"He Will Save His People From Their Sins"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on December 23, 2007

Text — Matthew 1:18-25

“He will save his people from their sins.” That’s Jesus’ purpose. That’s what his life if for.  But what does that mean —   to save people from their sins? What are sins?  And why do we need to be saved from them?

This word “sin” is a problem. It carries a lot of unfortunate baggage.  My guess is, sin isn’t what you came to hear about to lighten up your Christmas holiday, but this is our text.  It’s hard to make sin light-hearted, but I’ll do the best I can.

Sin has a range of meanings. Going back to Adam and Eve, sin means crossing a boundary we shouldn’t cross. They wanted their eyes to be open, to be like God.  That was the “no no.” To Moses and the Israelites, when they were escaping from Egypt, sin meant losing heart. They wanted to go back to Egypt just after God had gotten them out. After the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai, sin meant disobeying a commandment.

Today, we have a more psychologically rich idea of what sin is. Sin means turning away from God.  Or sin means pride, or selfishness, or stubbornness.

One of my biggest complaints about the term “sin” is the idea that sinners are bad people. Sinners are not necessarily bad people. If all sinners are bad people, then there are no good people. Good people get to be sinners too.  Sin does have a moral dimension, for sure. Sin and morals are obviously connected. But sin is more than a moral condition.  Sin — as I’m using the word here — has to do with our mental and emotional programming: how we feel about life, the impulses and fears we have that lead us to act in certain ways, just by being human.

For example, humans are competitive, by nature.  Some people turn everything into a competition. Humans are social creatures. That means we want to belong and to have things that other people have. That leads to envy. You can see this operating even in dogs. You don’t think of dogs as being sinners, but a dog can have no interest in a toy until another dog starts playing with it. Then suddenly it becomes very important, even worth fighting for. Humans are aggressive. That leads to fighting, wars, and killing.

And then there are softer and more subtle forms of sin. Humans feel a lot of fear. It’s part of our protective mechanism. But it can get in the way of appreciating life. Sin is our apathy.  Sin is our arrogance. Sin is wishing you were someone else. Sin is being your own worst enemy.

The point is: we’re all sinners. We all have these feelings and impulses in some form. We’re selfish. We hurt other people. We reach too far. We all see ourselves at the center of the universe. We lose heart.  We worry.

But here in the story of Jesus’ birth, it says that Jesus was born to “save us from our sins.” How does he do that? How does Jesus free us from the grip of all these self-defeating impulses? 

This is the subject of many theories and many long books. But for all of them, the first step in being saved from our sin is believing in God’s mercy.  If we believe in God’s mercy, we can admit that we can’t save ourselves from these conflicts we have. This is at the core of everything Jesus said.

Life, in this world, will never be trouble free, anxiety-free, or envy-free. We’ll never have everything we want or need, or think we need, or what some other people have. We’ll never be able to love our neighbors exactly as we love ourselves. We’ll always feel a little uncomfortable in our own skins.

But just the act of facing that, trusting in God’s mercy, is a step toward being saved from the worst of these impulses.

Most of us know what the 12-step program is.  It’s the basic program followed by Alcoholic Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeater’s Anonymous, and dozens of other groups.  There’s been an explosion of these 12 step groups because the program works.

The first step of the 12 step recovery program is essentially, “trust in God’s mercy.”  Admit that you’re powerless to solve the problem on your own. 

The 12 step program doesn’t take away the problem. An alcoholic is always an alcoholic.  So you need to rely on a “higher power” — a merciful power. For Christians, the higher power is Jesus.

Being a sinner is nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s who we are.  It’s the way God made us, and God loves us the way we are. But God also loves us too much to leave us that way.

Jesus came into the world, not to make us perfect, not to take away our personalities, not to take away all struggle. Nothing is forced on us — although we can all think of people we wish Jesus would force something upon. But that’s not the way it works.

What is your uneasiness? Or, how do you lose heart? Or, is there some way you make your own life harder for yourself? How are you stuck? Can you admit that you’re selfish? Is there some way you are, or have been, your own worst enemy?

And here’s the final question: How has God worked in your life to save you from any of those conditions or tendencies? How has God’s mercy changed you?