Sin and Lostness

Pdt. Dr. Stephen Tong
(summary belum diperiksa pengkotbah)

It’s irony of sinners that they are not conscious of their own status.
How can sinners properly understand? The bible continues to teach that the only way to become conscious of human sin is through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Since the days of Renaissance, the anthropocentric worldview of natural man has tried to interpret God and soul through the sinful self of man.

There is a common ad consistent cause of imbalance and problems:
1.Our societies are full of empty souls, in spite of material abundance.
2.Full of the anxiety (kegelisahan) of war, in spite of unceasing (terus menerus) peace talks.
3.Full of insecurity, in spite of the most powerful weapons ever produced.
4.The rate of suicides increases in spite of better living standards.
5.More families are broken in spite of more freedom practiced in sex and love.

From the Renaissance the twentieth century, we have been dreaming of human autonomy from the interference of God. Since the nineteenth century, many ideologies have risen to create a modern naïve optimism, including liberal theology, evolutionism, and communism. The result has been terrifying wars in the twentieth century. Then followed international revolutions of communism, nationalism, and existentialism – all of which have tried to sole human problems, yet we are still living in a chaotic situation without knowing where the future is heading. To date, the search for man’s identity remains a key issues. This tells us that sin and lostness is an undeniable fact.


WHAT SIN IS NOT.
Though man has tried to escape the fact of sin to dilute and reinterpret it- man can never escape God’s reference to it in the Bible.

1.Sin is not an entity of self-eternal existence. Sin and evil are not self-dependent realities, neither are the devil and demonic powers. Only God is without beginning and ending.
2.The Bible leaves no room for the concept that sin was created by God or caused by him. God is neither the cause nor the source of evil. The word evil Isaiah 45:7(KJV), refers to the punishment of God in history as the manifestation of his righteousness and sovereignty to this sinful world, nut not ontological or moral evil.
3.The Bible leaves no possibility for God to be held responsible for sin. The only reference is the mysterious permission for God for occurrence of evil.


WHAT SIN IS
1.The Bible teaches that sin is more than ethical failure. Philosophically, sin means “missing the target.” The New Testament uses the Greek word hamartia to indicate that man is created with a standard, or target, as the purpose of life and conduct. When sin occurs, we fail to achieve God’s standard. God sent his Son to delineate (menggambarkan) the standard again and made him our righteousness and hiliness. The rediscovery of the aim of human life can only be found through the perfect example of the incarnated Christ.
We were created in between God and the Devil, good and evil, after the fall of Satan. We were created in a neutral state of goodness, yet to be confirmed through the way of obedience; created a little bit lower than God, yet in dominion over nature; and created after God’s image and likeness. The true submission of man before God’s sovereignty is the secret of governing nature, and to achieve the true aim of glorifying nature’s creator in man’s life.
Temptation come in the sense of trying to draw man away from his original God-planned position. Then comes miscounduct.
2.Sin is also misuse freedom. The greatest honor and privilege God gave man was the gift of freedom. Freedom has an undiminishable factor as the foundation of moral value. Moral achievement can only be rooted in willingness, they cannot be forced. Spiritual freedom offers two choices: God-centered life or man-centered life. When man submits in his freedom to God, it is a return of that freedom to its original master. The self centered life is the cause of sin, and self-centered intention is the beginning of unrighteousness.
3.Sin is destroying power. Paul uses both the singular form and the plural form of sin in the book of Romans. The plural form of sin indicate wrongdoings, but the singular form means the power that drives sinful conduct.
Sin not only pollutes the sphere of the will, it penetrates emotion and reason as well. The ultimate result of this destroying power is to cause man to be self-abusing and self killing.


SIN AND COSMIC RELATIONS.
Sin destroys relation, both personally and comically, including the relationship between man and nature, and man and men. Sin also destroys the relationship between man and himself. Therefore, sin makes harmonious life impossible. Yet, deepest of all is the destruction of the relationship between man and God.
From the original privilege, we are created higher than nature, and nature is created for man. But sin turned man into the abuser, the enemy, and even the destroyer of nature.
As the result of broken relationships between man and men, man has lost the potential to reflect the love of the triune God, which is the model of human community.
The most serious broken relationship is between God and man, which is the cause of the brokenness of other relationships. When man is separated from God, no other relationship is able to be restored.


SIN AND LOSTNESS
Separation from God leads sinners into a state of lostness-lostness from the countenance and presence of God. The Augustinian concept of sins as the lacking of good needs to be understand as a result of sin in man, rather than as the interpretation of sin itself. Man will live without honor and greatness, education will be devoid of the truth, human rights will contain no righteousness, knowledge without wisdom, lust without love, science without conscience, and freedom without control.

The effect of the sate of lostness are seen in many areas:
1.Universal identity. Separation from God makes man a universal prodigal, determined to be tired of his ungrounded existence and uncontrolled freedom.
2.Spiritual dignity. Man was crowned with glory. Dignity becomes an idea without reality.
3.inner security. Man can only obtain peace and security in God himself. When the separation occurs, our peace is ended.
4.eternal direction. Theologically, man is to live for him as life’s final goal. When sin occurs, eternity loses direction.