Our Problem is Unrepentant Sin

By Coach Dave Daubenmire

“For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man…” Romans 7:19-25

Sin. It is a word that you don’t hear a lot about any more. Like so many other things in America the idea of sin has been sanitized. We call it a “mistake,” or an “error,” or a “miss-step,” but no matter how much lipstick and make-up you put on the pig, underneath it is still a pig.

Politicians don’t lie, they “miss-speak.” Governments don’t steal, they “tax.” Schools don’t educate, they indoctrinate. Whoremongers don’t commit adultery; they “sleep around.” Yep, in America today we rarely call things what they are. Politically correct synonyms are now the white-washed lexicon for long established prohibitions.

As I asked in a commentary five years ago, Whatever Happened to Sin?[1]

All of the problems that our nation is dealing with are a direct result of sin. We live in a fallen world where the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). We used to understand that. We used to teach it to our children. For man, sinning is as natural as breathing. No one has to be taught how to be selfish. But today, we have bought into the fable that men are naturally good.

All of the evidence leads to a different verdict. America has a sin problem.

Sin is an individual problem that impacts us all. The price of it is death (Romans 6:23). But somewhere along the path to liberation sin has been sanitized. You see, my sin does not just affect me; it touches others in a way we cannot even understand. Sin would be bad enough if my soul was the only one injured by my disobedience but, unfortunately, individual sin bleeds over on the rest of us. Collateral damage is what Timothy McVeigh called it.

The idea that my sin doesn’t harm others is preposterous. Hitler sinned. His lust for power led him to murder. How many lives have been impacted by his actions? All Bernie Madoff did was steal, but his purloining rattled the foundations of the financial world. Margaret Sanger only wanted to be “liberated” but her selfish heart lead to women’s “reproductive rights” and the destruction of millions of lives. Hugh Hefner's crusade was waged to feed his natural sexual attractions but it opened the floodgates to the porn industry.

The heart is deceitful above all things. Your heart can convince you that good is bad and bad is good. LBJ thought that government charity was the “Christian thing” to do when he created the “Great Society”, turning on the spigot of legalized government coveting. Lincoln thought he was doing a good thing when he over-ran the rights of individual states. Obama believes the government's function is to take care of us from womb to tomb. “I hear tell the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Civil laws are nothing more than government’s attempt to control the sin nature of the individual. Although the moral anarchists want to tell us that we can’t “legislate morality”, the obvious fact is that is exactly what the purpose of laws are. Stealing is wrong, so, in an effort to stop it, we make laws to punish it. “Law-breaking” is the moniker we put on the behavior and fines and incarceration are the penalty of civil-sins.

But external restraints are never enough to control inward desires. No matter how many laws we create someone will always find a way around it. In fact, we hire “lawyers” to poke escape hatches in those restraints. Over the centuries our law-books have exploded from ten simple rules, to law libraries full of the failures of “legislating” morality.

Jesus simplified it even more when he cut the list to two. That is why I love the Law of God.[2] If we follow it, no one gets hurt. Yet we are hell-bent on removing its clear teaching from the minds of our children. We can’t build enough prisons to control the hearts of un-regenerated men.

You see, God’s plan was simple. Knowing the heart of man, He put into place a set of controls (government) for society and it began, first and foremost, with the individual.

The ultimate goal in God's justice system is for the individual to establish self-control. If we fail to teach to our children the importance of self-government by obeying the “law written on the heart” then all true liberty will be lost (Romans 1:16-32). Liberty comes through obedience. Disobedience (sin) brings a loss of freedom. Failure to control ones inward desires leads to outside controls.

Family is the next level of government that the Lord put into place. From the earliest age parents are admonished to “train up a child in the way he should go.” (Proverbs 22:6) It is the role of the parents to help the child strength his/her inward controls. In the simplest of terms it is the parents’ duty to teach a child to govern himself so that others will not have to. Because the enemy has directed his laser at the destruction of the family this safety net of first response has eroded.

If the child fails to control his behavior the responsibility falls to the parents. If no parental controls are in place, or if the controls are ineffective then the family turns to the church for restoration.

The church is God's sanctuary between the people and the civil magistrates. But the church has dropped the ball. Having bought into the church growth movement, relationship evangelism, and the Purpose Driven bilge, the Law of God is no longer used as the antidote to the Spiritual AIDS ravaging America. As the church goes...so goes the nation. A little leaven infects the whole crowd and our toleration of sin in the camp has weakened the cultural immune system....the church. The ineffective “religious system” has given sway to the civil authorities.

Moral anarchy reigns supreme as we turn to amoral government to harness the passions of men. Morality is only relative in the absence of truth. Today, America's prisons are full and her churches are empty as we continue to ignore the clear warning of our founders.

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” -John Adams.

Government has usurped the authority that God originally gave to the people. We have surrendered the rights of the individual to the sovereignty of Caesar.

Samuel Adams, the Father of the American Revolution said:

"Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity...and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”

James Madison, The Father of the Constitution opined,

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not on the power of government, far from it. We've staked the future of all of our political institutions on our capacity...to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

I wonder if these boys could get elected today…

America’s leadership is swimming in sin. They are incapable of delivering us from our body of death. We will never change America through the political process. Changing one set of sinners for another will not save us. Only a return to Biblical morality and the Grace of God can.

"If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation." Charles Finney[3]

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” -Teddy Roosevelt.

Until we recognize the source of our trouble this nation is doomed. America does not have a political problem. America’s problem is sin.

Volume 15, 2010