Crucified for Sins
And the danger of psychologizing sin
“Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it out into the wilderness by the hand of a man ready to do this.” (Leviticus 16:21 LSB)
In our modern, over-psychologized world, the biblical concept of sin has been all but obliterated. Simply consider the way transgressions have been usurped by “struggles,” iniquities by “trauma,” guilt by “poor self-esteem,” and sins by “breakdowns” and “stress.” Indeed, if any fault is admitted on the part of the person in question (and such occasions are rare), responsibility for these faults is usually off-loaded onto some ready-made excuse like so many sacks of grain onto a Peruvian pack mule.
In other words, we moderns deeply resent the idea that we might actually bear moral culpability for our actions, and thus we are only too willing to shield ourselves from the implications of such a prospect. As Malcolm Muggeridge wisely noted, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” We simply hate that we are sinners.
In the Scriptures, however, sin is not the kind of thing that can be done away with through the mere swapping of terms. It is not, like a stray cat or dog, something that can be renamed and domesticated. In fact, sin is startlingly objective in character, placing us under a real and equally objective state of condemnation and guilt. This is because sin in the Bible is not the mere breaking of arbitrary rules; it is personal and calculated rebellion against the infinitely good and holy God. It is open defiance against the Lord of heaven and earth, rank ingratitude toward the Giver of all grace. Thus, sin requires resolution rather than denial: atonement must be made, either through the death of the sinner or the death of a worthy substitute:
“Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it out into the wilderness by the hand of a man ready to do this.” (Lev. 16:21)
Sin, then, must be borne. It must be removed. It must be covered over and atoned for if fellowship with God is to be had. Without this “expiation,” to use the theological term, the pollution of sin remains, and with it, its curse and condemnation. As the Scripture elsewhere says, the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), and there are no exceptions to the rule.
The objectivity of sin, however, points us to the glorious hope of an equally objective and historical atonement. If sin wreaks havoc in the real world, among real people, before a real and holy God, then the answer to sin can be no less real in character and kind. It can be no less concrete, no less clothed with flesh and blood than the sin it answers for.
This sort of atonement is just the kind God has provided through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Christian confession goes, in the fullness of time, Christ—born of woman and born under the Law (Gal. 4:4)—came into the world to “save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). He did this, moreover, not by providing a sterling moral example for us to follow or by waiving our sins as though they were a parking ticket. No, when God made atonement for sins He did so by taking to Himself a human body—a body with veins and capillaries and arteries filled with blood—and shedding that blood on a Roman cross. Christ, in the language of the Scriptures, was thus crucified for sins (1 Cor. 15:3), and by that crucifixion—or, rather, by that “offering”—perfected for all time those who are being sanctified (Heb. 10:14).
This is the Christian hope. This is the heart of the gospel. And this is the message we must hold out to the world.
So to return to where we started, Satan loves to trivialize and diminish the horrors of sin by cloaking it in soft, therapeutic language. He loves to deceive us into playing the victim rather than the perpetrator.
Don’t fall for it, Christian.
As the Scriptures testify, sin is real and there is death and hell to pay for our rebellion against God’s kindness and grace. The good news, however, and the ground upon which all our hope is founded, is that Christ is an equally real and mighty Saviour and He has made perfect atonement for our sins through the sacrifice of His body on the tree.
If we are in Him, there is no condemnation (Rom. 8:1).