“The wages of sin is death,” St. Paul proclaims to us in today’s Epistle. Sin is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Christianity today. A whole host of psychological complexes emanate from this misunderstanding. In some Protestant circles, sin is identified with legal transgression and salvation with justification and atonement, or appeasement of God. Others, of a more Calvinist perspective, assert they cannot lose their salvation no matter what. Catholics, for their part, are often plagued by guilt because of their juridical or legal understanding of sin.
Indeed, the Western doctrine of ‘original sin’ asserts that we’re all guilty at conception of Adam’s sin. According to this perspective, salvation is about becoming individually ‘justified.’
Institutional Catholicism reveals the problem with this theory of sin: the inherited guilt is a real issue in the lives of many faithful Catholics because, while you can confess your sins, the reason for doing so is to satisfy the ‘legal’ requirements of the faith, of the need for justification, but not for the healing of one’s soul, of learning to be freed from the passions that contribute to and cause our sins, which, if not repented of, lead to death, as St. Paul declares to us today, saying: “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” (Rom. 6:23)
Our Orthodox Faith teaches us that sin isn’t participation in collective guilt, but rather, that through the Fall, we’re created in an environment where the inclination to sin is very strong, and where we all share in the consequences of that first sin rather than its guilt. This distinction is very important because the remedy then is healing and not the assuaging of guilt.
Sin for us as Orthodox is thus understood as ‘missing the mark,’ failing to live up to our God-given purpose in life—to live to His glory, to grow in holiness as His adopted children, co-heirs with Christ. We’re created for relationship, participation and communion in the life that God Himself is as Holy Trinity.
Sin is likewise described in the Orthodox faith as sickness for this same reason. In order to have the capacity to love, of returning and giving love, we must be free to choose or reject that love, to experience that love, which is life with God. Rejection of that life, of Him who alone is “the Life of the world,” of that calling for which we were created is what we call, sin. Our choice to sin leads us away from relationship, communion with Him who is Life, who created all life, our Lord Jesus Christ. In the end, a life lived apart from communion with God is a living death.
The Western concepts of sin lead to a dead-end street with no way out, no overcoming, no healing where the goal becomes as Orthodox theologian, Christos Yannaras, has put it “an egocentric fear of transgression,” and/or the tendency to gloss over sin or to reach an accommodation with it,”. It’s as if we’re saying: “O, no big deal, I’m really a ‘good person,’ or, it was only a ‘white’ lie, a little one, or, “everyone does it…” Such thinking leads us to avoid repentance, avoid recognizing the consequences of the reality of sin and its sad affect on us and our society; it keeps us from finding true freedom and healing from our sins and passions.
This kind of misunderstanding of sin leads people to down-play sin and its sad affects on our lives, our personhood, our being with Christ. When the focus is on us, we have to strive on our own to be justified, being judged by our sins, having upset the scales of justice, or become overwhelmed trying to ‘make up’ for those sins, then we’re still lost, we’ve no way out, there’s no hope to be healed, and so, our only option is to pretend that we’re basically ‘good’ people, to mitigate sin, and so, we’re kept from healing from a disease that, with Christ, is always curable.
Instead, it’s our very real, honest, recognition of sin in our lives, our confession of sin, that ‘missing the mark,’ our calling to holiness and life with God, which is the key to our liberation from its hold on us. Only in this way, are we able to give our sins over to the One who can forgive us of them.
It’s only in recognizing the truth about ourselves and our need for God—that we cannot become righteous or ‘good enough’ on our own to inherit life with God, that we’re not ‘good enough’ as we are—that we begin to change, that we recognize the sad and very real affects of sin on our lives, on the world around us. In recognizing that we’ve missed the mark, that we’ve failed to be what we are each called to be, we have somewhere, Someone, to turn to, Jesus Christ, to heal us, to grow us, to save us.
For this reason, we affirm as Orthodox that recognizing something as sin, ‘calling a spade a spade,’ is not an act of ‘intolerance,’ but in actuality an act of true love. We do so not to condemn, for it is God’s business to judge, but to save: how can we find healing from our sin-sickness if we no longer recognize as sin that which is spiritually sickening us or others and keeping us or them from life with God. No, instead, because we love, we call others to the same life of healing, hope, and growth in holiness through repentance that you and I are experiencing through Christ’s holy Orthodox Church as well.
We do well to remember this, particularly on this Sunday, having just been told that gay ‘marriage’ is now the law of the land in all 50 States. Those who follow the universal teaching of the Orthodox Church and recognize that homosexuality is a sin find themselves being labeled bigots, homophobes, hate-mongers and much worse. We do well to remember that true love does not condemn the sinner but recognizes that God calls all people to this life of holiness with Him that I just described. We love by not excluding anyone, but by calling all people to repentance and healing from all sin-sickness. In order to do so, we continue to recognize sin as sin. Otherwise, there’s no healing from sin but only death.
We can no sooner declare homosexuality, adultery, or gossip to no longer be sin because it’s God who defines what’s compatible with the Life that He alone is—and not us. We don’t invite God into communion with us; He graciously, lovingly invites us into relationship and communion with Him—if we are willing to repent, be transformed, and continue to grow in holiness so that we can be in the near presence of Him who is holy. For us who know better to think that we can erase or alter God’s revelation, is the height of arrogance, and among the greatest of sins.
Following the culture as it not only embraces but mandates acceptance of homosexuality in the guise of ‘tolerance’ is not love even if the culture at large now defines it as such. God is the Author of love. As St. Paul reminds us, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Love is defined as God’s self-emptying of Himself for the sake of our salvation, which we access through repentance and participation in the sacramental life Christ has entrusted to us. We truly love when we desire for others what God desires for us all. Are you willing to love to this extent, even if it costs you? It will begin to cost us more. We are called upon to resist accommodation with sin and instead to practice courageous humility, inviting all people to the same healing from sin-sickness you and I have experienced even as we continue to grow in the knowledge and love of Christ.
We take refuge in the Church where we’re given meaning and purpose for our lives, an identity not grounded on this passing, transient world or in our present culture and its ever-changing norms, but an identity, a purpose, that grounds us in God who is alone eternal and unchanging.
St. John Chrysostom asks in this regard, “Have you sinned? Come to the church and have them cleansed. However often you fall on your journey, as many times as that may be, you pick yourself up; in the same way, as many times as you sin, repent just as often. Do not lose hope or be lazy, that you may not lose your hope in the heavenly good things prepared for us… Here is the hospital; not a tribunal. Forgiveness is conveyed here… Come and see: repentance will save you.” May we take seriously this exhortation so that understanding sin better, we can avail ourselves more fully of Christ’s cure.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Epistle: Romans 6:18-23
Gospel: Matthew 8:5-13
