Life at PazNaz

Hamartiology

- Hamartiology is the theological term used to describe the study of sin. The term comes from the Greek word hamartia which means “to miss the mark.” Sin is a multi-layered word that names all of the personal and corporate ways that humankind misses the mark of God’s intentions for the creation.

“The Bible presents sin by way of major concepts, principally lawlessness
and faithlessness, expressed in an array of images: sin is the missing of a
target, a wandering from the path, a straying from the fold. Sin is a hard
heart and a stiff neck. Sin is blindness and deafness. It is both the
overstepping of a line and a failure to reach it – both transgression and
shortcoming. Sin is a beast crouching at the door. In sin, people attach or
evade or neglect their divine calling… Sin is disruption of created harmony
and then resistance to divine restoration of that harmony…God hates sin
not just because it violates his law but, more substantively, because it
violates shalom (his peace), because it breaks that peace, because it
interferes with the way things are supposed to be. (Indeed, that is why
God has laws against a good deal of sin.) God is for shalom and therefore
against sin. In fact, we may safely describe evil as any spoiling of shalom,
whether physically, morally, spiritually, or otherwise… Sin, then is any
agential evil for which some person (or group of persons) is to blame.
In short, sin is culpable shalom-breaking.”
- Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin

Genesis 3 – The Human Story

- The Bible always describes human disobedience to the purposes of God as a tragedy not only for the one who disobeys but for the whole created order. While the possibility of disobedience must be real in order for authentic love, relatedness, and responsibility (response-ability) to exist, the scriptures never accept sin as an unavoidable consequence of human freedom.

- Sin is a misuse or perversion of God’s good intentions and God’s good creation.

- The story of Adam’s fall (his name literally means “humankind”) is the story of all humanity as we have continually moved against God’s good purposes.

- Important insights into sin from the Genesis 3 story:

1.  Sin is rooted in shifting attention from the Creator to the creation. The      serpent reminds us of the whispering allure to misuse the creation             (Rom. 1:23, 25).

2.  Sin is a matter of pitting self-sovereignty against the divine will. We are all tempted to become “like God.”

3.  Sin quickly weaves its web through the social-corporate dimension of      humanity. There is a mysterious human connection that causes us to relationally and inter-generationally pass on the alienating power of sin.

4.  Sin involves the breaking of relationship and the attempt to hide. Sin involves not only hiding our true selves from one another, but from God.

5.  Sin often includes the denial of responsibility.

6.  Sin becomes a destructive force in all our relationships.

Grace: God’s Divine Persistence

- The Genesis narratives suggest to us that God’s decision to share freedom with human beings – creating beings who can and often do act contrary to his purposes –opens God to the sorrow and grief that accompany love. We also discover in the Genesis narratives, however, God’s deep covenantal commitment to the redemption of creation. God persists with his fallen creation, and this persistence we call grace, for grace refers, in part, to God’s unwillingness ever to give up on the creation.

- The grace of covenant is seen most clearly in the stories of Noah and Abraham. In covenant love God does not control humankind, but rather calls and beckons us into a renewed relationship of love.

- It is always God who moves first in the restoration of relationship. In the Wesleyan theological tradition we call this initial act of love by God “prevenient grace.”

- God’s grace gives the possibility for humans to respond back to God in love.

Exodus: The Definitive Act of Redemption

- The proto-typical act of salvation is the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage to Pharaoh. God moves on behalf of the oppressed to bring freedom from slavery.

- There are many terms used to describe the fullness of God’s delivering or saving activity, all of them rooted in the Exodus story. The primary salvation terms are:

1.  Justification: this term means to set things right. On our own we could never make things right in life again, but what humans could not accomplish God has done by setting creation right again.

2.  Regeneration: sin is a destroyer that damages the image of God in us. God’s purposes are not just to set things right but to make all things new.

3.  Adoption: selfishness and sin always leads to isolation and loneliness. God takes an enslaved people and makes them his own children.

4.  Sanctification: sin keeps people from fulfilling the divine purposes for which they were created. The restoration of our lives in love also sets us apart to be used as instruments of divine love and blessing.

Jesus: Establishing the Kingdom of Forgiveness
(Matt 18:21-35)

- Jesus came not only as a final affirmation of the Exodus event but he also came to establish a Kingdom of forgiveness.

- From the perspective of Jesus, forgiveness is the very “way of the Kingdom.” Those who are followers of Jesus learn to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we ourselves are forgiving our debtors.”

- Paul describes the ministry of Jesus as the ministry of reconciliation. This is a ministry that believers have now been given. The task of Christians is to not only proclaim reconciliation to God but to embody reconciliation with one another.

Recommended Reading:

Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How (Ballantine, 1997).

Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan, 2002).