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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is Wednesday, November the 18th, 2020, and if you're following along in our daily Bible reading, you're going to be reading 1 John chapter 1.
If you'd like a copy of our daily Bible reading list, you can find it at our church's website. Go to sgfcjacks .org, that's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, sgfcjacks .org. You can go to posts and you'll find our reading list for 2020.
Now 2020 is almost over, so we will be having a new reading list coming up in 2021 if you would like to follow along and continue reading with us. Yesterday on the program, I began to ask the question, what is sin?
And the reason for this question was a conversation I had with a person who recently joined our church and we were talking about the basics of the faith and we were conversating about things that are important for new believers to understand.
And many people who have grown up in church might know certain things because of an atmosphere of being around and within the church. But there are times when you come to faith later in life and you realize there are things you just didn't know.
And one of those things sometimes is knowing what really is sinful. I'll give you an example. I know a lot of people who believe that drinking alcohol, any alcohol at all, is sinful. Maybe you believe that.
But it is my conviction that the Bible does not teach that drinking alcohol is sinful. Now it is very obvious that drinking alcohol in excess and drinking alcohol for the purpose of getting drunk is certainly sinful.
But the question of whether or not someone should drink alcohol, I think, is not necessarily a question of whether or not it's a sin, but rather or not whether or not it violates their particular conscience.
And Romans 14 does tell us that if there is something in our life that violates our conscience, whether or not it is a sin, we still shouldn't do it. Because if we do, for us, it would be a sin because we would be violating the conscience that we have.
God has given us our conscience. God has given us peculiarities to each of us. And so if we have a conscience that tells us that we ought not to drink alcohol, whether or not it's a sin is irrelevant at that point because our conscience won't allow it.
There are certain people who won't watch television because their conscience won't allow it. Now are there programs that are just blatantly sinful?
Absolutely.
But just the very act of watching television, in some people's minds, just the act of sitting down and watching television is not good, and so they choose not to do that. And that is within their right, within Christian liberty, to believe that.
It's not within their right to impose that on someone else any more than it's someone's right to impose the issue of alcohol on someone else, because we have a certain liberty in on things that are not necessarily sinful.
But this does raise the question, how do we know if something is a sin? And as I said on the program yesterday, the first way to know something is a sin is if it violates the law of God. If something is against the law of God, if it is lacking conformity to the law of God, or it is transgressing the law of God, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, then obviously it is sin.
And how do we define the law of God? Well, the Bible defines it for us, but as I said yesterday, it can be summed up in the two great commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself. And so if what we are doing, first and foremost, violates those two simple commands, then we know we are violating the law of God. Now, we're going to move in today to look at some more very specific examples of violating the law of God, because these are examples that are given to us in scripture in what I typically refer to as the vice lists of scripture.
And there are several of these, but we're only going to look at two today. So if you have your Bible, open up your Bible with me to Romans chapter 1 and hold your place there. And if you want to tab the other place, we're going to be jumping over to 1 Corinthians chapter 6.
In Romans chapter 1, towards the end of the chapter, the Apostle Paul is giving an example of what a society looks like that has been given over to a debased mind. And in this giving over to the debased mind, we have a list of very specific sins that is given.
And so I'm just going to read them. I'm going to make very little comment. I just want to say, here's the lists as they are given to us. And I'll make a few comments as I go. In Romans 1, the first time it says God gave them up to a debased mind, it says that they lusted in their hearts to impurity.
It says he gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. This is verse 24. And they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
Amen.
So the first two things we see in this list is impurity in the body and idolatry, which is interesting because if you go to 1 Corinthians 6, it says this, do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters. So if you compare Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6, they both sort of begin with two primary things. One is sexual immorality and two is idolatry.
And so sexual immorality is any act of sexual activity which is outside of the bond of the covenant marriage. And so if someone came to me and said, well, pastor, is it wrong for my girlfriend and I who are not married to have sexual intercourse, I would say absolutely.
The Bible is very clear that is fornication, that is sin, and it's immoral for a man and a woman to have sex with one another if they are outside of the bonds of marriage. Now within the bonds of marriage, a man and a woman can enjoy the sexual experience, but outside of the bonds of marriage, it is ungodly, it is immoral, and it's the first thing on both lists, interestingly enough.
And the second thing, of course, is idolatry. That's replacing our love for God with anything else. It's loving something else more than God. It's putting something else ahead of God. It's making someone else the thing that we run to instead of God, the thing that we trust in instead of God.
Idolatry is very common, and we find ourselves falling into that more often than we want to admit. So the first two things are sexual immorality and idolatry. Now going back to Romans 1, you have beginning at verse 26, another statement God gave them up, and this time it says two dishonorable passions, and it mentions women exchanging natural affections or relations for those that are contrary to nature, and men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men, receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Okay, so here we have what seems to be an indication of homosexuality. So not only do we see sexual immorality, verse 24 and 25, but now we see homosexual immorality verses 26 and 27, both on the side of the woman who is burning with passion, as it says, or rather exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, that's women seeking women sexually, and then of course men likewise gave up their natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
That's homosexual behavior. And interestingly enough, if we go back over to 1 Corinthians 6, we see that homosexuality also is mentioned here. It says, beginning again at verse 9, it says, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers, which is another form of sexual immorality, that's the difference between sexual immorality and adultery, is sexual immorality is outside of marriage, adultery is inside the covenant of marriage.
One person in the covenant of marriage has gone outside of the covenant, and then, so all of this is sort of fitting into the same sort of subcategory of sexual sin, and then it says, men who practice homosexuality.
Now that is not, in my opinion, the best way to translate this, that's the ESV translation, that's the translation I preach from, but the actual two words are malakoi and arsenokoites, and there's some debate as to what they mean, but what it seems to mean is the malakoi is the means to be soft or effeminate, and that's the way I think it's translated in the King James Version, is effeminate, and arsenokoites is one who has sex with a man, and a man who has sex with a man, and so what it seems to be referring to there are the male, the two males in a homosexual relationship, and what we would say the passive and active participant in a homosexual encounter.
So homosexuality here is certainly listed among sinful activities, and for those who would say, well I can be a Christian and continue in a homosexual lifestyle without any sense or desire for repentance, I would say that's a major issue, because if someone were to say, well I'm a liar, and I'm going to continue in being a liar, and I'm not going to seek any repentance or restoration from my being a liar, I can be a Christian and be a liar, I think that that would be an issue, because basically you're saying I can just continue to live a sinful lifestyle and call myself a Christian.
Same thing is true of a person who says, well I'm a homosexual, and that's just the way I am, and I'm going to continue to live this way, and I'm going to continue to indulge in this sinful act or sinful behavior.
Now this does lead to another conversation, which I don't have time for today, but there is a debate that's being had right now about whether or not the very desire for homosexuality is a sin, and again, I don't have time to really dive into that today, but ultimately I want to say this, homosexuality, the behavior, the practice, is sinful very clearly in Scripture, and it's listed here in these vice lists.
Now going back to Romans 1, we get to verse 28, it says, Since they did not seek to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. Okay, so this is where the list begins, first way nine, it says, They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, they are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice.
Them.
So we have here this list of sins, and if you have a question about any of these sins, I would encourage you to send me a message, and I would love to do a program on any one of these topics, but ultimately, if you just listen, they're there.
Faithlessness is a sin, unbelief is a sin, heartlessness, ruthlessness is sinful, people who mistreat others and abuse others, and gossip, slander is a sin. Talking about someone, slandering their name is sinful, and it's right next to hatred of.
God.
That is so important. Hatred of God is right next to slander and gossip in this list. Boastfulness, and then this phrase, inventors of evil, people who just come up with new ways to violate God and His law.
And then the last thing it says, though they know God's righteous decree, they not only do these things, but they give approval to those who do them. As the book of Isaiah tells us, there are those who call good evil and evil good, and He says, woe unto them who call good evil and evil good, and that's exactly what we see here.
Now, moving over to 1 Corinthians 6, we see a very similar list. It says, beginning at verse 10, thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. But the blessing of chapter 6 is this, verse 11, it says, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
So the point is, yes, all of us come out of sin. All of us have a sinful life that God saved us from. We have been saved by grace through faith, and that is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works.
So our salvation is a gift, and some of us came out of some very, very sinful lifestyles. In fact, I would say all of us had sinful lifestyles of one sort or another, and God saved us. And that's why he says now, such were some of you, but he doesn't say, such are some of you, because when we come to Christ, our lives will change.
That doesn't mean that we're perfect, as I said before, and maybe I'll do another program in the days to come on the Christian life and sin, because there does need to be an understanding of that. But ultimately, first and foremost, the most important thing to understand is as Christians, we are called not to walk in the way of the unrighteous, but to walk in the way of the righteous, to stand in the truth and not stand in disobedience.
And so this is the list that the Scripture gives us. There are more, obviously. There are other places where we can find these, but these are some very basic things. And again, a few basic things. If you are a believer and you're struggling with one of these things, or you want more, if you have questions about the definitions of these words, I do ask, please send me a message.
I'd love to interact with you on a future program. I would love for this program to be able to help you in your life. And I do hope today's program has been helpful. I want to thank you again for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.
My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.
May God bless you.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through.
Him.
May God be with you.