What the Whole Bible Says About Sin

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - The Bible is full of about 20 major themes

00:00:08.360 | and another 50 to 70 smaller ones.

00:00:11.380 | And when it comes to explaining how each theme

00:00:13.580 | develops from Genesis to Revelation,

00:00:15.540 | I don't know of anyone who does it better

00:00:17.100 | than Dr. Don Carson.

00:00:18.740 | On Select Fridays, we release a little longer episode

00:00:21.460 | than normal where we call up Dr. Carson,

00:00:23.500 | he takes a theme and explains it to us.

00:00:26.340 | We have now done this five times with an episode

00:00:28.800 | on what is biblical theology,

00:00:30.360 | which was a good sort of overview of this sort of thing.

00:00:33.120 | Then we recorded an overview of the whole Bible,

00:00:35.480 | which was very popular, as you can imagine,

00:00:37.560 | thank you for the response.

00:00:39.020 | It was then followed by a theology of creation,

00:00:41.720 | a theology of the temple,

00:00:43.140 | and then a theology of resurrection

00:00:45.780 | just a few days before Easter.

00:00:47.480 | And each of those episodes can be found on the APJ app,

00:00:50.940 | just search the word Carson.

00:00:52.920 | It has been a great series, well-received,

00:00:55.320 | and we've only begun.

00:00:56.420 | Dr. Carson joins us again today over the phone,

00:00:58.480 | which is the fruit of our partnership

00:00:59.960 | with our friends at the Gospel Coalition.

00:01:02.280 | Carson is the co-founder and president

00:01:04.600 | of the Gospel Coalition,

00:01:05.840 | and also the editor of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible,

00:01:09.180 | which is the study Bible version

00:01:10.720 | of what we're doing in these podcasts.

00:01:13.200 | I called Dr. Carson at his home office

00:01:14.860 | and asked him to share with us a whole Bible theology

00:01:17.680 | of the theme of sin.

00:01:19.920 | Here's what he said.

00:01:20.920 | - In one sense, what the Bible says about sin

00:01:25.280 | is so comprehensive that it's really challenging

00:01:30.280 | to get to the heart of the issue in 10 minutes or so.

00:01:34.160 | Virtually every page of the Bible

00:01:36.760 | says something implicitly or explicitly about sin.

00:01:40.400 | One thing it does not say

00:01:42.760 | is that sin was there in the beginning.

00:01:45.360 | Sin is portrayed in Genesis 3 as rebellion.

00:01:50.280 | It's not that matter is intrinsically sinful, for example.

00:01:54.360 | Sin is portrayed as doubting God's word.

00:01:57.920 | Has God said, or it's involved with mocking God,

00:02:02.920 | standing in a position where we can criticize God.

00:02:07.320 | God knows that if you eat this fruit,

00:02:10.080 | then you'll be like him,

00:02:11.320 | and he doesn't want you to be like him.

00:02:12.800 | He's jealous and narrow-minded and rather bigoted.

00:02:15.780 | Sin is first and foremost rebellion against God

00:02:20.320 | and what he has disclosed of himself in words.

00:02:23.200 | And that notion of sin prevails in one fashion or another

00:02:28.200 | across the entire sweep of scripture.

00:02:31.360 | The reason why it's important to think clearly about sin

00:02:35.060 | is manifold, but in particular,

00:02:38.080 | to think clearly about sin

00:02:40.040 | helps you to think clearly about salvation and the Savior.

00:02:44.160 | The problematic of the Bible storyline,

00:02:47.080 | the problem that is addressed by the Bible storyline

00:02:50.740 | is the problem of sin.

00:02:52.560 | And the solution that is presented

00:02:54.880 | in the coming of Christ and in his work

00:02:57.180 | must match the problem itself.

00:02:59.920 | If the fundamental problem of humankind is bad economics,

00:03:04.920 | then what we need is a superb economist.

00:03:08.000 | If the supreme need of humankind is good health,

00:03:13.000 | then what we need is superb medical facilities.

00:03:15.760 | But if the supreme problem is sin,

00:03:19.000 | then what we need is a salvation that addresses sin,

00:03:23.000 | not only the concrete acts of rebellion,

00:03:27.480 | but all of its effects,

00:03:30.320 | including alienation and suffering and sickness and war

00:03:35.320 | and hate and finally death itself and hell.

00:03:40.280 | The notion of sin in scripture

00:03:42.600 | is the notion of what is wrong with the universe

00:03:45.800 | and therefore constitutes what it is

00:03:48.760 | that God is sending his son to address.

00:03:53.200 | Now, within that framework,

00:03:55.160 | it's easy to start teasing out the Bible storyline

00:03:58.760 | in terms of sin.

00:04:00.840 | So after Genesis 3 and the temptation of Adam and Eve,

00:04:05.120 | Genesis 4, you have the first murder, a fratricide.

00:04:10.000 | By the time you get to Genesis 5,

00:04:12.480 | you have the repetition of the phrase,

00:04:14.920 | and he died and he died and he died and he died,

00:04:18.440 | which is the entailment of sin.

00:04:21.920 | When you sin, you will die.

00:04:24.760 | And then Genesis 6 to 9, the flood account,

00:04:27.920 | which is generated by God's disgust

00:04:32.920 | and hatred of sin and its pervasive judgment

00:04:38.040 | attracting evil across the face of the earth.

00:04:42.160 | And so on, right through the biblical accounts

00:04:46.400 | of the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,

00:04:50.200 | the patriarchs and the story of Joseph and so on,

00:04:55.200 | all of which take up the rest of the book of Genesis.

00:04:58.080 | Abraham was a man of faith.

00:04:59.960 | He was a godly man.

00:05:01.120 | He was also a liar.

00:05:02.400 | The 12 patriarchs include 10 who are trying to decide

00:05:08.080 | between killing and selling into slavery, the 11th,

00:05:11.080 | and Judah, who is ultimately the great, great,

00:05:13.760 | great grandfather of King David

00:05:16.240 | and ultimately of Christ himself,

00:05:18.040 | is busy sleeping with a stepdaughter.

00:05:21.600 | Sin is interwoven into the accounts.

00:05:24.520 | And one could similarly go through Exodus and Leviticus

00:05:28.560 | with its sacrificial systems to deal with impurity

00:05:31.240 | and sin of various kinds.

00:05:33.920 | Everything turns on the pervasiveness of sin.

00:05:37.240 | And then one comes to the book of Judges

00:05:41.800 | and we witness the cycling down of periods of reformation

00:05:46.800 | as people are broken and they cry to God for help

00:05:51.560 | and God restores them by raising up a judge

00:05:54.320 | and bringing about some measure of purity into the land.

00:05:58.000 | Again, within a generation and a half or so,

00:06:01.520 | things spiral down to idolatry and perversity and so on,

00:06:05.640 | until you get to the last three chapters

00:06:07.600 | of the book of Judges.

00:06:08.920 | And they're so grotesque that even the so-called good guys

00:06:12.720 | are pretty horrendous and it's hard to read

00:06:14.800 | those chapters in public.

00:06:16.400 | So we could proceed through the kings and the prophets

00:06:20.000 | and so on and witness the pervasiveness of all of this.

00:06:22.880 | But let me instead direct your attention

00:06:25.160 | to a few passages of scripture

00:06:28.360 | that are in many ways determinative.

00:06:31.040 | In Exodus chapter 34, verses six and seven,

00:06:35.080 | God intones certain words to Moses

00:06:38.760 | as Moses is hidden in a cleft in the rock

00:06:42.120 | so that he cannot see God.

00:06:44.480 | He's later permitted to peek out

00:06:47.200 | and see something of the trailing edge

00:06:48.920 | of the afterglow of the glory of the Lord.

00:06:51.040 | But as God goes by and intones certain words,

00:06:55.360 | there is a built-in tension in what God says.

00:07:00.360 | This is in Exodus chapter 34.

00:07:02.960 | On the one hand, God presents himself

00:07:05.360 | as a God of immeasurable mercy and grace.

00:07:10.360 | God says, "The Lord, the Lord,

00:07:13.920 | the compassionate and gracious God,

00:07:16.880 | slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,

00:07:20.760 | maintaining love to thousands,

00:07:23.120 | forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin."

00:07:26.000 | That's the one side.

00:07:27.280 | On the other side,

00:07:28.520 | "Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.

00:07:31.120 | He punishes the children and their children

00:07:32.960 | for the sin of the parents

00:07:34.040 | to the third and fourth generation."

00:07:35.840 | At the end of the day,

00:07:36.680 | that tension is not really finally resolved

00:07:39.600 | until you get to the New Testament and the cross,

00:07:42.200 | or another passage that gives a lot of insight.

00:07:45.800 | In Psalm 51, we find David penning this Psalm of contrition

00:07:52.400 | after his horrible lapse,

00:07:56.560 | seducing Bathsheba, murdering her husband,

00:08:00.080 | corrupting the military, betraying his family,

00:08:03.200 | lying about everything,

00:08:05.480 | until finally he's confronted by the prophet Nathan

00:08:08.160 | and comes to real deep repentance.

00:08:11.920 | But there is a lot of damage

00:08:13.440 | that's been done just the same.

00:08:14.840 | One of the most intriguing things that he says,

00:08:16.960 | however, in Psalm 51 is found in verse four.

00:08:20.880 | He begins in verse one by saying,

00:08:22.440 | "Have mercy on me, O God,

00:08:24.640 | according to your unfailing love,

00:08:26.680 | according to your great compassions,

00:08:28.480 | blot out my transgressions.

00:08:30.640 | Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin."

00:08:33.360 | The man really knows how guilty he is.

00:08:36.880 | "I know my transgressions.

00:08:38.640 | My sin is always before me."

00:08:40.880 | And then he says, verse four,

00:08:41.960 | "Against you, you only have I sinned

00:08:44.760 | and done what is evil in your sight."

00:08:46.800 | So you are right in your verdict

00:08:48.440 | and justified when you judge.

00:08:50.240 | But the truth of the matter is that at one level,

00:08:54.040 | the reader is tempted to say,

00:08:55.880 | "Come on, David, how can you say

00:08:58.200 | that you've sinned only against God?

00:08:59.760 | You've sinned against Bathsheba, you seduced her.

00:09:02.160 | And you've sinned against Uriah the Hittite, surely.

00:09:07.000 | You had him killed.

00:09:07.840 | You've sinned against the military high command.

00:09:09.840 | You corrupted them.

00:09:10.960 | You sinned against the nation

00:09:13.560 | in that you're the chief magistrate

00:09:15.240 | and you fail at a fundamental level.

00:09:18.560 | You sinned against your own family.

00:09:19.960 | You betrayed them.

00:09:20.800 | It's hard to think of anybody you didn't sin against.

00:09:22.960 | Then you say, "Against you only," addressing God,

00:09:26.120 | "Have I sinned and done this evil in your sight?"

00:09:28.720 | Yet at another level, that is exactly the point.

00:09:32.840 | What makes sin so heinous is not all of its,

00:09:36.080 | shall we call them, horizontal dimensions,

00:09:38.520 | but that it is defiance of God.

00:09:40.400 | It is not loving God with heart and soul

00:09:43.200 | and mind and strength.

00:09:44.640 | If David had loved God with heart and soul

00:09:46.800 | and mind and strength,

00:09:47.640 | he wouldn't have committed any of these sins.

00:09:49.560 | In all of our sins,

00:09:50.840 | whether it's cheating on our income tax

00:09:53.320 | or nurturing bitterness

00:09:54.480 | or succumbing to fits of rage or jealousy

00:09:57.920 | or anything else,

00:09:59.960 | God is always the most offended party.

00:10:03.120 | That means in Scripture,

00:10:05.000 | whatever else we must have,

00:10:06.280 | we must have forgiveness from God.

00:10:08.040 | The heart of the worst effects of sin

00:10:12.240 | is being alienated from God,

00:10:14.600 | cut off from him who is our maker

00:10:16.880 | and the giver of life.

00:10:18.200 | If he stands against us,

00:10:21.080 | then we are lost.

00:10:22.600 | We are undone.

00:10:23.880 | So although the Bible does stress

00:10:25.520 | the importance of reconciliation

00:10:27.120 | at the horizontal level,

00:10:28.520 | the heart of the Bible's storyline

00:10:32.000 | is how sinful human beings

00:10:34.640 | made in the image of God,

00:10:35.800 | alienated from him,

00:10:37.040 | deserving of his wrath,

00:10:38.720 | nevertheless can be reconciled to him,

00:10:41.320 | which brings us again and again

00:10:43.480 | back to the gospel of the cross

00:10:45.760 | and resurrection of Christ.

00:10:47.560 | Some other things need to be said briefly

00:10:49.960 | about the Bible's storyline.

00:10:52.200 | Sin tends to be a generic word for evil,

00:10:55.840 | but there are other words

00:10:57.520 | that overlap in semantic range,

00:10:59.800 | in the range of meaning with sin,

00:11:01.120 | but have some sort of specialized focus.

00:11:06.120 | Idolatry, for example,

00:11:08.280 | shows how sin erects a false God.

00:11:11.680 | It displaces God.

00:11:13.320 | One could track out the significance

00:11:16.080 | of idolatry right through the Bible.

00:11:18.520 | The New Testament can insist

00:11:20.200 | that greed is idolatry

00:11:21.920 | because what you want strongly enough

00:11:24.880 | becomes God for you,

00:11:26.600 | and God becomes de-Godded.

00:11:29.360 | Or another word is transgression.

00:11:31.400 | Now, it's not evil in some summary sense.

00:11:36.400 | It's actually going against,

00:11:40.240 | crossing over, transgressing

00:11:43.520 | the boundaries that God has put in place.

00:11:45.760 | It is doing what he prohibits.

00:11:47.840 | It is failing to do what he explicitly commands.

00:11:50.840 | So there's transgression and iniquity

00:11:54.480 | and failure and dirt.

00:11:56.480 | There are many different words

00:11:59.000 | that describe sin,

00:12:00.880 | and all of them together

00:12:02.640 | need to be thought through.

00:12:04.440 | Now, in that connection,

00:12:05.880 | then, there are related theological notions

00:12:10.160 | that need to be borne in mind.

00:12:11.600 | For example, the wrath of God.

00:12:14.120 | About 600 times in the Bible,

00:12:16.440 | in the Old Testament alone, in fact,

00:12:19.240 | apart from the occurrences in the New Testament,

00:12:22.240 | the Bible speaks of God's wrath.

00:12:24.480 | This does not mean that God is bad-tempered

00:12:26.680 | or loses it or anything of that sort.

00:12:29.600 | His wrath is not an intrinsic part of his character

00:12:33.760 | the way his love is.

00:12:35.800 | His wrath is the outworking of his holiness

00:12:38.600 | when he confronts sin.

00:12:40.520 | And if God did not express wrath,

00:12:45.000 | condemnation, judgment on sin,

00:12:47.520 | he would not be thereby nicer.

00:12:50.640 | He would be morally indifferent.

00:12:53.040 | He would not become morally attractive.

00:12:55.000 | He would become irrelevant to questions of truth

00:12:58.240 | and integrity and morality,

00:12:59.560 | both in this life and in the life to come.

00:13:01.840 | Then there are other elements of sin

00:13:05.200 | that we should think about.

00:13:06.840 | For example, the prophet Habakkuk can ask the question,

00:13:11.640 | "I understand," he says, in effect,

00:13:14.040 | "how God might use a wicked nation

00:13:16.600 | "to punish another wicked nation.

00:13:18.360 | "But how can he use a nation that seems to be more wicked

00:13:22.080 | "to punish a nation that is,

00:13:23.560 | "on any measurable front, less wicked?"

00:13:25.960 | And he's thinking about how his own people,

00:13:28.640 | the Israelites, are being punished

00:13:30.040 | by the regional superpowers of his day,

00:13:32.040 | which on any measurement are more wicked.

00:13:35.480 | And that raises some fundamental questions,

00:13:38.680 | which he resolves finally by going into the temple

00:13:42.320 | and being convinced of the goodness of the Lord

00:13:44.360 | and of an eschatological reconciliation on the last day.

00:13:48.200 | There are other pictures of sin.

00:13:51.000 | Apostasy, for example,

00:13:52.400 | seen as a kind of spiritual adultery.

00:13:54.680 | All of these pictures come together.

00:13:57.480 | In Matthew chapter 11, verses 20 and following,

00:14:01.120 | the grievousness of guilt is tied in part

00:14:05.080 | to how much revelation we've already received.

00:14:09.000 | So in that connection, Capernaum and Bethsaida,

00:14:13.160 | cities which witnessed a great deal of Christ's gospel,

00:14:17.520 | preaching, and powerful miracles,

00:14:20.520 | will stand more condemned in a worse place on the last day

00:14:24.240 | than Sodom and Gomorrah, or pagan cities like Tyre and Sidon,

00:14:28.120 | or to put it in contemporary terms,

00:14:30.480 | it may well be then that on the last day,

00:14:33.400 | Kabul, Afghanistan, will be in a less dangerous place

00:14:36.720 | than Tulsa, Oklahoma.

00:14:38.040 | It really is important to see that the doctrine of sin

00:14:41.360 | in scripture is really very complex.

00:14:43.120 | It's not just a matter of bean counting.

00:14:45.320 | It includes very complex notions

00:14:47.680 | that only God himself can finally sort out,

00:14:50.360 | in which guilt is tied, at least in part,

00:14:54.080 | to how we have done, what we have done

00:14:56.600 | with the revelation that we have received.

00:14:58.760 | And all of this presupposes a universality, too,

00:15:03.320 | in the very interesting comments of the Lord Christ

00:15:08.000 | in Luke chapter 13, verses one to five,

00:15:11.320 | where Jesus reminds the people of the tower

00:15:15.000 | that fell on a number of people and crushed 18 of them,

00:15:20.080 | or where he talks about those whose blood

00:15:23.400 | was mingled with the blood of the sacrifices.

00:15:26.080 | In both cases, he asks the question,

00:15:28.200 | do you think that these people who thus suffered

00:15:30.720 | were more wicked, more sinful,

00:15:33.720 | than others who did not similarly suffer?

00:15:36.920 | And it's a bit like asking,

00:15:39.080 | do you think that the people who came down

00:15:41.160 | in the Twin Towers on 9/11 were more wicked

00:15:44.160 | than everybody else in America?

00:15:46.040 | And Jesus does not say, oh, they're not wicked at all.

00:15:50.080 | What he says is, unless you repent,

00:15:52.680 | all of you will similarly perish.

00:15:55.000 | In other words, the disasters,

00:15:57.520 | whether made by human beings or so-called natural disasters,

00:16:02.520 | are marks of judgment that is deserved by everybody.

00:16:09.000 | And it's of the Lord's mercies we're not consumed.

00:16:11.640 | And that eventually sets us up for the long, long passage,

00:16:15.320 | Romans 118 to 320, which begins,

00:16:20.200 | "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven

00:16:23.240 | against all human wickedness."

00:16:26.320 | Human beings suppressing the truth and so forth.

00:16:29.520 | Section after section is taken up with proving

00:16:32.280 | that Jews are guilty before God

00:16:35.080 | and Gentiles are guilty before God.

00:16:37.480 | We're all shameful and dirty and sullied

00:16:41.680 | until you get the concatenation of biblical quotations

00:16:46.680 | from Romans 3, 9 or thereabouts to 320,

00:16:53.040 | all verses that are designed to prove

00:16:56.040 | that human beings are lost and guilty.

00:16:59.280 | Reminds me of some passages in the Old Testament.

00:17:01.560 | I occasionally set myself to memorize a psalm

00:17:04.840 | or something like that.

00:17:06.080 | And one I've been working on recently is Psalm 36.

00:17:08.960 | I have a message from God in my heart

00:17:11.080 | concerning the sinfulness of the wicked.

00:17:13.480 | There is no fear of God before their eyes.

00:17:16.680 | In their own eyes, they flatter themselves too much

00:17:20.600 | to detect or hate their sin.

00:17:23.480 | That's almost a description of contemporary culture.

00:17:26.440 | We flatter ourselves too much to detect or hate our sin.

00:17:30.920 | The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful.

00:17:33.320 | They fail to act wisely or do good.

00:17:36.560 | Even on their beds, they plot evil.

00:17:38.440 | They commit themselves to a sinful course

00:17:40.800 | and do not reject what is wrong.

00:17:43.120 | But when one is finished with all of these reflections

00:17:46.960 | on sin and one tracks out the myriad lines

00:17:50.840 | that describe sin across the entire biblical canon,

00:17:55.840 | one cannot help but remember that at the end

00:17:59.120 | of the long passage in Romans 1, 18 to 320,

00:18:02.520 | comes one of the most glorious atonement passages

00:18:05.280 | in all of Holy Scripture, Romans 3, 21 to 26,

00:18:09.560 | where God takes action in Christ Jesus and his dead,

00:18:13.760 | both to justify the ungodly and to be just himself

00:18:18.760 | in the sacrifice of his own dear son,

00:18:21.520 | a sacrifice that simultaneously turns aside God's wrath.

00:18:25.800 | It propitiates God and it cancels sin, it expiates sin.

00:18:31.120 | Until you come to the final two chapters

00:18:33.480 | and the portrait of a new heaven and a new earth,

00:18:36.600 | where part of the glory of the portrait

00:18:39.480 | is that there is no more sin, no more death,

00:18:43.080 | no more decay, no more fear, no more shame.

00:18:47.920 | The glory of the Lamb is everything

00:18:49.680 | and God's people will see his face.

00:18:52.920 | And here then finally is the abolition

00:18:56.440 | of all sin and its effects.

00:19:01.080 | Grounded in the triumph of the Lion's Lair.

00:19:03.640 | - So good and rich.

00:19:06.760 | This is world-class biblical theology made to look so easy.

00:19:10.660 | That was Don Carson from his home office,

00:19:12.620 | joining us again by way of our partnership

00:19:14.520 | with our friends over at The Gospel Coalition.

00:19:16.820 | Carson, of course, is the co-founder

00:19:18.760 | and president of The Gospel Coalition.

00:19:21.600 | We now break for the weekend,

00:19:23.040 | and this weekend feel free to look back

00:19:25.000 | on the episodes from the week,

00:19:26.360 | search our archive of hundreds of episodes,

00:19:28.460 | download the app, subscribe to the podcast,

00:19:31.040 | or even send us a question of your own.

00:19:33.840 | Do all of that at our landing page,

00:19:35.840 | desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:19:40.480 | And of course, you can find all the episodes

00:19:42.480 | with Dr. Carson in the app.

00:19:44.340 | Just search for his name, Carson,

00:19:45.960 | and you will find them there.

00:19:47.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:19:48.880 | I'll see you on Monday with author

00:19:50.320 | and longtime pastor, John Piper.

00:19:52.320 | We'll see you then.

00:19:53.280 | (upbeat music)

00:19:55.880 | (upbeat music)

00:19:58.460 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

What the Whole Bible Says About Sin

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