“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.
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’, righteous, before God, constantly making up for that collective sin, or, in the case of the Neo-Protestants, believing that Christ died to ‘pay the price” for us, to right the scales of justice tipped against us, and there’s nothing else we need to do, or any of a host of other theories.
Our Orthodox belief is 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.
Sin for us as Orthodox is understood as ‘missing the mark,’ failing to live up to our God-given calling and purpose in life—to live to His glory, indeed, to be glorified as His adopted children, co-heirs with Christ. We’re not created as objects of wrath, but rather, as objects of love—invited into a relationship, a participation in the life that God Himself is as Holy Trinity.
Sin is likewise described in the Orthodox faith as sickness for the reason St. Paul states in today’s Epistle: “sin leads to death.” 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 to live in Him is what we call, sin. Our choice to sin leads us away from relationship, communion with Him who is Life, who created all life—the Word of God, Jesus Christ. In the end, a life lived away from participation in the life of God is a living death.
The Western concepts of sin lead us, however, to a dead-end street with no way out in which the goal becomes “an egocentric fear of transgression,” and/or the tendency to gloss over sin or to reach an accommodation with it,” as Orthodox theologian, Christos Yannaras, has put 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 recognizing the consequences of the reality of sin and its sad affect on us and keeps us from being freed from them in confession.
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, and 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, but to pretend that we’re basically ‘good’ people, that we aren’t the sinners we are, healing from a terrible disease.
If being ‘good’ is the measure of our salvation, then we’re all lost with no way out. Christ proclaims, “No one is good but One, that is, God.” (Matt. 19:17). What seems like a “feel good” boost, saying we’re good (enough) to ignore sin and its consequences in our lives, actually makes us and keeps us spiritually sick, because it ignores our need for God, for our only Savior, for a real change in our thinking, our behavior, that leads to our healing and our salvation.
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. We call this recognition of sin and our turning from trust in ourselves to trust in God, repentance, metanoia.
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. 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.
By owning and grounding our identity, our self worth, in who we are in Christ God, as called to be a fellow heir with all the Saints, participating in the Body of Christ through the Sacraments, we become step by step through repentance, those servants of God and children of God we’re called to be.
This effort demands a cooperation on our part with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We neither believe that nothing we do makes any difference as we wallow in our guilt, nor do we believe that we’re ‘good enough’ as we are and that there’s nothing really left to do.
Existing as an autonomous individual, even a ‘good’ one, doesn’t save us from corruption and death. But taking refuge in the Church, participating in the Sacramental life, acting out our repentance through prayer and confession, communing with God, step by step sets us free from sin’s hold on us. For this reason, we confess our sins regularly, not to purge ourselves of guilt or be justified, but to be set free of their debilitating effect, to be healed of their spreading sickness, to learn to avoid sin in the future, to be reunited to Christ God, and capable of upward growth in communion and love with Him.
To this end, I strongly recommend using a “Self-Examination” before confession, such as the one we now have available to all on our Holy Archangels’ website. By asking ourselves such personal and deep questions about our sins, we can come to better understand the root causes of them. Looking at ourselves in the mirror is difficult, humbling, but in confronting the reality of our sin-sickness, we can take it to Christ and beseech Him to heal us, renew us, save us. When diagnosed with a curable disease, it does us no good to bury our heads in the sand. Rather, we have to follow the prescribed treatment to be healed.
Confession is humbling and because it’s humbling, it’s an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work in us, to help us take a step of faith in becoming more of who God created us to be—holy men and women. Christ says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Matt. 23:12, Lk. 14:11). We see such humility exemplified in all the Saints. We think of St. John the Baptist, who says, “He (Christ) must increase and I must decrease” (John 3). And we see this humility in today’s centurion, a great leader of 100 men and in the eyes of the State, says to the Lord, “I am not worthy that You should come under my roof, But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed.”
When we repent, we’re humbling ourselves before God, we’re being freed from the weight of sin, healed of its hold on us, oriented again to the life we’re called into communion with, and enabled and equipped to live more fervently, more abundantly for God. This is God’s desire for each of us.
So, 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, but an identity, a purpose, that grounds us in God who is alone eternal. St. John Chrysostom’s 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, July 6, 2014
Epistle: Romans 6:18-23
Gospel: Matthew 8:5-13
