Published: February 29, 2024 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Leviticus - The Parable of Leviticus 1 - Part 7 | Scripture: Leviticus 5:14-6:7
Transcript
View Full Transcript →
0:04
well at all Burk Howard deals with this in fact he has a a whole chapter called the titled the gravity and gradation of sin uh so the the idea
0:15
of the of the various uh sinfulness of sin you know that there's there is a distinction among sins and that scripture seems to
0:28
confirm this confirm this um burkhow writes it is simply an undeniable fact that scripture makes various distinctions and speaks of
0:38
several degrees of sin now I I don't know that that is UN is undeniable you know as as he makes it um because what what we see in the
0:50
scriptural seemingly uh distinctions between sins needs to be I don't know corrected or at Le least
1:00
influenced by the fact and and burkhow does this by the way in his book um that that all lawlessness is is sin and all sin is death the wages of sin is death
1:12
so on the one hand there there are distinctions so we you know we hear the Lord telling Betha and Chim that it
1:22
would be better in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them uh because they sinned against a greater light essentially light essentially that one you know the greatest has come and you have
1:34
ignored him um and then and then we have that passage that Infamous passage in first John that I do want to try to deal with this evening to some extent and
1:45
that is um the sin unto death you know the idea of the sin unto death if anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death he will ask and
1:55
he will give him Life For Those who commit sin not leading to death there is a sin leading to death I do not say that he should pray about that all unrighteousness is
2:06
unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not leading to death if anybody fully understands that passage I'll sit down and you come up here okay because that that has been one
2:17
that that that that has a multitude and we're going to see that a little bit this evening but a multitude of different interpretive approaches to that verse of the concept
2:27
of the sin unto death it is for example it's very it's very uh to to talk about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as the sin unto death um
2:38
which may have some application because it's in the same book the first Epistle of John that John tells us to test the spirits and then any spirit that denies that Jesus has come in the flesh is of
2:50
the Antichrist okay so you know there is some connection there between what Jesus says I think it's in Matthew um 12 concerning the B blasphemy of the Holy
3:00
Spirit and what John says then there's also the passage in 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul hands such a one over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh
3:11
that that does not sound like a request for intercessory prayer okay I mean we really don't have that category on our prayer priority sheet you know those handed over to Satan okay right um we
3:23
just don't put that up on the Google sheet it's there but no it's not there that's the Sicilian prayer list but uh um these are troubling
3:34
passages uh especially in the more modern Church where we we tend to think that that everything is forgivable um and that that not no one and of course we have the Roman Catholic doctrine of
3:45
purgatory where you're not even past hope after death okay so it just shows all of this shows in a preliminary way that we really haven't gotten a handle on this concept of sin and of
3:58
sins probably throughout history I don't think the rabbis have done any better I have I have some quotes in here from the rabbi sources and I don't know that the rabbis had any inside track on the issue
4:09
because it is our tendency especially our religious tendency toward moralism okay we we want to whitewash the Seiler okay that's that's the idea and
4:21
we also want to believe uh first of all that there's something we can do to make ourselves worthy before God that's one principle and then the other principle is uh well
4:32
okay now that we've been saved by grace isn't there something we need to do to kind of retroactively deserve it okay so it's that the the issue of salvation by
4:42
faith but Sal uh sanctification by works and that is a very prevalent Evangelical um concept so um so that so
4:53
what we're dealing with here kind of is
5:08
moralism now on the flip side the contrary antinomianism where really anything goes there is no law there is no uh criteria
5:19
of behavior is also completely unbiblical certainly in both Old and New Testament Behavior does matter and that
5:29
sins within the congregation whether it is the is Israel in the wilderness or the church are to be uh extricated there're to be surgically removed
5:42
excommunication and that's in the levitical laws as well as in the New Testament um Paul's saying handing such a one over to Satan for the destruction of his
5:52
of his flesh so we're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place on the on the one hand if we focus too too much on moral taxonomy in other words the the
6:03
relative uh significance of this or that sin then we we we do slide down that hole into hole into moralism and what generally happens is
6:16
the classifications that we come up with are very are very self-serving they're they're not biblical okay and we tend to classify certain sins even we don't use the terms
6:28
we tend to classify if certain sins as venial and others as mortal okay we don't use those terms because we're not Catholic but we still treat the the concept kind of the same way so um I
6:43
want to talk a little bit about that today and in light of the levitical taxonomy that we've already discussed okay so um the tendency toward moralism
6:56
is that we set up often times our own
7:10
classification now for those of you who got a D in biology like I did uh taxonomy is the classification of species all right it's kind of like the more in my element sorry that's a pun
7:20
like the periodic table I'm in my element with that I didn't mean didn't mean that sometimes it just happens but um so that's what we're doing here we're
7:31
talking about kind of the lenus classification of the of the animal and plant World here we're talking about the the the classification of sins that's
7:41
also also changes over time classification Yeah well yeah it does yeah and and so it also does with sin you know and what's amazing is that this the the the kingdom mortal gets smaller
7:55
and and the kingdom venal gets larger okay somehow as we go through time sins become less and less sinful and that's true and even contemporary Ro I quote a
8:08
number of Roman Catholic scholars in this week's notes because as you know I do like to quote the hores mouth so that I don't end up looking like the other end okay
8:19
end okay so right from the the the catechism or you know from Catholic Scholars but they they themselves uh are recognizing especially since vaan
8:30
2 how not only has the category of venial sins venial sins enlarged what is said about them and this is this has been true all the way through makes one wonder if they can
8:41
really be considered sins at all okay and we'll we'll discuss that a little bit because I do want to touch upon the mortal and venial distinction because I think it has a parallel uh within
8:53
Protestant Christianity but that's because it has a common root and that common root is the tendency toward moralism we we really have a hard I we have a
9:03
hard time with the balance between um what are the what are the words I want piety on the one hand you know how we we
9:13
actually act like we believe but also faith on the other where we realize not only is it's it's
9:24
not my actions that matter but that my actions don't help me you know that even our righteousness is as filthy rags okay so
9:36
you have this this everybody understand what I'm saying on the you know we have this pism we have this bent toward and the church tends to go that way it tends to go you always end up with some chronic pietistic movement within the
9:48
church because um people like Pelagius a British monk visiting Rome recognizes that the professing Christianity in Rome was vulgar that there there was no
10:00
appreciable um impact of Christianity on the lives of Christians and we see that today we see that in the churches today
10:10
and so what do we want to do well we want to we want to swing that P that pendulum back over to piety and we want to demand certain behavior and and certain outward uh characteristics not
10:22
realizing that that's just whitewash on the Seiler that it really is offensive to God that we should try to work out our Salvation through the Flesh and pretend
10:34
that we're somehow deserving of his grace okay and yet when Paul deals with the opposite tendency and that is
10:44
antinomianism let us sin more that Grace might abound he has no theological treatment of that he simply says may it never be
10:54
okay so I think that's very important that Paul will you know he will will deal with things doctrinally and theologically on the one hand and he does that with sin as as we're seeing on
11:05
Sunday mornings how it culminates in God condemning sin in the flesh so he's dealing with sin but then when someone says well in that's just a sin Grace can
11:16
abound even more Paul has no theological answer for that he just says what you talking about you know that that shouldn't even enter your mind so so
11:27
obviously there's something and of course I think we all know it's it's the indwelling and the and the walking by the spirit that makes the difference that nobody who understood
11:39
Paul through a regenerate heart and mind would walk away from his Series in Romans and say well I'm just going to go sin then okay sin is I'm I'm dead to sin
11:52
so let me just do what I want um and and yet when things did go that way like in Corinth Paul didn't just wink at it he didn't
12:02
just tolerate it as if immoral Behavior within the church was somehow acceptable because we're under grace so the dynamic is all there and it tear it it pulls in different directions but the strongest
12:15
pull especially in religion is toward moralism and and one of the reasons is because um you know two of the most
12:25
powerful motivating forces in persuading people are guilt and fear and so there there's no religion among men in which guilt and fear are not going to be found because they are
12:37
effective ways of maintaining control over the people so um going against the grain and not following this tendency
12:51
toward moralism means you you have to rethink the whole concept of moral taxonomy the whole concept of of gradation of sins that it's not an
13:03
either or it's a both and that there are evidently sins that are worse than others and yet to hate is to murder and
13:14
to lust is to commit adultery okay so what does that do to tonomy all right it it destroys it because sin is of the heart and the wages of sin is death and each
13:27
manifestation you can't any any individual human life any individual human being ever was self- exonerated by the fact that their sins
13:39
were truly not as bad as the other people doesn't work that way the one sin of Adam thrust the entire human race
13:49
into corruption and condemnation and it really wasn't what we would call a heinous crime certainly not the same as C
13:59
you know who murdered his brother so that there's there's kind of both um polls in the scripture and even in the
14:11
passage we've been looking at we have the unwitting or inadvertent sin we have the high-handed sin now we're going to come up on sins that we did some last
14:22
week and then more this week sins that clearly could not have been inadvertent and yet we're not high-handed so we have the we have what
14:34
appears to be a spectrum of sin and today we're going to this evening we're going to look at a sin that appears to be or an offering that appears to be entirely provisional like just in
14:46
case we'll have you know I'll go ahead and offer this because there's nothing actually me made or known in terms of what the sin was but just in case we'll
14:57
go ahead and offer up this the sacrifice to be safe so you see that it's you know it's like okay we could handle it if it was inadvertent and high-handed you know
15:07
those two but it's not it's a spectrum and and um we may not even know where we are on that Spectrum our hearts are so deceitful so the reality of that
15:20
type of uh gradation is entirely biblical and yet I don't think we were ever intended to make a classification
15:30
of sins so let's look a little bit at the history of this idea of mortal and
15:41
mortal and venal sins I trust everybody has heard of that is that maybe Joe and filigree but um everybody's heard of the
15:51
distinction between Mortal um the Roman Catholic catechism and for those who I who've not heard this I'm sure you probably all have um but when you are
16:03
reading Roman Catholic material you want to look inside the front pages where their copyright material is and you want to find the
16:14
niil obstat or the imprimatur um or those alone indicate that what you're reading
16:25
is official Roman Catholic Doctrine it doesn't mean you don't read other stuff it just means that the other stuff you're reading is the opinion of the author only uh not to not to say that
16:37
it's not good exegesis of scripture there are actually some very very talented Roman Catholic Bible scholars um not to say that it isn't perfectly accurate in terms of Roman
16:47
Catholic Doctrine and behavior it often is it's just not official so the Roman Catholic catechism or the catechism of the Catholic church that I quote does
16:57
have the have the obstat um and it the current version that is the official one was actually approved by uh Joseph Cardinal ratzinger
17:09
who was the head of the doctrine of Faith which used to be the um the Inquisition they changed that name um and as some of you may know then went on to become Pope Benedict V 16th so he was
17:22
very much a theologian of the church but when you look up Mortal and venial sins in the catechism the catechism says sins are rightly evaluated according to their Gravity the
17:35
distinction between Mortal and venial sin already evident in scripture in scripture became part of the tradition of the church it is corroborated by
17:46
Human Experience now the reference of scripture is to 1 John 516 And1 17 okay so the the the the root verse for this
17:57
Doctrine within Roman Catholicism is 1 John 56-17 the sin unto death okay and so
18:09
that of course death mortal that introduces the mortal sin now what is interesting in in a very cursory uh glance at the passage is that it is a
18:21
sin unto death not sins okay sins okay so what the Roman Catholic church has
18:32
done is it has made a classification of mortal sins these are these are sins that um that lead to death but they
18:44
don't lead to death what they lead to is a fresh outpouring of God's grace through the through the sacraments okay because if they lead to
18:55
death that person is no longer a part of the Christan C Catholic Church they they they just like in Israel they must be cut off from among their people or as
19:07
Paul says handed over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh those kind of phrases don't uh don't really admit of restoration although in Corinthians
19:19
people wonder whether the fellow in 2 Corinthians was actually the offender in First Corinthians we don't know um God's grace is indeed uh powerful
19:29
but that's not the point when when John says there's a sin unto death there's there's no responsibility upon the church to seek that person's
19:42
Reclamation does that make sense I mean they're not to pray for that sin that person okay and and that's actually what Jeremiah was told in terms of Israel
19:52
don't don't even pray for these people okay so there is a point at which we're not even to intercede for for that so it's an important
20:02
sin um if we're ever going to recognize
20:25
just yeah we no the Lang the the post Vatican 2 language has become very accommodating and um very um forgiving compared to the Vatican 1 language but
20:37
you also in the last couple of decades have seen a lot more people who call themselves Vatican 1 Catholics um that and and and Scholars that are recognizing that um maybe the church has
20:48
gone too far this current pope is raising a real melstrom of of opposition with his uh incredible liberalism toward things that things that um have always been recognized as sins
21:01
and Mortal sins within the Roman Catholic church and he's now um basically everything is venial to Francis um so now where this all seems
21:13
to begin in history is around the fifth and sixth Century in Century in Ireland Okay
21:34
this is not to say that it didn't show up elsewhere this is the earliest manuscript evidence we have of what are known as known as penitentials these penitentials these are undeniable classifications of
21:47
sins they they are um case uh not case studies but a case book of sins and their associated penants
21:58
which is why they're called penitentials so if you do this well it it reads a lot like Leviticus you know if you do this this is what you have to do you have to
22:08
bring this and and um and so these penitentials what they do is they
22:19
associate Penance with a gradation of sins now they were
22:29
initially U meant for the monastic Community they were not meant for the church at large but that is because what else had the other thing that had seeped
22:40
into the church by that time was the concept of the um clergy or though the sacred vows and the secular
22:53
occupations and so the average Catholic was not held to pretty much any standard at all um whereas the one who received
23:04
um the sacrament of ordination or had taken vows in a monastery or a Convent they were to live by rules so
23:14
the Benedictine rule is perhaps one of the most famous but that was that was actually a guide to to your devotional life uh how you spent your time so you have matens and Vespers and know you
23:26
have your your Cycles of the clock and and um all of that see that's that's the rules of a monastic Community this had to do with the kind of the the penal
23:36
code of the monastic Community this is what you would have to pay in terms of penance if you committed certain infractions so they um they were
24:04
and not for the church at large but they then branched out especially as the uh some of these monastic movements especially in Ireland uh St Patrick uh were very
24:14
were very Evangelistic and they would go back to the continent into the Germanic area and they would preach the gospel but they would also set up the a similar monastic Community with similar rules and penal
24:27
code and then those would basically kind of fan out into the church at large so this is this is somewhat the um the origin of this idea um me see if I can
24:43
find a an example okay um the gradation of sin and Penance was called the Tariff chiefly prescribed in
24:56
schedules or tariffs of specific penances for various sins of various kinds and degrees in one document where we have um it's it's one
25:08
of the key documents because it we have it you know we have you know that's the thing um that's why I said the Irish may not have been the first to do this but
25:18
theirs is the extent manuscripts the oldest extant manuscripts of this concept um so here's a
25:28
the Penance for paraside is 14 years or half as long if it was committed on account of ignorance on bread and water
25:39
and with and with satisfaction now there I don't know what the satisfaction was but 14 years of bread and water if you kill one of your
26:00
um in the Old Testament see it it really sounds a lot like the levitical sacrifices that we've been studying that's exle right there already off
26:10
theil exactly yes what is the P biblical penal penalty for killing your father killing yeah being stoned right in fact you were to be taken out if you were just simply a difficult child you know a
26:23
disobedient and rebellious child you didn't even have to get around to killing the old guy you know so yeah you can see how far off the rails they are you get 14 years on bread and water okay
26:33
so um you but again that's within the monastic community and keep in mind that within the Roman Catholic um tradition there are certain sacraments that are
26:43
indelible or ordination is one of them you know that once you've received that Sacrament it's forever yours which is one of the reason why the Roman Catholic church has had such a difficult time
26:54
with dealing with its um hor horrible uh history of abuse is that these these men
27:05
are permanently sacramentally permanently sacramentally ordained okay so the church doesn't really know what to do to discipline um and that was also a major problem within
27:15
the between the in the Middle Ages between the Civil Authority and the ecclesiastical Authority because killing your parent under the civil law would have been the death penalty but killing
27:25
your parent as a monk was for 14 years in bread and water okay which in some of these monasteries might have been an improvement u i mean they did have all these vows and one of them was
27:36
abstinence in the Old Testament the interdictions set in place to protect the sacred places people and objects from ritual defilement constituted the most important mechanism by which the
27:46
contractual relationship between Yahweh and the people of Israel should be maintained sin in essence implied any transgression against the rules and Commandments that Yahweh had given to
27:57
his people such offenses were disruptive to the social order and were thereby in direct violation of the Covenant the remedy for sin must be sought before the Lord because all sins threatened his
28:08
holy presence and endangered the solidarity of the whole Community conversely the adherence to religious precepts was IND IND indicative of an individual's or a whole community's
28:19
acceptance of God and hence ensured that they would also be accepted by him now that's a commentary basically saying this is what they were trying to do they
28:30
saw themselves as the Tabernacle of God and so they were trying to reenact the sacrificial rituals only in that time
28:42
the sacrifices were bloodless and Penance had taken the place of actual um penalty within the community so
28:53
community so already we're diminishing in this gradation we're diminishing the actual impact of sin and the importance of proper Justice 14 years on bread and
29:07
water is not proper Justice for paraside okay so it this is this is the fifth and sixth Century this is uh Ireland shortly
29:17
after the fall of the Roman Empire okay so this is a long time before the even the high point of Roman Catholicism uh which wouldn't come until the end of the 7th century was that right Gregory he
29:29
was end of the end of the sixth into the seventh um but by by that time Gregory the Great and then in the 13th century innocent III who was like he was the big
29:41
papa okay he he was probably the Pinnacle of papal power and you should have seen him pick a peck of pickle peppers okay
29:54
peppers okay wow I really try to avoid alliteration but sometimes that just happens too um so this is a long time before the Roman Catholic church has actually established itself as what we think you know we
30:06
think it's always been this powerful central control now for a good bit of the first the first Millennia um Power was here and there and often circulated or centered around
30:18
particular Bishops like um Ambrose and Milan or Augustine and hippo or you know uh Hugo of St Victor I don't know if he was ever a bishop but you know different
30:29
centers of ecclesiastical Authority and that's where kind of the church Authority and then it it's slowly gravitational to Rome but now we're
30:41
really past the first Millennium and well into the high Middle Ages so this is this is really early in the church where we're starting to classify sins and Associate particular punishments
30:52
with those sins and and they admit in their own documents that this essentially comes from Leviticus this is what we do with Leviticus so I I guess one of the
31:03
reasons I want to I want to teach this is that that that's one of the things that we have to deal with when we read the Pento what do we do with this what does it have to do with the church and
31:14
perhaps it's helpful to to look at what we did do with it and see that that wasn't what we were supposed to do with it okay so at least by by negative teaching you know this is not what we
31:25
were supposed to do with it but it really reaches a high point so much of Catholic theological doctrinal
31:36
history reaches its high point in terms of expression and I would say it's low point in terms of biblical
31:46
content with Thomas aquinus okay so when we get to aquinus now aquinus is I'm going to get this wrong but it's something like 12 29
31:59
to 74 something like that that's in that range so he's middle he's 13th century um in fact he was alive at the same time as innocent III uh so the church has
32:11
reached its Pinnacle of power in Europe and it's reached its Pinnacle of theological thought in Thomas aquinus but Thomas aquinus was himself an
32:22
Aristotelian philosopher so he was actually trying to exed the Bible he was trying to synthesize Roman Catholic tradition with the new newly
32:32
discovered AR Aristotelian Aristotle had finally come back into Europe by way of the Moors in Spain um and so he you know this great Greek philosopher has shown
32:43
up he's the hot rage and so we're going to kind of synthesize his teachings in fact aquinus refers to him simply as the philosopher okay so um you don't really
32:54
expect a whole lot from aquinus but sadly he he still is the Theologian of the of the Catholic Church his doctrines
33:04
his teachings and it's really amazing how uh some leading reformed Protestants have become enamored with Thomas aquinus yeah
33:15
one just recently passed away I think last year last year or two but RC Sproul was um was very enamored of aquinus I think you know sometimes we spend too
33:25
much time in our books aquinus um is actually quoted many times in the catechism he's probably the most quoted Theologian of the church within the Catholic catechism he says mortal
33:37
sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law okay so mortal
34:02
violation of God's law now he doesn't actually go into what that grave violation is although he gives examples and some of those examples are actually from the from the Bible it Bible it turns I'm sorry I have a typo here it
34:15
turns man away from God who is his ultimate end and his beatitude by profer by preferring an inferior good to him
34:25
and so it turns the turns the heart away from
34:51
God now there's already some real huge cracks in this the term inferior good is is one of them but what sin does not constitute choosing an
35:07
good there's any sin not comprised of choosing an inferior good rather than God in fact to obey anything other than God's command is to choose an inferior good so there is no distinction here
35:18
actually and and so much of theology sadly but so much of Roman Catholic theology is just words if you you should read them out loud cuz then they sound
35:30
like you're young child they sound childish when you read them out loud you realize this doesn't make any sense this is just words okay um and so when you
35:40
say that a mortal sin is choosing an inferior good rather than God well you just described all sin so all sins are mortal well yes they
35:50
are okay but we have to go on and we have to now classify venial venial sin allows charity to subsist even though it offends and wounds
36:01
it okay so the distinction is in the heart of the
36:12
sinner charity is wounded but not killed yes right okay um you're yeah his
36:24
heart was still in the right place and you're beginning to see the progression of venial sin okay and this is where Roman Catholicism has gone since aquinus and that is venial sin is
36:36
essentially the operation of Fallen human nature Next Step venial sin is natural Next Step venal sin is not
36:49
really sin at all it's just man expressing his nature next step venial sin is actually a native good because it
37:00
shows us the need for grace and the sacraments of the church right exactly that's that's the path they just took is that venial sin
37:11
is remediable first of all because it has not destroyed charity well why did it happen then well it happened because of original sin because of our fallen nature therefore venial sin is natural
37:23
okay so so why do we not treat that sin as mortal because it is sin well because it is a reflection of our own well this word is actually used
37:35
dignity it's a reflection of our own nature therefore it's a reflection of our own dignity and before you know it venial sin is simply an outworking of our nature and it's not really sin at
37:46
all now there are some Modern Roman Catholic Scholars and I I have a lot of quotes in here who recognize that their church has done this there's one article
37:57
um by a a woman Roman Catholic scholar um uh I can't remember her name right off the top of my head but um forens I think or something like that she her the
38:09
title of of her article is taking sin seriously and and her argument is that the Catholic Church hasn't been doing that for quite some time now um and
38:19
while she will not uh do away with the distinction of mortal and venial sin she's trying to turn back the clock trying to go back to a time when even venial sins were still bad okay um but
38:31
that's pretty hard to do you know to turn back the clock on on any type of moral digression it's very hard for any type of society of human beings to go back to a previous moral uh standard
38:46
when that standard has been abandoned I think we see that just in general social life what do he mean about charity love charity just
38:57
charity just just it's just pardon me it's just more words it's just more words but it means it means love to God and love to one's fellow man or uh and one love to the church so he he elaborates that a lot in
39:09
his um uh his the his theology love is the the greatest of the three and so the mortal sin it destroys that love uh but
39:21
what's what's interesting is that um as as Aaron noted with the comment on paraside that was the fifth or sixth Century um later Catholic
39:40
Doctrine again this is quoting oh no this is from the this is from the catechism so mortal sin clearly I mean it's a sin leading to death or a sin unto sin unto death it's not that phrase is not it's a
39:52
sin that will eventually lead to death it's a sin that kills it's a sin the result of which is death not necessarily physical
40:03
death but this is what the catechism says is uh the result of mortal sin for the offender mortal sin by attacking the
40:14
vital principle within us that is Charity necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart
40:24
which is normally accomplished within the sacrament of reconciliation Penance saved again well yes uh keep in mind that in Roman
40:36
Catholic Doctrine you're never actually saved well sure but you have to be regenerated again yeah you essentially have to have to be well it's a new moral initiative by God right let's not complicate things by
40:48
using biblical words please well it says a conversion of heart conversion of heart the conversion of heart but that's not through uh the
41:01
rebirth um because then you would have I don't know what you would do that it's it's the just it's the justification of the sacrament of penance so not only has venial sin
41:13
become nothing more than Fallen nature therefore natural mortal sin is no longer mortal and of the two one can be
41:25
absolved by Penance you know 14 years on bread and water and the other need not be because it's not really a sin so that's what's happened but I will
41:39
submit to you that this is what's going to happen whenever anyone pursues the idea of classifying sins whether Protestant or Catholic and I think we've
41:51
all seen it at some point in time in our Christian lives where churches have have made a moral classification of sins and you can find out which ones
42:03
are winked at which ones are remediable and which ones if any are mortal okay that that is what happens
42:15
whenever we go down this path and try to to build a classification of sins but the temptation to do that is not only innate it seems to be biblical like
42:27
first John 5 so what is the sin unto death what is John talking about there well frankly no one
42:45
knows um see if I can okay one author points out
43:00
six traditional um conclusions on the interpretation of the sin unto death among Protestant commentators so now we're shifting away from the Catholics
43:11
okay uh we there's a lot more in there if you want to read the notes about about where Catholicism has gone with all this but there are six um rubrics under
43:24
which the this idea of the sin unto death has been exeed okay the first one is the sin against the holy spirit all
43:36
right so the sin against the Holy
43:51
Spirit the second one is any great sin such as murder or
44:27
apostasy for deliberate and willful
44:39
sins the high-handed sins of numbers 15 five a apostasy I'm not quite sure how that differs from number
44:51
three and he doesn't really go into great detail in his article and then six
45:06
sins it doesn't leave out much hope for any of us does um his conclusion he this particular
45:18
author is that the um the sin unto death is the habitual and continual sinning of a professing brother
45:31
the problem with any of these first of all one of the problems is just biblical is very very difficult to to make a connection for example with 1 John
45:42
1 John 516 and the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit the sin against the holy spirit in Matthew 12 it's it's very um exotically lexically it is just
45:52
like really they're like totally different peric and there's no connecting words one was written by Matthew the other by John um so there's not R really um in many of these a
46:04
Biblical connection here all right um the problem with the idea of uh deliberate and willful sin is
46:16
sin is that how do we know that the person has crossed the line how how do we know that they've
46:27
gone past the point of no return we know that God was was incredibly longsuffering in terms of his people Israel that they committed even in the wilderness sin after sin and act of
46:38
rebellion after Act of rebellion and yet he did not destroy them he destroyed one generation but as Aaron's been teaching us the younger generation will enter and conquer the land and then once they're
46:50
there we're going to go into the Book of Judges okay and and so what you know so where do we draw the line line do we draw the line at at Samson okay you know where where among the judges do we say
47:01
oh this is just too much I mean he would bid well for that classification myself but he's actually mentioned in Hebrews 11 you know one of the
47:14
weirdest God's grace is really great you know Amazing Grace there's Samson in Hebrews 11 um so from a pastoral standpoint and and if John was anything he was a pastor his writings are very
47:25
pastoral but also he had that reputation within the earliest writings of extra biblical writings of the church was he was at one point the pastor at Ephesus and he was considered the Apostle of
47:36
Love um and that pastoring was his passion so what do you what do you do how do you know that this person has gone past the point of no return um so
47:48
it it really is very difficult from within the text itself um and I and I point out here the perhaps the closest parallel language in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 5
48:01
where you have Paul handing over the the man for his sin a sin that not even named among the Gentiles um and and he hands them over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh the problem
48:12
with that is that that phrase number one is is a hop Hax legina in other words we don't read it anywhere else in scripture where someone's handed over to Satan for
48:23
the destruction of their flesh and number two we have the uh vague reference in second Corinthians which may actually be fourth
48:34
Corinthians and First Corinthians may actually be second Corinthians there's just two letters that we don't have okay but there's this reference of restoring such a one you know receiving someone
48:46
back into the fellowship many have determined that that is the same person who was condemned but that
48:56
but that weakens the language of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 he says that his Spirit exactly but the destruction of the flesh is a very
49:08
strong it it does not sound like in 1 Corinthians 5 that he's holding out hope of reclamation what he's primarily concerned about is the is the purity of
49:19
the body and the danger of this sin remaining that that's the emphasis so I I'm only I'm not saying that the guy in 2 Corinthians is not the same guy I'm
49:29
simply saying that the terminology used again cannot be directly connected okay because on one hand there's there's no sense of re
49:41
reformation and the terminology is is seems quite final we don't know anywhere in the New Testament or old where part of our discipline is to be handed over
49:53
to Satan and even job was not being disciplined he was a righteous man okay he was tested but not disciplined so the concept of being disciplined biblically
50:04
is being disciplined by Our Father Hebrews okay but being handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh is truly a enigmatic and Powerful
50:14
statement that doesn't open up a whole lot of room for reformation and then in Roman in second Corinthians it's like okay he was sorrowful let him back
50:26
in well you know they don't they don't match up hand and glove is all I'm saying so that that once again it it's not a clear um light upon first John 5
50:39
and it's fair to point out
50:50
hey right that was his emphasis there yeah get yeah that's death language so you know the whole thing is death language and death language doesn't really hold a whole lot of Hope for restoration so again the closest
51:03
parallel is 1 Corinthians 5 but it doesn't really parallel okay so um blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that's that's generally rejected uh although it
51:14
may have the closest connection to the context of First John where and where you have those who are going out from Among Us um but those who have denied
51:25
Jesus coming in the flesh the spirit of antichrist so you you do have that issue of a A Spiritual Authority that's being rejected so that very well may be um
51:37
although you know it it's again it's very hard to say at least from within the New Testament itself if you allow what we've learned
51:48
from the Old Testament considering the high-handed sin I think you get a a picture of at least again I hate to use the word you
51:59
know maybe A A A genus of sins that are outside the realm even of God's grace because they manifest an
52:10
arrogance towards God and the man in 1 Corinthians 5 did this in fact the whole congregation was being infected and Paul said your pride is not good that they
52:22
were actually proud that they could number this egregious sinner among themselves as people of
52:40
here Capital it was capital offense one of curses of curses fromal that second one I know is probably not popular but as an option but the idea that John as a Jew would
52:56
with in in what he's saying isn't completely no no it's and he calls he talks about lawlessness and things be punishable by death under the law is what he's talking about seems somewh plausible all of
53:08
these have at least a tangential connection to the passage I don't think any of any of them catch it that you can say okay
53:19
that's it it's right there it's clear frankly I don't think it's clear I think it will remain an enigmatic statement in scripture and it it does but but being such it does indicate things to us first
53:31
of all it indicates that there is such a thing as a sin unto death which which in the context means and this is even harder for modern Christians to
53:43
Christians to accept there is such a thing as a sin for which we are not to pray that an offense committed against God is of such magnitude that we are not
53:55
to pray for them okay that's like oh my word we pray for anybody okay uh except politicians you I'm not going to pray for him but you know within the church
54:06
especially within our own families we cannot accept the concept that oh I I'm I'm not to pray for that person and yet I think it's
54:18
undeniable Unless somehow something's changed since John's day to ours which sin has hasn't changed people haven't changed and God's holiness hasn't
54:29
changed so the if the sin unto death no longer exists and we don't need to be talking about it but I think we all know that it must exist because it's there and there's no temporal limitation
54:40
placed on it well now that means that recognizing it becomes more important in the sense that if we are
54:50
praying for what we are ought not to pray then we are disob disobeying God we have no clue well I think we do
55:01
have a clue and that's the high-handed sin I I mean it's it's not a clue and I'm going to read a quote from Calvin now most people thought of Calvin as a as a real hard nut but um you know he
55:14
wasn't he wasn't always that way um but I'll wrap up this section by reading that but what we're dealing with in first
55:25
Corinthians 5 I do think though it's not a direct connection it's actually a connection to First John 5 through
55:36
numbers 15 that if we look at numbers 15 where we encounter a sin for which there is no atonement if there's no atonement then
55:48
there's no continued Fellowship between that Israelite and the community and with Yahweh he is no longer welcome at the Tabernacle he is cut off from among his
56:00
people he is committed we might say the sin unto death how has he done that well when we looked at that we saw that the high-handed sin was a manifestation of
56:12
utter arrogance in the face of God concerning sin that's what we see in 1 Corinthians 5 the sin was bad enough but it's
56:25
interesting that Paul does not go on and on about the sin he goes on and on about the pride the arrogance and the unwillingness of the congregation to deal with it they were proud that they
56:38
were so liberal that they could accept such a one in their midst so is that any with a yeah that's the that's it that's it that's it and
56:51
that cuts through taxonomy any sin with a high hand because there was no taxonomy in numbers 15 it was a sin of the high hand it
57:03
doesn't say it was murder it could have been gossip you know it could have been uh embezzlement it could have been adultery you
57:36
it isn't to say you know we know that everyone been B of God doesn't murder people right doesn't commit adultery or and we want to make it a particular sin and we know actually because we talked
57:46
about repenting sin and later don't he says that ear yeah he says that earlier you cannot deny that you have sin unless talking about something else and he says
57:58
keep on sinning yeah yeah he said that's that's if you read John in that letter you you come away with him you you know sin exists within Believers and within
58:10
the congregation if we sin we have an advocate with the father Jesus the righteous if we say we do not sin we deceive ourselves okay and the truth is not in us so it's not a matter of just
58:21
sinning but it's also not a matter of particular sins and see that's what we want to do we want to look at the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit what is it so that I know I didn't do it
58:33
right or I know when I did it we want to know what it is and the same thing here with this sin unto death what is it what what is the sin of so I can stay away from it I'll take all the rest of them
58:45
but not that one that was yeah that one really bad right bad juju um and and so that's our attitude that's our moralizing tendency
58:56
but also our our really self-justifying tendency we're afraid that maybe we're g I hope I have time you know the the the guilt offering that has no known sin at
59:08
all we're afraid that maybe we've already done already done it because we don't know what it is and so how do I know I haven't done it and so sensitive consciences and I've
59:19
encountered them many times in the past 30 plus years that you know it's like have I have I blast the Holy Spirit have I committed the sin unto death okay um
59:29
that's because we want to know what it is and if we don't know what it is we think we did it but if we didn't know what we what it was we wouldn't do it okay again you see you see how wrong all that is how fleshly all that
59:43
is it now strikes me that I'm looking at the C of a reason
59:56
andil father um what we do with the knowledge of Good and Evil is ridiculous