Sin Wrongdoing and Evil
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 637 aired on November 19, 2017
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next 30
minutes I’m going to invite you to spend a short bit of time with me. The FLOT Line is designed
to remind you of Biblical truths and introduce you to an in-depth way of studying and learning
the Word of God. It’s all done with no manipulation, no solicitation, just simply 30 minutes of
education, some motivation, a lot of inspiration. That’s my job, to verify and identify the plan of
God for you and my prayer is you will orient and adjust to the plan. Thank you for listening to
The FLOT Line this morning. This morning as this show goes out, we’re playing across 24 cities,
across the United States from California to New York and it’s an honor and privilege to be able to
talk with you. Thank you for your time.
Today we’re going to talk about sin, wrongdoing, and
evil, three different things we face in our lives as believers in Jesus Christ.
The reason I’m
bringing this up is because recently I was doing some studying and it dawned on me that I don’t
think I’ve ever really approached this and talked about this before. I think it’s necessary, you’ll
understand why as we go through it. People have different ideas about sin. Some people say don’t
drink, don’t dance, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t run with them that do. Well the Bible really
identifies sin in a totally different way. Sometimes people that are involved in some sort of
religious legalism will tell you that it’s a sin to do something that maybe the Bible doesn’t even
comment on. “It’s a sin to listen to that rock ‘n’ roll music,” they use to say. “It’s a sin to do this
or do that.” According to some people the only fun you can have as a Christian is to go bowling
or sing in the church choir but obviously the plan of God is much greater and offers a lot of areas
of fun. We will talk about sin and then we will identify what wrongdoing is because I’m talking
about something totally different from sin. Lastly we’ll talk about evil. So here we go.
Sin is
anything contrary to the character of God.
Isaiah 55:8 says,
“My ways are not your ways and
My thoughts are not your thoughts.”
Romans 3:10 says,
“There is none that are good, no not
even one.”
“
All of our good works are like a filthy rag in God’s eyes”
(Isaiah 64:6). The best
thing we could do does not even come close to equaling His righteousness. Sin, Romans 3:23
says, is coming short of God’s righteousness. The theology of sin is called hamartiology, the
study of sin, the doctrine of sin. All sins are not the same to God. They never have been the same
to God. There are different types of sin, different effects of different types of sin. Obviously God
knew about all of these sins in eternity past and He knew simultaneously every sin that would
ever be committed by any member of the human race. What I’m telling you is God knew every
sin you would ever commit in eternity past even the sins you have not even done yet, God knows
about them. That’s His omniscience, He is all knowledge. While not all sins are the same, it is
true that the solution to all personal sin is definitely the same. Thus the justice of God judged
every sin in human history in Jesus Christ on the cross as a substitute for us, every sin we will
do, every sin that has been done in the past. It was all paid for, all judged by God on Christ. All
sins were imputed to the perfect human nature of Jesus Christ on the cross, the Lamb of God
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without spot, without blemish. Thus Christ accepted the imputation and the sentence of spiritual
death for sin. Our Lord accepted the imputation because of one reason, He loves us, He has love
for all of mankind.
“God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son”
(John 3:16),
and the same reason that Christ died is the same reason God the Father sent Him, because He
loves us. All of our pre-salvation sins, the sins we did before we accepted Christ, were forgiven
at the cross. Then we have sins that happen after we get saved. I want to make a point here.
There is a difference between your position in Christ and your experience in Christ. In
your position, all of your sins are forgiven, past, present and future. In your experience,
when you sin in order to be forgiven you must rebound, use problem-solving device #1.
This
does not mean you would not go to heaven if you died with sin in your life, this is not true.
If
you died today and you had unconfessed sin in your life, you will definitely go to heaven
because of your position in Christ Jesus.
You are in Christ Jesus but in your experience, sin in
your life quenches and grieves the Holy Spirit and the only way you can be forgiven during time
is to use the rebound technique or problem-solving device #1.
“If we confess our sin then He’s
faithful and just to forgive our sin and to purify us from all wrongdoing”
(1 John 1:9). If we
become stiff necked, stubborn, hardhearted, and build up scar tissue on our soul and we don’t use
rebound, then we are punished by God when we don’t use the divine solution. What is this? This
is divine discipline.
Divine discipline always comes in three stages: warning discipline;
intense discipline; and even dying discipline.
You have a choice when you sin in time. You can
rebound this sin, confess the sin, God is faithful and just to forgive you, He always will. Or you
can become stiff necked, hardhearted and stubborn, build scar tissue until eventually you go
under divine discipline. Personal sin is a manifestation of having a sin nature. You’ve got it, I’ve
got it. Nobody sat me down and taught me how to lie. Nobody sat me down and taught me how
to cheat. Nobody sat me down and taught me how to lust. That’s my sin nature and thus,
“If we
say we have no sin then we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us”
(1 John 1:8). Then
1 John 1:10,
“If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His Word is not in us.”
These sins can be personal sins and even unknown sins. Two types of sins we have, known sins,
those sins that we are aware of the fact that we did them and unknown sins, sins that we are not
aware of the fact that we did them. Get this right and remember it.
Sin is not the issue in being
saved. It’s not the issue in you coming to salvation. Salvation is faith in Jesus Christ that’s
the issue.
The reason is because Christ satisfied the justice of God the Father and thus God was
propitiated or satisfied by the judgment of Christ on the cross and don’t ever forget this. That’s
why John 3:18 says,
“He who believes in the Son is not judged and he who does not believe is
judged already, because he has not believed in the uniquely born Son of God.”
John 3:36 says,
“He who believes in the Son has eternal life, and he who does not believe shall not see life, but
the wrath of God abides on him already.”
Sin comes in three areas: things we think, things we
say, things we do.
I want to go to Proverbs 6:16 and show you seven sins God hates. Proverbs
6:16-19 lists the seven worst sins in God’s eyes,
“There are six things which the Lord hates, in
fact seven are an abomination to His soul.”
Let me explain something, this is an
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anthropopathism. Using the word hatred with God describes a policy of God in terms of human
modus operandi so we can understand it because God doesn’t hate. Hatred is a sin. If God hated,
He would be sinning so this is an anthropopathism. An anthropomorphism is giving God a hand
or an eye like, “He holds the whole world in His hand.” God doesn’t have a hand so when we
give Him a hand, this is an anthropomorphism. Hatred here is describing the policy of God and
here’s what it says,
“He hates a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood.”
A
proud look is arrogance which includes anything from bitterness to jealousy to vindictiveness to
implacability, hatred, self-pity, slander.
Arrogance is the number one sin any Christian must
face and goes through the stages of self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption
and you
know it’s rarely talked about today. When is the last time you heard a preacher talk about
arrogance? You don’t. America is an arrogant nation because we think we are something that
we’re not. Arrogant people don’t see themselves as they really are. They see themselves as they
think they are and in our nation we have moved so far away from the plan of God that everything
that use to be evil is now all of a sudden becoming good and everything that use to be good is
now all of a sudden beginning to be called evil. That’s arrogance. That arrogance will destroy this
nation if we don’t repent of this and change our mind. The seven things that God hates,
“A proud
look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,”
that’s the first three. A proud look is
arrogance. A lying tongue refers to malicious gossip, slander, criticism, back-biting. Hands that
shed innocent blood refer to murder. Do you see the pattern in verse 17? It lists the three
categories of sin, mental attitude sins, sins of the tongue, and even overt sins. By the way,
murder, hold on to your seatbelt now, murder is the only overt sin listed among the seven worst
sins, not fornication. It’s not listed. This doesn’t mean it’s not a sin. It means it’s not listed as one
of the seven worst sins. Murder, why is it listed? Because it deprives an individual of his right to
live, the right given to him by God at birth when He imputes the spark of life to his soul. Man
and woman can produce human life but only God can create soul life. The first three,
“A proud
look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood.”
Proverbs 6:18,
“A right lobe
[in other
words a mind]
that devises evil conspiracies, feet that run rapidly to evil.”
It seems there are
always frustrated people who become conspiratorial and authority makes them feel
uncomfortable and they do everything they can to undermine this authority. We have this in the
political world today. It’s unbelievable the conspiratorial arrogance that goes on in this nation,
accusations, slander, maligning, criticizing, back-and-forth around each other, trying to gain
power by slander. Verse 19,
“A false witness
[that’s the sixth one]
who utters lies
[and then
number seven]
he who sows discord between the brethren.”
Those Jews had a great system of
jurisprudence and history and a false witness, a liar, makes it impossible to bring out the truth,
the facts.
“Whoever sows discord
[or strife]
among the brethren”
refers to us playing one person
against another person. These are the seven sins that God hates. You can take it and read it in
your Bible for yourself, Proverbs 6:17-19. Now let’s talk about another type of sin, it’s called
emotional sins. These are mental attitude sins. Emotional sins are often not even recognized as
sin such as fear, worry, anxiety, these are all emotional sins. Anger is an emotional sin because
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it’s always irrational. Hatred is an emotional sin and irrational and violence is an emotional sin. If
there’s someone today that you absolutely hate, someone that you absolutely loathe, you’re
sinning. It’s irrational because the Bible says you’re suppose to love the weirdos, not hate them.
The only way you can love them is by using the love of God and impersonal love, loving them
based on who you are not based on who they are. These are problem-solving devices #6 and #7,
personal love for God and impersonal love for others. If you haven’t ever heard this, you need to
learn what impersonal love is, the ability to love weirdos, the ability to love people that you don’t
even like based on the character of God in you. There are other categories of sin including
legalism and revenge and self-righteousness and sins that are related to rejection of authority and
crime, irrationality, chemical sins. Why do you have to understand these things? Because in
living the Christian life it’s important to know what sin is. Why should I know what sin is? If I
understand what sin is, it gives me an opportunity to build up resistance against it. I can identify
what sin is in the temptation stage when it tempts me and this helps me to resist it. However, just
because I can identify the temptation doesn’t mean I won’t succumb to the temptation.
Remember this, the temptation in itself is not a sin. It’s the volitional act of succumbing to
the temptation, that’s the sin.
You can be tempted to sin mentally. You can be tempted to sin
verbally, and you can be tempted to sin outwardly. Volition related to an unknown sin is a sin of
ignorance. Volition related to a known sin is a sin of cognizance. Some sins you’re aware of what
you did and some sins you’re not aware of when you do them. Whenever we commit a sin,
identification of this sin makes the function of rebound, problem-solving device #1, possible.
Remember that one of the problems in identifying sin is that in our culture today, many sins
become accepted over many generations so they’re not even considered sins by society anymore.
I’ll give you a perfect example, sports talk radio. I have never heard so many sins as I do when
listening to sports talk radio. The slander of a coach, the maligning of an athlete, the gossip of
something, I mean it’s just blatant. One caller will call in and slam another caller and another
caller will call in and slam this caller and verbal sins fly back and forth across the airwaves and
the host is the one that’s lighting the fire and fueling the fire. They never even realize that they
are committing sins of the tongue. Sometimes it’s gossip. Sometimes it’s slander. Gossip is you
repeating the truth and slander is you repeating a lie. If you repeat the lie long enough, loud
enough, and often enough, a lot of people will begin to believe it. Yeah, we have things today in
our society that are sins and people don’t recognize them as sins. It can happen in your life too. It
can happen if someone comes up and says to you, “What do you think about old Joe Blow?” And
then you say, “Well, you know he’s a pretty good guy but I’ll tell you one thing, you better not
trust him, you better not turn your back on him.” See, this is a sin. Whenever someone sets you
up to ask you a question like this, let me tell what you do. You just say, “What do you think
about him?” You’ll see what’s really going on. You can’t afford to malign anyone. You can’t
afford to slander anyone because Matthew 7 says there’s triple compound discipline involved
with it. Whatever we put on someone, it’s going to be put back on us. Read Matthew 7:1-7 and
you will learn quickly, you must never stick your nose in someone else’s business. If you don’t
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know what sin is a sin, you can’t confess it until you know it’s a sin. For the ignorant this may
take some time and in the meantime, they just go down in their spiritual life and sink deeper into
reversionism and eventually become involved in the cosmic system of the devil. By that time,
this sort of believer if he ever gets around to rebounding, he’ll be so deep into reversionism that
he may confess his sin but he’ll go right back in it. You can rebound if you do sin, so the more
you know about sin the closer you can keep your accounts, that’s
why I brought this up.
Don’t
ever get the idea that you have reached sinless perfection or that you just sin infrequently.
This very thought is arrogance in your life.
It’s failing to see yourself as you really are and the
ones that are usually like this are the most religious types. They appear to be very holy and very
godly and go around acting very godly and holy and they don’t think they sin. Again, 1 John 1:8,
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
We are not deceiving
anybody else, we just deceive ourselves. This is one of the greatest problems in spiritual
adolescence, as well as any other stage of spirituality, self-deception. You think you’re good. You
may even think you’re perfect and you don’t even realize the sins of self-righteousness which we
are guilty of. The Pharisees and the scribes that murdered our Lord Jesus Christ were guilty of
many sins but in their eyes, they didn’t think they sinned at all. Until we understand what the
Bible calls sin, it’s impossible for us to understand where we stand experientially with God. Too
many people commit sins and they are not even aware that they are sins. Therefore, although
they may try to rebound or confess the sin, they get right back out of fellowship instantly and it’s
an unstable situation and not conducive to any type of spiritual growth. If you’re to be a member
of the royal priesthood, the family of God, you must know what sin is so you can deal with it.
Deal with your own sins, go to the Lord, and use the rebound technique, problem-solving device
#1.
“If we acknowledge our sins to God, He’s faithful and just to forgive our sins and purify us
from all of our wrongdoing.”
Wrongdoing, now I’m changing the subject from sin to
wrongdoing. What exactly is wrongdoing?
Wrongdoing includes grieving and quenching the
Holy Spirit.
So if you want to be purified from all wrongdoing then you have to remove the
grieving of the Holy Spirit. You have to remove the quenching of the Holy Spirit and we do this
by confessing our sin and not letting the sin nature control our soul. Wrongdoing can go much
further than this. You see a right thing has to be done in a right way.
When you do a right thing
in a wrong way, it’s called wrongdoing.
For example, Christians do this all the time. Is it right
to pray? Yes. Is it right to go to church? Yes. Is it right to give money to your church? Yes. Is it
right to sing in the choir? Yes. These are all right things but can you do them in the wrong way?
Yes.
“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me”
(Psalm 66:18), that’s the first
one. Here you are praying, you’re out of fellowship with God because you have unconfessed sin
in your life that you have not rebounded and thus you’re doing a right thing, prayer, but you’re
doing it in the wrong way. You’re doing it in the energy of the flesh. Let’s assume the offering
plate comes by and you put a check in the offering plate or cash. Is this the right thing? Sure it is.
Can you do it in the wrong way? Yes you can. If you have unconfessed sin in your life and
you’ve quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit, even though you gave this money, you did a right
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thing, you did it in the wrong way. All of this is exposed at the Judgment Seat of Christ in 1
Corinthians 3:11-16. Here it says,
“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is
laid, which is Jesus Christ
[that’s like building a house with a concrete foundation].
If any man
builds on a foundation with gold, silver, and precious stones or wood, hay, and stubble, each
man’s work will become evident. The day will show it. It will be declared by fire and the fire itself
will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built upon remains, he
will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. But
[here’s a
conditional clause]
he himself will be saved yet so as through fire.”
You can’t burn up the
foundation is what I’m telling you. Wrongdoing is the wood, hay, and stubble. Right things done
in the right way is the gold, silver, and precious stones.
Anything you did for God while you
were out of fellowship, under control of your sin nature, you did it in the energy of the flesh
and it’s burnt up. It’s not acceptable to God, it is wood, hay, and stubble. It is wrongdoing,
right thing but you did it in the wrong way.
Then we come lastly to evil. What is evil?
Evil is
the genius of Satan that contradicts God’s grace plan in salvation.
God’s genius is grace.
“For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God not of works lest any man should
brag about it”
(Ephesians 2:8). What is evil? Let’s take the same verse. “For by grace are ye
saved through faith and baptism and giving up drinking Coca-Colas and eating no more turkey.”
Anytime you add something to grace, you destroy the grace.
The evil genius of Satan in
organized religion, humanism, socialism is a plan that’s unbelievable, a satanic plan. It’s the
cosmic system. It’s the
cosmos diabolicus.
We’re in the devil’s world and he has an evil plan.
Evil is not truth. It twists grace, it puts a half turn on it, and everything that is grace
becomes distorted.
Evil is the genius of Satan.
All sin obviously is evil but all evil is not sin.
I
mean the altruism of the do-gooder is not sin, to put a chicken in somebody’s pot. It’s not a sin to
get a food basket up and go give it to somebody, but it can be evil if the motivation is not right,
under the filling of the Holy Spirit, motivated by the Word of God. The motivation is the
difference and so if you’re trying to be saved by being altruistic, it doesn’t work this way. There is
so much more I could talk about, I’m running short on time. I may try to come back and speak on
evil some more. If you have questions, write to me, get in touch. Thank you for listening. Until
next week, this is Rick Hughes host of The FLOT Line