Today
will be another one of those controversial posts to most in the Christian faith
I suspect. But that is okay as it is my desire to challenge and stir only those
that are truly seeking the truth and want to awaken to their true nature. In 2
Timothy 2:15 Paul in talking to his Protégé Timothy states that we are to be
diligent in our study that we might show ourselves approved of God, that we
need not ashamed in rightly dividing and teaching the word of truth. The Greek
word for rightly dividing is orthotomeō
which
means to make straight cuts and I think Strong’s Greek dictionary gives the
best analogy in that it figuratively means to dissect(expound) correctly (the
divine message) and that is what I hope to do in these posts. As I’ve stated
previously I have never been content to just accept as fact that which is
currently taught and accepted as fact or truth whether it be from religion,
science or any other faculty. Had humanity done that throughout history we
wouldn’t be where we are today. Our whole existence as a species is a journey
of growth and discovery, an awakening to our true nature. For example I think
we all understand today that contrary to early religious teaching, the earth is
not the center of our solar system let
alone the universe and that it would be presumptuous
to assume that in a universe as vast and large as ours that we are the only
life.
So with that in mind, today I want to examine
two words that I believe, more than any other, throughout history provoke a
significant emotional reaction in almost all of us based on how we’ve defined and
been led to understand their interpretation. I think it would be fair to say that
for most of us it is the religious connotation attached to these two words that
stirs that emotional response within us. But I hope to show by the end of this
article that these two words when rightly divided are actually words you will
want to embrace when you understand their true meaning.
So we’ll start by defining each word by our traditional
English understanding.
Merriam Webster defines Sin as
1 a : an offense against religious or
moral law
b : an action that is or is felt to be highly
reprehensible <it's a sin to waste food>
c : an often serious shortcoming : fault
2 a : transgression of the law of God
b : a vitiated state of human nature in which
the self is estranged from God
In general most other sources also define sin as some sort of
immoral act, offense or transgression against divine law. In traditional
Christianity we are told that it is our sin that separates us from God, that we are born with it as a result of Adam
and Eve’s disobedience in the garden and that it is only through confessing our
sins, faults, shortcomings and all those other bad things we’ve done throughout
our wholes lives to God, then asking God to forgive us and receiving Jesus as our
Lord and Saviour that we can be saved and born again. I remember early in my
Christian walk asking,
“What if I forget a sin while I was confessing all the ones I could remember?”
Of course I never did get a satisfactory answer to the question. And then of
course once you were saved you still sinned, I mean, it’s not like suddenly
overnight I was able to change years of bad habits and conditioning. And as a
result it brought daily frustration as I would pray and ask God to help me be
good and not sin and every day I would blow it and then let myself feel
condemned. I was told it’s a process; it takes time to change and you just have
to keep confessing your sins daily to God and repent, which is another word we
will explore here too. But when you did mess up and sin, not to worry as 1 John
1:9 had your back. If we
confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and
purify us from all unrighteousness.
I
don’t say they things with the intent to be glib, but rather, to point out some
of the absurdity in the religious logic and thinking. This is why I say it is
critical to be as the Bereans in Acts 17:11 who received the message with great
eagerness but examined the scriptures daily to test and approve that what they
were being told was the truth. It was a result of my daily reading and study of
scripture that I soon discovered, what I felt, was a great deal of error in the
interpretation and teaching.
In the same book of 1 John in the very next
chapter John goes on to say that Jesus is the propitiation or atoning sacrifice
not only of our sins but for the sins of the whole world. And Psalm 103:12 says
that as far as the east is from the west, so far has He (God) removed our
transgression from us, while in both Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17 referencing Jeremiah
31:34 God declares, I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no
more.
So then my mind reasoned, well if God has not
only forgiven ALL my sins and doesn’t even remember them anymore why would I continually go back and confess and
remind Him of things He says He no longer remembers. I remember posing that
question to another Christian Brother one night as we got together for our
weekly prayer group. I said, “If God no longer remembers my sin then what sin
exactly am I supposed to confess to him?” He responded, “The one you just committed.”
But I said, “The Bible says the sins of
the whole world are forgiven and He doesn’t remember our sins anymore, what you’re
saying just doesn’t make sense and also if I’m now the righteousness of God in
Christ Jesus then what unrighteousness exactly is it that God is going to have
to cleanse me from? If I’m righteous in His eyes why would He need to
continually cleanse me?” Well of course he took offence and just got plain
angry because I couldn’t see his point which frankly was severely flawed in
light of what I reading in scripture. But, this was a man that had been
religiously indoctrinated his whole life and as I have previously stated, once
you become indoctrinated to quit thinking. You become spiritually deaf and
blind. His heart was sincere there is no question about that, but in my opinion
he was sincerely wrong.
That said, let
us now look at how the original language, both Hebrew and Greek, define the
word sin. The first appearance of the word sin occurs in Genesis 4:7 with God
speaking to Cain v6, And the Lord
said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why do you look sad and depressed and
dejected? 7. If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin crouches at your door; its
desire is for you, but you must master it. AMP
In
the context here we are dealing with Cain and Abel’s offerings to God, Cain
brought of the first fruits of the ground, while Abel brought the first born of
his flock and the fat portions. And the Lord had respect and regard for Abel’s
offering but not Cain’s so Cain took offence that God wasn’t accepting his offering
and the above verse was God’s response to Cain.
Why was Abel’s offering acceptable while Cain’s wasn’t. Thankfully the writer of Hebrews sheds a
little more light on the matter for in chapter 11:4 it states that it was by faith that Abel brought his sacrifice
and it was that faith that pleased God. Cain on the other hand brought a
sacrifice based of the works of his
hand and Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Now
if we read the passage in the traditional sense of our Western understanding of
sin as an offence I suppose it is correct. But if we look at the Hebrew word
and more importantly the root of its meaning
we will find that we get a whole different perspective. The Hebrew word used
here for sin which is the most predominant word used throughout the Old
Testament is the word, chaṭṭâ'âh chaṭṭâ'th which is defined in all Hebrew
dictionaries as an offence, a sinful thing and its penalties, a condition of
sin, punishment for sin. In other words it really still doesn’t tell us just
what sin is, just that it’s sin? But the whole purpose here is to establish
what sin actually means according to the Bible.
In order to do that we have to look to the root of the above word and
all Hebrew dictionaries state that the word sin is derived from the root Hebrew
word châṭâ' which is defined as, to
miss or to miss the way, miss the
mark, miss the goal, which as you’ll soon discover once we get into the New
Testament Greek definition of the same word, is defined the same way. And I
believe, when we combine the word sin with the true meaning of the word repent
or repentance it will tie it all together.
So then in the above context we
discover that Cain’s sin or offense was that he missed it, his path to God was
by his works, by sight, human intuition and presumption whereas Abel’s path to
God was by faith, what he believed rather than by works. Not through the five
senses realm for as Jesus stated in John 4, the true worshippers will worship
the Father in Spirit for God is Spirit.
When we get over to the New
Testament and look at the word sin we find it is derived from the Greek word hamartanō
which is also defined as, to miss the
mark, not share in the prize, figuratively to err or be mistaken, to miss or wander from the path of uprightness,
to do or go wrong. The urban dictionary picks up on this with their
definition of sin;
The Greek
biblical word for sin, "amartia", means literally "to miss the
mark", like an archer. Sin is not necessarily defined by moral wrongness,
by transgressing some set of rules, but is instead doing anything that takes
our focus off God (the target), onto ourselves, thinking we are the
be-all-and-end-all.
To sin in my opinion has
nothing to do with being bad or doing bad things in our traditional sense of
understanding it. Yes to do these things is sin but only in the sense that it
causes us to miss our true nature, who we really are in relation to God and I
know I keep coming back to this statement of who are we, but it is vital that
we come to this awakening if we want to experience the fullness of God.. Jesus understood
that relationship and He tried His best to show humanity, but we’ve missed it,
we’ve mistaken what He taught and what He meant, we’ve erred in our judgement
and again, I understand that to many that statement may come across as arrogant,
presumptuous and bold but I say it with all sincerity based on where the
evidence and revelation has taken me. Ask
and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened
to you. Matthew 7:7
When Paul says that the unrighteous will not
enter or inherit the Kingdom of God I do not believe he is not talking about
some external kingdom or heaven out there, but rather the Kingdom the Jesus
stated was within. He is reinforcing what Jesus told the woman at the well in
John 4 about coming to the Father in Spirit. It is not the specific actions themselves
that withhold us from the kingdom but the mindset that those actions create in
our lives. God is Spirit and those that come to Him must come to Him in Spirit.
Having a mindset of fornication, adultery, idolatry, covetousness, thievery, extortion,
gossip, backstabbing, etc is hardly congruent with the mind or Spirit focused
on God.
If according to scripture Jesus
was the final sacrifice for sin and Hebrews chapter 10 covers this extensively
where is states the priests stood daily offering the same sacrifices that can
never take away sin but that, He(Jesus), having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, v12 sat down at the right hand of God and that by the
ONE offering He has perfected for all
time those who are sanctified, v14 and
that as a result God states in v17, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will
remember no more.” Than why are we told that we need to keep coming back daily
if need be and keep confessing our sins to God so we can be cleansed of all unrighteousness,
V18 says that where there is forgiveness
of sin, there is no longer any offering for sin. So if we are continually
coming back to God daily asking for forgiveness are we not in essence offering
a further sacrifice? The result of doing this is not pretty according to, v26 For if we go on sinning willfully after
receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for
sins, 27 but a terrifying
expectation of judgment
and that in doing so v29 we are trampling underfoot the sacrifice of Christ and
insulting the Spirit of Grace. Should I not rather be daily praising and
thanking God that my sins are forgiven completely? There is so much more that
could be said about this but the point is that the ultimately the only sin
today in my humble opinion and as I see it is that we’ve missed the mark, we’ve
erred; we’ve wandered from the path of uprightness.
So on that note and speaking of
uprightness let us now look at just exactly what righteous or righteousness
means.
We’ll
start once again start with the current definition as once again defined by
Merriam Webster;
RIGHTEOUS
1: acting in accord with divine or moral law :
free from guilt or sin
2a : morally right or justifiable
<a righteous decision>
b : arising from an
outraged sense of justice or morality <righteous
indignation>
As we see once again, like sin, it is a generally an action,
the way in which we behave in relation to some divine law or moral code.
Biblically speaking it would be defined as a state of moral perfection and I
don’t think any would dispute that both Jesus and God the Father would be
considered perfectly righteous or morally perfect. First, how many have been
taught that there are none righteous no
not one as quoted in Romans 3:10 which is relating to an Old Testament
passage found in Psalms 14:3. That we
are born sinners due to Adam’s transgression that our only path to salvation
and righteousness is to confess our sins, ask God to forgive us and put our
full trust and faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on our behalf, because
we are just not good enough and never can be.
The Hebrew word for Righteous is tsaddı̂yq tsad-deek' From H6663; just: - just, lawful, righteous
(man). But like the word sin it is derived from a root word which is tsâdaq tsaw-dak' A primitive root; to be (causatively make)
right (in a moral or forensic sense): - cleanse, clear self, (be, do)
just (-ice, -ify, -ify self), (be, turn to) righteous (-ness).
In
the Greek the word for Righteous is dikaios dik'-ah-yos and is defined by Strong’s
as G1342; equitable (in
character or act); by implication innocent, holy (absolutely or
relatively): - just, meet, right (-eous).
Thayer’s states it as righteous, observing
divine laws, upright, virtuous, innocent, faultless, guiltless. But also 1a3) used of him
whose way of thinking, feeling, and acting is wholly conformed to the will of
God, and who therefore needs no rectification in the heart or life.
I
find the last definition very interesting in that righteousness can be defined as a way of thinking and
feeling as well as acting.
So if we tie the two words together, to sin is to miss
it, to err or be mistaken while to be righteous is to be right, correct in our
way of thinking, feeling and acting relative to our understanding, faith,
belief in God.
I think it’s at this point that I want to take the
opportunity to look at the word repent as I feel it is highly relevant to the
context as well. I remember hearing this word a lot from the leadership of the
first church I spent almost four years in. Just as we had to continually
confess our sins to God and seek forgiveness we had to keep on repenting every
time we blew. To repent was defined as turning away from our sin, but as got
into my study of this and first looked up the word in the Greek I realized once
again that I saw it’s meaning quite differently.
The New Testament Greek word for
repent is metanoeō met-an-o-eh'-o and is defined by Strong’s From G3326 and G3539;
to think differently or afterwards, that is, reconsider
(morally to feel compunction): - repent.
While Thayer’s adds; to changes
one’s mind or change one’s mind for better, heartily to amend with abhorrence of
one’s past sins
Until I looked it up for myself
I was told it meant to turn from my sin, to think differently in relation to my
sin, with sin of course being defined as my Godless way of life based on my
lifestyle and actions But when I actually studied it out I discovered that it literally
means to think differently. We can
see from the definition above that the word metanoeō is derived from two Greek
root words, G3326 and G3539.
G3326 is the word meta meaning with, after, behind and G 3539 is
the Greek word noieō noy-eh'-o 1) to perceive with the mind, to understand,
to have understanding 2) to think upon, heed, ponder, consider.
So
in tying all three of these words together to repent of your sin and
become righteous could be defined as
such. In repenting, thinking, perceiving, understanding things differently you
quit sinning, by missing the mark, erring, being mistaken about the path to uprightness
and in so doing your whole way of thinking, feeling and acting becomes fully
conformed to the perfect will of God.
One
of the results of doing this for me has been that scripture has suddenly come
alive to me in a whole new light. My understanding or perception of how I have
been told to interpret many passages regarding sin, righteousness and repentance
read so much more differently today. One
without the guilt, shame, condemnation that I am somehow angering God because
of what I do (works) vs what I believe (faith)
Repent
for the Kingdom of Heaven is near Matt
3:2 is no longer understood as having something to do with my sinful life and
some place out there called heaven, but rather a call for me to think differently about my understanding of heaven or the
Kingdom that as Jesus so clearly stated is NOT
out there but rather Within or near.
In
Matthew 6:26 Jesus tells us not to worry about our life, where our food or
clothing or other things pertaining to life will come from, but rather v33 seek
first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and in doing so all things pertaining
to life will take care of themselves. Once again it is not about some kingdom
out there that I am seeking but the one within and His righteousness has
nothing to do with my sinful lifestyle, but rather, a much different or right way
of thinking, feeling and acting in my knowledge and understanding of God.
Peter
says that it is through a true knowledge of God that He has given to us
everything or all things that pertain
to life and godliness and that it is through His great and exceeding promises that
we become partakers of the divine nature 2 Peter 1:3-4.
As
I stated I could go on and on but for time’s sake I’ll leave it here.
That
said, the content here remains sound in my mind, but, my perception and
understanding of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and how I read and understand the
scriptures has and continues to dramatically change day by day. One thing
though remains steadfast and resolute in my mind and that is that the Bible
truly is mankind’s life manual and a path, that if rightly divided, leads
directly to God, Christ and mankind’s full awakening to who he truly is in that
relationship. As time alot’s I will continue to write and share these findings,
the result of which I am certain, will challenge many, especially long term
Christian’s who take the time to read the material. But for those that are
hungry enough and want the meat rather than the milk as I have will see dramatic
changes in their lives, that, I have no doubt of. For the first time in my more
than twenty years of seeking I find myself fully convinced of what I feel the
Spirit is revealing to me.
I’ll
finish with this. I remember a time when I read the beginning of Hebrew 6; Therefore
leaving the elementary teaching about
the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not
laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
of instruction about washings and laying
on of hands, and the resurrection of the
dead and eternal judgment.
I
thought my goodness if repentance from dead works, instructions about washing
(baptism), laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal
judgement are the elementary
teachings of Christ than I definitely want to know what the mature teachings of
Christ are. The fact is every single church I have ever attended is still
teaching the exact same things stated above and these the writer says are the
elementary teachings. He admonishes us to move on to maturity and yet more than
two thousand years later the church is still stuck on the nursery school stuff, as a Christian brother referred to it last
weekend when I mentioned this scripture. It has been the result of that intense
heartfelt desire and continual search that I find myself where I am today.
Colossians
2 has much to say as v8; “See to it that no one takes you captive through
philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to
the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”
“Therefore
no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a
festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-- things which are a mere shadow of
what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.” – “Let no one keep
defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of
the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by
his fleshly mind, If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of
the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to
decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" (which all refer to things destined to perish
with use)--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are
matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion
and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value
against fleshly indulgence.
Every
one of these above statements from the Apostle Paul continues to this day in
one form or another in various denominational churches throughout the world. I
have experienced many of them over the course of my 12 year Christian walk and
yet here as in Hebrews the writer calls these elementary principles that we are
to move of from and be not part of.
So
for the second time since finding Christ I find myself at a crossroads once
again regarding attendance in a church setting where as Charles Capps says you
should never knowingly sit under teaching that you know is wrong, because
sooner or later some of it will creep in. I remember a time in my mid-thirties,
sitting with my wife in a Chinese restaurant having lunch one day and telling
her that not only did I feel I had a book somewhere inside me waiting to be
written but that I somehow felt like I would be part of a new religion. Of
course at that time I still did not know Jesus or His teaching, the Bible
belonged to self-righteous Bible thumpers as I referred to them, and I wanted
nothing to do with any church or so called Christian, but I did a belief in a
divine creator or God and I was diligently searching. Needless to say
circumstances and that continued search did eventually lead me to Christ, the
Bible and those Bible thumping Christians several years later and several years
in I realized that it wasn’t a new
religion I was going to be a part of but one that already existed. But what I’ve
since discovered over the past twelve years is that the current religion is
still drinking milk and has yet to move on to maturity, has yet to grow up into
Him who is the head. Eph 4
I
have felt for time now that my purpose in life is to teach, to see people set
free and to reach and experience their full potential, to fully awaken to their
true nature in Christ and in God, but time will tell and maybe this blog is a
first step.
Love
in Christ, Rob.
