is there a big difference between talking about sin and labelling someone a “sinner”? Remember the big question, the Holy Spirit reveals to a believer what sin is and convicts them of it, but what if you don’t get what the Holy Spirit is, or for that matter really care?

The categorisation of another as “sinner” seems to be a big part of the problem the church is facing culturally at the moment so it made me wonder how Jesus and Paul approached it. In the gospel you’ll only find “sinner” 29 times (5 times in Matthew, 4 times in Mark, Luke goes to town using it 16 times, John like Mark only 4 times). I found it personally surprising that Paul only uses it 6 times (3 times in Romans, twice in Galatians and once in 1 Timothy).

But here’s what I found really interesting; Jesus never calls another person a sinner. Neither does Paul (with the exception that he self identifies as a sinner). The term is almost always editorial, non-specific or general unless it is being used by a Pharisee or the crowd. 

Before I dig into this point let me quickly say that Christians, lead by the example of Paul, seem to have less of a problem self-identifying as “sinners” and that makes perfect sense to me. If we have a relationship with God through Jesus, we’ll have an awareness of the Holy Spirit working in our lives and the world and we will be aware of our capacity to sin along with our actual sinfulness and so we can rightly claim to be sinners, but we also are aware of the full picture that includes and is completed by grace and forgiveness and so for us the word and title is far less jarring.

The passage that really tweaked my interest in this was the story of Jesus’ encounter with the tax collector Zacchaeus which you only find in Luke’s gospel. Ironically I preached on this passage less than a month after the Andrew Thorburn saga. In my sermon preparation I stumbled across something that had me scratching my head.

Zacchaeus isn’t called a sinner by Jesus, he doesn’t self identify as a sinner, he’s named a sinner by all those gathered, the crowd, which probably included some Scribes and Pharisees checking in on Jesus (who by the way had labeled Jesus as a sinner for the healing of the man born blind which we find in chapter 9 of John’s gospel).

Zacchaeus says to Jesus in response to being called a sinner by the crowd:

‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ (Luke 19:8)

In the translated English it sounds like this is a future promise but in New Testament Greek it’s in the first person present tense, implying that it’s already happening, which is hard to fathom if he’s just a dodgy tax collector up a tree.

This has had Biblical Scholars arguing for generations but this sort of stuff rarely makes it into a Sunday sermon, at least never one I’d heard.

It may well be a future promise & Luke’s got his Greek grammar wrong but it is equally possible that while society has judged Zacchaeus as a sinner by sheer weight of his occupation, he was already giving away money to the poor and making up for his past fraudulent behaviour or that of the tax collectors in his charge, before he saw Jesus.

Zacchaeus wasn’t the only one with a bad reputation, Jesus had one as well. Hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors and “sinners” had earned him the ire of the religious elite: ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner’ (Luke 19:8).

It’s quite likely that the reason Zacchaeus is recognised and named by Jesus (Luke 19:5) is because Jesus is God. It is also possible that because of the company Jesus was keeping, he’d heard about this chief tax-collector who was changing his ways and was really short, and when he looks up and sees a really short dude in a tree, dressed in the clothing of a person who shouldn’t be up a tree, he puts 2 and 2 together and given he’s God that’s not hard, and says I know of you Zacchaeus, I want to spend time with you so I can really know you and you know me.

For the first time in his life someone has not looked down on him in either a literal or metaphoric sense. Someone has seen him as more than the societal label of “sinner”.

I don’t pretend to be a exegetical expert in Luke 19 but this got me asking some deeper questions, particularly about how we bandy about this term: “sinner” and if we are doing it more as social and moral commentary on the world outside the Church and less around what’s going on within the Church and within our own personal hearts and lives. After all, isn’t it much easier in our polarised world just to say the problem is with the person who disagrees with me than to ask the deep and hard question of why do I actually think the way I do and why do they think and behave the way they do. After all, that takes the hard work of relationship.

As I read scripture with these questions in mind I start to ask myself: does Jesus actually reframe what “sinner” means in the world and context he lived and walked and worked? Have we, the contemporary Church, regressed to the Pharisaic? As I look through the examples and usage of the term in scripture, I find it hard to find an example that is used in clear judgement of a specific person or people group outside of those who already believe in Jesus. Yet I am deeply saddened to say that I can not say that about the use of the term by the contemporary Church. How else have they jumped to the conclusion that we think they’re all sinners and going to hell if it were not for the way we have talked to and of them.

We seem to have postured and positioned ourselves as the experts and arbitrators of sin. I get the sense that many of us think that sin is pretty simple and easy to identify and define when in reality it’s much more complex and challenging to identify. So much so, that Jesus says we need the Holy Spirit to help to identify it for us.

I wonder if “sin” has devolved to become any act that I as a Christian disagree with or in some way offends me.

Have we convinced ourselves that the identification of sin in others is so simple when the identification of sin in our own lives is a revelation through relationship which can be long and hard?

While the Bible, as the word of God does help identify what sin and sinner are, there are numerous examples, which the critics of the Church are all too ready to throw in our faces, of biblical evidence of what we would consider now to be “sin” being seemingly advocated in the bible: polygamy, slavery, war and violence, gendered power, animal cruelty to name but a few.

Sin has always been both contextual and difficult to identify and reveal and that’s why Christians need both the word of God and a relationship with God to help us work it out.

This is not a new idea. Church reformer Martin Luther identified that “it is the nature of sin not to wish to be sin.” Sin in and of itself is subtle, less obvious, much more identifiable in the other and much less in ourselves which is why I would contend we be incredibly cautious when we loosely use the term sin and sinner with reference to another, particularly with reference to one who is not in a relationship with and has no revelation of God, or at least they would not consider any revelation they have as being from God.

Theologian Søren Kierkegaard contends “there must be a revelation from God to teach man what sin is”.

Kierkegaard wrote in the 1800s so we can take his term “man” to include all of humanity rather something that is gender specific.

I’m not saying that because sin is always contextual that anything goes or anything that was once deemed good needs to be viewed suspiciously because it could actually be bad. I’m saying that the work of identifying sin is not as easy as we might first think, it takes relationship with and revelation from God and that’s just to identify it within ourselves and Christian communities. 

What then does that say about how we view, speak of, name, label or judge another? Particularly those outside of the Church and those outside of a relationship with God.

I want to suggest we as the Church and individual Christians, have lost the right to tell society what is and isn’t sinful. I know that might sound alarmist but I think it’s because of our own arrogance, hypocrisy and sinfulness that we have lost the trust of non-Christians who are now the majority of society. Just look at the examples of child abuse within the Church and the systematic covering up of such abuse that took a secular and enforced Royal Commission in Australia to finally begin to more fully uncover.

We have not been good at allowing the Holy Spirit to convict us of sin so how could we justify loading a weight upon others without a relationship with the Holy Spirit that we cannot bear or have not born ourselves.

We’ve got a lot of work to do and a lot of trust to rebuild, but I do believe all is not lost and there is hope!

It does start within the Church and it does start with me and it starts with you if you do profess that you are a follower of Jesus.

Maybe the first step is to stop the condemnation of those outside the Church. Just stop. Nothing more nothing less. What is to be gained by labelling an action or behaviour as sin or a person as sinner if they have already lost their trust in us? We can still use these words within the Church in reference to ourselves but outside of the Church, we just stop.

Secondly, maybe it would be good to pray. We should be absolutely praying for those who are yet to or will never believe in Jesus, as we pray for ourselves and each other. I would suggest we should pray more, but including them in our prayers is at least a start.

Thirdly, maybe we could allow the Holy Spirit to mirror in us what is our sinfulness and address it, accept the forgiveness, grace and mercy of God and live like we are actually forgiven.

I have long pondered what it would be like if followers of Jesus actually lived life like they were truly forgiven. What a testimony that would be!

Lastly, what if we let our life be the testimony and not our well intentioned but ultimately judgmental words. My testimony of my own self identification of sin and the evidence of the forgiveness I have received and the transformation that has taken place in my life, is and has always been, enough. It was enough for the first century Church and so it should be enough for me today.

In my humility as a recipient of grace I am noticeably different from how our culture says I should want to be noticed, which makes me think that humility should be my default setting. 

In that I humbly accept that in my pondering I could be completely wrong, I know I have been in the past and will be in the future. I’ve engaged a number of people in conversation over the last almost 12 months coming to this position and I hope that conversation will continue along with the revelation I receive. I just pray that I might be more known for my humility and willingness to be proven wrong than for my self-righteousness, hypocrisy, ignorance and arrogance, which for me personally, is something for which I have to strive really hard to die to daily. After all, I am a sinner. This is a term I’m now more comfortable calling myself but increasingly less comfortable calling another.