Myth Buster: Because of Grace, Sin Doesn't Matter

Pastor Burcham's Sermon

  Sunday, June 26, 2005

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are the hosts of a show called MythBusters on the Discovery Channel. Maybe you've seen it and maybe you haven't. Their whole show is of the premise that there are urban legends they test to find out whether they're true or not. They do it through scientific research but also they do it by actually trying these things out to see if they're true or not.

For instance, on one show, they decided to discover is it true, like in the movies, if you're in a bathtub and somebody throws in an electrical appliance you'll actually be electrocuted and die. Will that really happen? They tried it out. They tried out the whole idea when you're filling up your gas tank, if you have a cell phone and you're using it, can that make a spontaneous combustion and the whole thing blow up? So they tried it out. Another one they tried out was this thing with balloons. You know, you've seen it in cartoons where somebody hands somebody a bundle of balloons and all of a sudden they go up in the air because the balloons can lift them? Well, these two guys decided to see if that was true. Can you really be lifted off the ground by helium balloons? Well, that one's rather interesting because, actually, you can. Of course, it takes about 6,000 balloons for it to lift you off the ground.

Mythbusters. Testing urban legends to find out if they're true or not. What about myths surrounding the church? Religion? Spirituality? Things we've heard for a long time and they sound like they could be true. They have at least a certain element where they sound like they're right. But, in reality, when we look at God's Word, maybe there is a different story.

This morning, we're going to look at the myth that says, because of grace, sin doesn't matter. And what that myth teaches is, since God's grace, his love for us, and his forgiveness for us, and knowing the fact that whenever we sin, God will forgive us. Well, then in one sense, sin really doesn't matter. It's just not all that important. We shouldn't get too hung up about sin and what we do and what we don't do because, if we do something wrong, we know God is going to forgive us anyway. Is that true? Because of grace, sin doesn't matter?

Let's take a close look at the myth then. The myth says this: Because of grace, sin doesn't matter. So let's take it apart. Let's take a look at grace. Grace we know is God's undeserved love by definition. That's how we learned it. In other words, it's a love which is freely given. It's not something you can purchase. It's not something you can earn. It's not even a love that you can repay. Grace is just simply something God gives to us, His undeserved love for us. And certainly, scripture clearly teaches about God's grace. And scripture clearly teaches that we are made right with God, that our salvation with God is by grace alone.

Famous passage Ephesians 2:8-9. All of us probably memorized that in confirmation. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so no one can boast.” Clearly stated, it is by grace alone we are saved through the vehicle of faith. It has nothing to do with what we do or what we don't do. There are no actions we can do to somehow earn favor in God's eyes. No, it's by grace alone we are saved.

Even the Book of Romans teaches that. Romans 5:20. I referred to that just before our reading. Right there it says, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” In other words, God can out-grace our sin. No matter how far away we may go from Him, no matter how much we do which is wrong, we can never outpace God's love. God's grace is always there. Where sin increases, where we disobey all the more, God's grace abounds all the more. Certainly, scripture teaches about grace, about God's undeserved love, a love that can't be earned, a love that cannot be repaid.

Specifically, what scripture teaches about grace is that grace is the motivation behind what God does. It is this indescribable love that God has for us that motivated Him to send His Son into the world. It motivated Jesus to lay down His life for us, that He'd be willing, though He was innocent, to be declared guilty for us. It is grace that teaches us that, through faith, we know we are forgiven because of what Jesus has done for us and there are no exceptions to that. There are no exceptions to the rule as far as God's forgiveness is concerned. No crime is too heinous. Nothing we've done that we regret, that we're ashamed of, is too much for God to forgive. Scripture clearly teaches there is nothing, no sin, no act we've done, no act we've left undone that God will not forgive. That's God's grace. That's His amazing love for us.

Well if that's true then, then what our myth says is this: If forgiveness, if salvation has nothing to do with what we do or don't do, it's totally separated from us, it's not by works, it's not by anything we've done, if, in fact, each time we sin God's grace increases, in other words, each time we sin and we receive God's forgiveness, we experience His love and His grace anew, if you will, you could even say the more we sin, the more we experience God's grace, well then, logically, sin really doesn't matter all that much. It means I can do as I please. And if I happen to do something which is wrong or disobeying God, that's okay because I know I'll be forgiven. So because of grace, sin doesn't matter.

I'm guessing most of you aren't buying it, are you? But have you bought into it? Tell me this: Have you ever said or believed, “It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” Have you ever said to yourself, “You know, I'm going to have to go to church twice this week after tonight.” Have you ever been at a loss for words when somebody confronts you and says, “You know, you Christians are so judgmental. You're always talking about what's right and what's wrong.” And then they counter it real quickly with saying, “I thought you were supposed to be about love and forgiveness. If you're about love and forgiveness, then how come you keep talking about this is right and that's wrong.” Have you been at a loss for words to answer that? Inadvertently, have you bought into the myth that because of grace, sin doesn't matter?

Well, it's time to bust that myth. Let's test it out. Let's see how it works. Let's take a look at sin first of all. It says that sin doesn't matter. Okay, by implication then, the myth is teaching sin isn't really all that important, sin isn't really all that serious. I mean there's really nothing to worry about, whether you sin or not, because you know if you sin, you disobeyed God, you're going to be forgiven anyway, so there's no need really to take sin all that seriously. What does scripture say about sin, though? What does scripture say about disobeying God? What does it teach?

Let's go back to St. Paul in his letter to the Romans. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death.” And he's talking about an eternal death here, an eternal separation from God. You may recall at the beginning of time, Adam and Eve were not supposed to die but, because sin entered into the world, so also death entered into the world. For the wages of sin is death.

How about Jesus Himself speaking on the subject. Matthew 18, Jesus is talking about sin. He says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.” Is sin serious to Jesus? Does He take sin seriously in that passage? Maybe the most compelling of all is back in the Book of Romans and St. Paul is talking about Jesus himself in Romans 4, and he says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.” Listen to the first part again, though. Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins. Does scripture take sin seriously? Does God take it seriously? Sin is so serious that if God wanted to make things right with us, He had to either condemn us for eternity or He had to send His Son into the world and make it right. Sin is so serious that if Jesus wanted to reclaim us, He'd have to lay down His life. He'd have to shed His blood. Sin is so serious that only by the blood of the Son of God can you and I be forgiven. No other way. Sin is serious stuff. It can't just be dismissed or ignored. Nor can we make lightly of the forgiveness God gives us.

How about grace? By implication in the myth, grace is just a free ticket to live as you want to live. It's almost like getting a Get Out of Jail Free card in Monopoly. You don't really have to worry about it. You sin, don't worry, confess it, you're forgiven, go on your merry way. Is that really what grace is all about? Is grace just a free ticket to live as we want to live, do as we please, not do as we please? Is that what scripture teaches us about grace? Scripture teaches something different. Scripture says the effect of grace is different than just a license to do as we please. Remember Ephesians 2:8-9 makes it implicitly clear that it is by grace through faith we're saved. We're saved because of nothing we've done but because of everything God has done. No doubt about Verse 8-9, by grace we're saved. But why? What effect does that have on us? Verse 10 comes in, so Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, to do good works, not to earn favor in God's sight, not to chalk up points but because that's the natural things that are going to happen. When we've been struck by God's grace and His love, then we want to live for God. We have a new life within us. That's what we just read a few moments ago in Romans. In Romans 6:2, Paul is answering the question, “Well, if where sin is grace increases all the more, what shall we say then? Shall we sin all the more so grace will increase?” Romans 6:2 says, “By no means. We've died to sin. How can we live in it any longer?” We died to sin. God's given us a new life. How can we go back to the old way of life? Grace is not a free ticket to sin, but it is the freedom to serve God. Grace releases us from our sin. It releases us from our guilt and our shame. It releases us to serve God. That's the effect grace has on us.

The myth is busted. Because of grace, sin doesn't matter? No. Because of grace, sin matters to us more than ever before. We take sin more seriously than we did before, not because it condemns us but because we know what it cost God. We know what that grace really means. When you've been touched by God's love, when you realize our sin causes Jesus His life, you realize and experience God's love in a dramatic way, to have that weight lifted off of you, to know you've been bought by the blood of Jesus, that changes you. Because of grace, we have a changed life. We're changed people.

If you'll allow me to get a little bit personal for a moment because, in the last six months, I saw God's grace change a man. I saw God's grace change my father. As you may or may not know, he passed away last Tuesday. What you probably don't know is that my father, for over 30 years, never stepped foot in a church. I don't know why he stopped going. In my youngest years, he was always in church. One Sunday, he stopped. I'm ashamed to admit to you I never asked him why through all the years.

In January, when I found out how seriously ill he was, I made up my mind to ask him about his relationship with God. Folks, I'm no different than you. For whatever reason, it's hard to talk to family about faith. I don't know why. The first conversation came up, and I chickened out and I didn't. The second conversation came up while I was there, the opportunity opened up, and I thank God that I took it, only God did it not me.

My father started talking about his regrets and some of the things he was ashamed of in life. I was able to tell him of God's love. I was able to tell him in a few short words about God's forgiveness and it didn't matter what he did, that God had done more, that Jesus had died for him. He accepted that forgiveness. We both had an emotional moment and then, like true men, we pulled ourselves together and changed the subject.

I asked him, though, I said, “Dad, I have a pastor friend in town. Would it be okay if he called on you?” I was very scared to ask that question. He hadn't been in church in over 30 years. He said, “I'd like that.” In my next phone conversation with him, he said I have something very important to tell you. I couldn't tell him anything else. I said, “What?” He said, “I took communion yesterday.” The next visit up to see him, he said, “I want you to know something. I believe in Jesus, and I believe in going to heaven.” We had another emotional moment, pulled ourselves together, and changed the subject. But we both knew.

Because of God's grace, last Tuesday, heaven's gates opened up and my father was there. But before January, I didn't know that. But my point is this: God's grace changed him.

My second visit up there, I visited him in the nursing home and I started talking to some of the nurses and some of the attendants and they described my father as being kind, as being always in a good mood, as being compassionate, agreeable. I mean no disrespect for my father, I've never heard him described in those words. That was not him. God had changed his heart, and God's grace had rescued him from that sin and he wasn't going back. He was changed.

God's grace has captured your heart, I pray, as it's captured mine. And that changes us. It gives us a new life. It releases us from sin, and there's no going back. Why would we want to go back? It's a myth to say, “Because of God's grace, sin doesn't matter.” Because of God's grace, we are changed. We're changed in this life. By God's grace, we're changed for an eternity. Amen.

. Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church