Religion in the newspapers

By Todd Stadler · Wednesday, September 5, 2007 11:24pm

Last Saturday's Oregonian had an article about a local pastor waging a "spiritual war against sexual addiction." As these things go, it was a pretty normal article.

But one thing caught my eye, and it was from a question-and-answer set the Oregonian had with the pastor:

Q: Why tackle this problem now?
A: We need a true revival in the church, but a real in-depth relationship to God is not possible right now if we don't deal with this sin.

Although I understand the desire to combat such problems in our society, and I agree that sin is the root problem, the pastor's statement is wrong, as I read it. It's just backwards, and it makes me sad to think that people whose main exposure to Christianity may come from the Oregonian's Saturday religion stories might think that this is what the faith is all about.

Let me be clear about Christianity: it is not about people themselves overcoming their sins in order to have a relationship with God.

No, like I said, the pastor got it all backwards: it is not possible to deal with sin if you don't have a relationship with God.

But hey, don't take my word for it! Take God's, as found in Paul's letter to the Romans: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

What's my point? We don't approach God and initiate a relationship with him once we've rid our lives of sin. No, he approached us first, and he did so "while we were still sinners." Then, "since we have been justified [that is, declared not guilty] through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

It's only after God tells us that he established a relationship with us, declaring us free of sin and guilt, that Paul tells us what our response should be to our sinful desires: "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace [that is, forgiveness] may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

This may seem like so much religious fooferaw to some of you.

But, whether he meant to sound that way or not, the pastor quoted above has managed to summarize what so many people seem to think Christianity is about: working really hard to rid ourselves of sin, in the hopes of earning God's favor. And I can't think of a more horrible thing to believe.

No, God himself took away our sin while we were still sinners and hostile to God. The proper response to such mercy is to willingly turn away from sin in our lives.