Episode 33
Sin: What It Actually Means | NT90
What if the word “sin” doesn’t mean what you think it means? In this episode of Seek Go Create, Tim Winders unpacks how the New Testament’s original context and language reveal a radically different definition from what many churches teach today. Are we missing the real message by focusing on behavior rather than belonging? Join us as we challenge familiar beliefs, explore the surprising roots of “sin,” and ask if we’ve been drawing the wrong boundaries all along. If you’re ready to rethink faith, inclusion, and what really puts us “in” or “out,” this episode is for you.
"Sinner, or the word sin in the first century, was almost entirely about occupation and stature, not behavior." - Tim Winders
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Episode Resources:
- NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Rethinking Sin
00:42 NT 90 Reading Plan
02:23 Three Big Bible Words
05:04 Sinner as Moral Label
06:48 Sinners by Occupation
08:42 Sinners by Social Status
11:07 No Behavior Checklist
11:58 Gospel Evidence Tour
17:56 Luke Parables Setup
21:00 John 9 Category Clash
26:20 Toward Paul Galatians
26:27 Sinners as Outsiders
27:25 New Testament Evidence
30:15 Boundary Marker Label
30:53 Modern Arrow Reversal
34:48 Gatekeeping Checklists
37:26 Hamartia Missing Mark
39:45 Hebrews Trust Problem
43:52 Actions as Fruit
46:59 Guilt Engine Wrap Up
48:51 Next Episode Death
49:40 Study and Reading Plan
Transcript
Sin.
Speaker:I thought I knew what that word meant.
Speaker:You probably think you know too bad behavior, breaking the rules, the
Speaker:reason you need saving and salvation.
Speaker:I believe that definition for most of my life.
Speaker:Then I read the New Testament in order in the original language and context,
Speaker:and I discovered that the Bible defines this word very differently
Speaker:than the church does, and the Bible is the thing that corrected me.
Speaker:Welcome to Seek, go Create.
Speaker:I'm Tim Winders.
Speaker:I just finished reading the entire New Testament in 90 days
Speaker:in the order it was written.
Speaker:Not the order in your Bible.
Speaker:Not actually chronological, but the order that the letters actually went out.
Speaker:And what I found surprised me, challenged me and changed the
Speaker:way I understood scripture.
Speaker:This series is where I share some of those discoveries.
Speaker:It's kind of a what I found series where we're doing an episode on either
Speaker:a big topic or a a, a group of topics.
Speaker:Where I just kinda share the notes that I made and what came out of it with you.
Speaker:If you wanna do what I did, and I highly encourage it.
Speaker:I don't wanna be the expert here.
Speaker:I want this to really just be me sharing, and then you press
Speaker:in and discover on your own.
Speaker:You can go get the reading plan.
Speaker:It's just where I divide it up into 90 days, the New Testament, and I
Speaker:put it in the order that we believe.
Speaker:That many people believe it was written in and released to
Speaker:people in the first century.
Speaker:And so go check it out.
Speaker:Go to K two M Foundation slash NT 90, that's K two M Foundation slash NT 90.
Speaker:You could download the reading play and get some more information,
Speaker:check things out, get some of the.
Speaker:Background and sources to how this was developed and I
Speaker:think it's a great exercise.
Speaker:I think it's a great, if you wanna understand the Bible
Speaker:more, it's a great thing to do.
Speaker:So I encourage you to do that.
Speaker:Download it, read along, see what you find.
Speaker:The link is down in the show notes.
Speaker:Before we get into today's episode, let me kinda set the table or let
Speaker:you know what we're gonna be doing over the next three episodes.
Speaker:We are going to look at three of the biggest words in the Bible.
Speaker:Sin, death and salvation.
Speaker:These are words most of us think we understand.
Speaker:We throw them around a good bit.
Speaker:In Christian circles, it's kind of christianese language.
Speaker:I thought that I understood them, had a grasp on them.
Speaker:But when I read the New Testament in order, in context, something shifted.
Speaker:I kept seeing.
Speaker:The words pop up and in my mind I go, wait, that's not
Speaker:quite what I thought it meant.
Speaker:And then I would see it again.
Speaker:And I'm like, wait, that's not the way I understood it.
Speaker:And I would make a note when I was doing handwritten notes and I'd
Speaker:said, I'm gonna come back to that.
Speaker:But then I would see it again and again.
Speaker:And these words obviously are throughout the scripture.
Speaker:But what I really found is that I don't think that our meaning today.
Speaker:In our church world or our Christian circles means the same thing that they
Speaker:meant for it to mean in scripture.
Speaker:I'm not saying it's totally different and we're gonna dive into it.
Speaker:So, uh, don't just take my word for it here, but, uh, I don't
Speaker:think they, I. Meant the same thing that I'd been led to believe.
Speaker:Maybe it's translation, maybe I just never studied them closely enough myself.
Speaker:Maybe you did and you're going, ah, of course, I get it.
Speaker:Maybe modern religion has slowly altered the meanings over time, or
Speaker:maybe it's something else, entirely deception or something like that.
Speaker:Honestly, do not know which one it is, but I do know this.
Speaker:When you go back to the original language and the original audience, these three
Speaker:words look very different than what most of us, specifically myself were taught.
Speaker:So that's what we're doing here.
Speaker:Three episodes, three words, and we're gonna let the Bible and the
Speaker:New Testaments speak for themselves.
Speaker:Every once in a while you'll have me slip in and probably use
Speaker:language like I, or this is what it means, or something like that.
Speaker:I try to be cautious.
Speaker:What I really do is want this to be discovery, not just for me, but for
Speaker:you also, and as I've said many times.
Speaker:Challenge me, go study it for yourself.
Speaker:I don't wanna be Tim, the answer man.
Speaker:I want you to dig and find this out for yourself.
Speaker:These episodes are really just me sharing what I found as
Speaker:I went through that process.
Speaker:So at the very least, what I want us to know is what is scripturally accurate?
Speaker:So that's what we're going to be doing here.
Speaker:This one.
Speaker:Part one is sinner, the label of sin in the Bible.
Speaker:And, let's first of all look at kinda what we were taught, what we.
Speaker:What we have come to believe about this word, and maybe it might be more me, but
Speaker:I'll share that most of us grew up hearing sinner as kind of a moral category.
Speaker:Bad people, people who do bad things, bad actions, kind of
Speaker:the opposite of righteous.
Speaker:So when we read the gospels and see Jesus eating with sinners, we
Speaker:picture him going to the rough side of town, hanging out with criminals.
Speaker:We admire his willingness, of course, to be around bad people, and we've
Speaker:all heard sermons about it and things like that, but that picture
Speaker:isn't entirely what is portrayed.
Speaker:I won't say it's wrong, which is actually what I have written here in my notes.
Speaker:It won't say it's exactly wrong.
Speaker:But it is a little bit off.
Speaker:When you read the gospels in context, it becomes pretty obvious.
Speaker:Sinner, or the word sin in the first century was almost entirely about
Speaker:occupation and stature, not behavior.
Speaker:The Pharisees did not have a moral checklist.
Speaker:They had the law and that was critical, and we'll talk about
Speaker:that in just a moment, but they actually had a social map.
Speaker:Your position in the system determined your category, not your
Speaker:heart, not your private behavior.
Speaker:And that's really important as we get into it.
Speaker:So let's look at who were the sinners.
Speaker:Let's look at the categories and let's feel the weight of this system that we
Speaker:really see unveiled or shared with us when we walk through the New Testament.
Speaker:Let's look at occupations.
Speaker:This is kind of fascinating to me that it's not really what you do.
Speaker:It's sort of what you do as a living.
Speaker:Tax collectors were a big one here, and they worked for Rome, and by
Speaker:definition, they were traitors, not really because of personal sin, and we'll
Speaker:look at examples later, but because of who employed them and what they did.
Speaker:Shepherds, this is an interesting one.
Speaker:They really weren't able to keep the Sabbath or purity laws.
Speaker:They were always out in the field, so they were permanently
Speaker:disqualified from being a. The system, so they were termed sinners.
Speaker:This one's interesting.
Speaker:The tanner worked with dead animals.
Speaker:They were permanently unclean under the purity code.
Speaker:So, so just because you were that, that job, that role, you
Speaker:couldn't be in that system.
Speaker:The Jewish system, you weren't pure.
Speaker:And then this one is probably not surprising, but prostitutes.
Speaker:They were outside the social boundary.
Speaker:But, but notice this is real interesting.
Speaker:The category is more about social location, not a moral verdict on what.
Speaker:They did.
Speaker:That's fascinating when you see that.
Speaker:Not because they just did sex for hire necessarily, it was really about
Speaker:the social stature of who they were.
Speaker:So anyway, and that kinda leads into this next category and that is the stature
Speaker:of certain groups of people that would be considered air quotes here for the,
Speaker:those watching on the video or those listening, you're not getting this.
Speaker:The stature of these people made them.
Speaker:Quote unquote sinners.
Speaker:Alright, first of all, the poor.
Speaker:They actually could not afford sacrifices or tithes, and sacrifices
Speaker:and tithes were a requirement.
Speaker:If you couldn't pay the entry fee, you were out.
Speaker:And also, we'll look at this example.
Speaker:In a little while, the sick and the disabled, they were
Speaker:assumed to be under god's.
Speaker:Judgment in John nine two, and we'll look at this more later, who sinned?
Speaker:This man or his parents that he was born blind?
Speaker:The question assumes the categories and then there were
Speaker:women in certain situations.
Speaker:There's a. Episode that I'm gonna be doing related to women in the biblical
Speaker:narrative or women in the Bible.
Speaker:And it's, it's really gonna be a fun episode because it kind of busts up
Speaker:some myths and some dogmas that we have.
Speaker:But anyway, in certain situations, widows and also we know the hemorrhaging
Speaker:woman, the woman at the well, they were all outside the system's protection.
Speaker:And then of course we know this example, Gentiles by birth.
Speaker:Just because you were born a certain way, you did not do anything wrong.
Speaker:You were just born on the wrong side of the line, and that is a sinner.
Speaker:In other words, a gentile was a sinner, not because of what they did, but
Speaker:because of where or who they were born.
Speaker:And then there's something, I hope I could pronounce this correctly.
Speaker:It's the AM Hartz.
Speaker:It's the common people.
Speaker:And again, I may not have pronounced that exactly right.
Speaker:It's A MHA and then A-R-E-T-Z am Harts the common people.
Speaker:They could not keep the Pharisee purity codes because they were busy surviving.
Speaker:They were not ignorant.
Speaker:They were just busy working.
Speaker:So let's look at what is absent from all that.
Speaker:From what is absent is really interesting.
Speaker:It's a list of specific behaviors.
Speaker:There is no sins checklist The Pharisees used now.
Speaker:They did have the law, and within the law there was all of these items listed.
Speaker:But that really, when we get to the New Testament and we begin looking at it.
Speaker:Those items weren't listed.
Speaker:It was more of an insider or outsider, reference.
Speaker:When we talk about someone who sinned or who was a sinner.
Speaker:It was sort of a membership list, actually, not a moral verdict.
Speaker:You were either in or you were out, and the people that decided that were
Speaker:the ones that were running the system.
Speaker:And, and, and really we could look in a lot of evidence here.
Speaker:Let's go ahead and dive in.
Speaker:Let's look in, let's look at some scripture to try to start
Speaker:getting some examples of this.
Speaker:The first is the evidence in the gospels, the sinner as a boundary
Speaker:marker like we just talked about.
Speaker:And this is really going to back up.
Speaker:Now, I, I, everything in me wants to walk through these scriptures very
Speaker:quickly, but I'm going to attempt to go slowly because it builds the
Speaker:case of what we're saying here.
Speaker:And if you are able to, instead of listening to me at two exit speed, which
Speaker:some of you might be wanting to do, might even slow it down or pause, get your Bible
Speaker:out and read along as we go through these examples, because it really does make.
Speaker:The case and it continues to build.
Speaker:That's why I say when you're going through it in order and
Speaker:context, it just builds and builds.
Speaker:And after a few examples, I'm going, wait, sin does not, it really
Speaker:doesn't mean what I thought it did.
Speaker:So let's look at some of these.
Speaker:Alright, in the gospels in Luke five 30, mark two 16 and Matthew nine 11.
Speaker:Jesus was asked in all of those, why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?
Speaker:That's kind of humorous to me that the tax collectors and sinners
Speaker:are put into the same category.
Speaker:We talked about tax collectors earlier.
Speaker:Three gospels record this.
Speaker:It is a boundary question, not a moral question.
Speaker:They're not asking why are you with bad people?
Speaker:They are asking, why are you with people who are not?
Speaker:In our group, and I just want you to think about that now in a little while.
Speaker:We're gonna fast forward 2000 years to where we are now, and we'll talk
Speaker:about how we do similar things today.
Speaker:But this is really a big, big storyline in the New Testament.
Speaker:It's who's in and who's out, who's in the group and who is not.
Speaker:Let's go to Luke 5 32, mark two 17 and Matthew nine 13.
Speaker:Jesus answers.
Speaker:I have not come to call the righteous, but.
Speaker:Sinners.
Speaker:He is not saying, I came for the morally bad.
Speaker:He is saying, I came for the ones that you have excluded, the ones that
Speaker:you won't let in, and I'll add this.
Speaker:He really came with open arms saying I'm now welcoming.
Speaker:All in.
Speaker:And that's the examples that we kept seeing throughout the
Speaker:gospels, the category label.
Speaker:Let's look at Luke seven, and this is, verse 37 through 39.
Speaker:In Luke seven, a woman anoints Jesus feet.
Speaker:this is a really, if you read through this, I won't read through all of it.
Speaker:I'll just pull out a, a portion of the scripture.
Speaker:Go read this.
Speaker:This is one of the more awkward, uh, storylines in the New Testament,
Speaker:and we can all picture it, but it's a woman that anoints Jesus' feet.
Speaker:Simon the Pharisees says to.
Speaker:If he knew what kind of woman this is, and he really lumped her into a
Speaker:category, not a person, but a label.
Speaker:Remember that, that's important.
Speaker:And then let's go to Luke 7 34 and Matthew 1119.
Speaker:Both the reference of, of this, of this story a friend.
Speaker:Of tax collectors and sinners.
Speaker:You can almost hear the cynicism in that accusation.
Speaker:It's not admiration, it's an accusation and it's really laced in what we
Speaker:would call maybe social contamination.
Speaker:you're associating with people outside our system.
Speaker:How dare you do that.
Speaker:Jesus actually uses the words sinners as a social label.
Speaker:Let's look at Luke 6 32 through 34.
Speaker:Even sinners love those who love.
Speaker:Them, even sinners lend to sinners.
Speaker:Jesus uses the word sinners to mean the others, and he's kind of saying
Speaker:the people that your group, the people he's speaking to, looks down on,
Speaker:He is saying that even the outsiders do basic reciprocity, a social
Speaker:category, not a moral description.
Speaker:And then I, I love, I mean, this is part of what Jesus does.
Speaker:He really dismantles this system, this category system that we're talking
Speaker:about here in Luke 13, one through five.
Speaker:There's a reference to pilots, Galileans and the Tower of Shalom,
Speaker:and he, and he says, do you think that these Galileans were worse
Speaker:sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?
Speaker:No, I tell you, Jesus is not correcting a misunderstanding.
Speaker:He is rejecting the entire premise that suffering proves your category.
Speaker:The crowd assumed that bad things had happened to them.
Speaker:Therefore, they must be in worse Sin.
Speaker:and that category Jesus says no to.
Speaker:He says that is not the case.
Speaker:The system is wrong, not the way that they are being judged or categorized.
Speaker:And let's talk more about the membership complaint that we see in Luke 15.
Speaker:In Luke 15, one through two.
Speaker:He says, Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him.
Speaker:They were attracted to him, and the Pharisees grumbled saying, this man
Speaker:receives sinners and eats with them.
Speaker:This is the setup for some of the most famous parables in the Bible.
Speaker:The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost.
Speaker:Son and the setup is a membership complaint talking
Speaker:about outsiders and insiders.
Speaker:Let's look at Luke 15, seven and also 10.
Speaker:There is more joy in heaven.
Speaker:Over one sinner who repents then over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.
Speaker:I know that I have taken that out of context and made that look different.
Speaker:And of course there are songs about that and all.
Speaker:But anyway, it's the righteous that are the ones who think they're in,
Speaker:and the center is the one who was out.
Speaker:It's about membership, not actions or morality.
Speaker:The three parables that follow are all about something that was
Speaker:outside being brought back in.
Speaker:And that's important to understand.
Speaker:That's this definition that we begin seeing of sin or sinner as we read through
Speaker:in the context of the New Testament.
Speaker:Let's look at, I guess the status, we'll call it the acknowledgement of status.
Speaker:We see this in Luke.
Speaker:18 and 19.
Speaker:Let's look at Luke 1813, the tax collector in the temple.
Speaker:God be merciful to me, a sinner.
Speaker:This is someone referencing themself as a sinner and putting that label, and
Speaker:he's not really confessing a sin like we.
Speaker:would come to believe that we see that word?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:He's basically acknowledging his status in life.
Speaker:A sinner, his category, his membership or his lack of membership.
Speaker:He knows where the system placed him.
Speaker:And then let's look at Luke 19 seven.
Speaker:This is one of the ones, as I was reading through it, that really.
Speaker:I, I guess, really made me think differently about this
Speaker:word and this definition.
Speaker:It's Zacchaeus and we hear the quote here in Luke 19 seven.
Speaker:He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.
Speaker:And we know Zacchaeus is a tax collector.
Speaker:That is the category.
Speaker:The crowd is not listing his crimes.
Speaker:They are naming his label because of his occupation or who he associated with.
Speaker:And then one we'll look at later and probably, actually
Speaker:we're gonna probably take a dive into it a little bit more here.
Speaker:It's John chapter nine.
Speaker:and it's really, the whole system is what we're gonna see in this entire chapter.
Speaker:It's the strongest single passage in the entire New Testament for this argument.
Speaker:The whole category system is on display and Jesus dismantles it in real time.
Speaker:Alright, let's look at it in John nine two.
Speaker:The disciples ask, who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind?
Speaker:Jesus has just healed the blind man.
Speaker:And so let's read that again.
Speaker:Who sinned, this man or his parents?
Speaker:So the disciples really believed that his parents sinned, or he did,
Speaker:and that's how he became blind.
Speaker:So they assume the category.
Speaker:These disciples that had been hanging out with Jesus believed
Speaker:that blindness equals sin status.
Speaker:Not what did he do wrong, but whose category?
Speaker:Is he in?
Speaker:The question assumes that disability is proof of your
Speaker:position outside of God's favor.
Speaker:Then let's go to John nine 16.
Speaker:The Pharisees say this about Jesus, this man is not from God,
Speaker:for he does not keep the Sabbath.
Speaker:Others say, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs?
Speaker:They use the same label as the blind man on Jesus himself, not
Speaker:because of moral failure, because he operates outside their systems rules.
Speaker:If he does not keep the Sabbath, he is a sinner.
Speaker:Period.
Speaker:That is what they say.
Speaker:And then let's move along.
Speaker:John 9 24.
Speaker:They double down.
Speaker:And the quote is, give glory to God.
Speaker:We know that this man is a sinner, and that's the Pharisees are actually telling
Speaker:the blind man that, and they're talking about Jesus a declaration of a category.
Speaker:They're not investigating.
Speaker:They have.
Speaker:Already decided.
Speaker:They know who's in and who's out.
Speaker:Based on their definitions, they're the deciding factor.
Speaker:John 9 25, the Healed man.
Speaker:This is not a theologian, and he's standing in front of the
Speaker:Pharisees that are pressing him.
Speaker:The healed man refuses to play their game.
Speaker:Here's what he says.
Speaker:Whether he is a sinner, I do not know one thing.
Speaker:I do know that though I was blind.
Speaker:Now I. See, he will not engage with their category system.
Speaker:He just reports what happened then.
Speaker:Let's go to John 9 31.
Speaker:We know that God does not listen to sinners, sinners as
Speaker:a permanent outsider category.
Speaker:So not only are you outside, but God doesn't even hear what you say.
Speaker:What happens with someone who is a sinner or outside of their membership
Speaker:or in that stature or in that, position.
Speaker:Not situational, but it's structural.
Speaker:If you're a sinner, God does not hear you.
Speaker:That is the doctrine we know and we decide.
Speaker:I'm speaking as if I'm a Pharisee.
Speaker:Then John nine thirty four.
Speaker:You were born entirely in sins.
Speaker:And are you teaching us?
Speaker:This is the Pharisees telling the former blind man.
Speaker:Who are you to tell us?
Speaker:we know.
Speaker:And then they throw him out of the synagogue.
Speaker:He's born in sins, not behavior.
Speaker:That's a birth status.
Speaker:And the physical act matches the label.
Speaker:You are categorized as out.
Speaker:So we are putting you out.
Speaker:Next is John 9 35 through 38.
Speaker:Jesus finds the expelled man.
Speaker:All of this is a continuation of this story of the blind man.
Speaker:And John telling it and how it, really exposes a lot of this Jesus
Speaker:in John 9 35 through 38 finds the expelled man that's been thrown outta
Speaker:the synagogue and reveals himself.
Speaker:The one the system threw out is the one Jesus seeks.
Speaker:That is kind of the punchline or the, or the or.
Speaker:The really whole thing we should see from the entire chapter is Jesus
Speaker:finds this guy that was thrown out of the system, the synagogue system.
Speaker:That was what everyone held in such high regard in that Jewish temple system.
Speaker:Anyway, and then let's, uh, let's kind of move along a little bit.
Speaker:That was a, that's a great, that, uh, chapter nine is a great storyline and
Speaker:great to really spend some time reading.
Speaker:In that, in that section.
Speaker:But let's move on and let's look at Paul in Galatians two.
Speaker:Let's look at verse 15.
Speaker:Paul says, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentiles, sinners.
Speaker:This is the clearest verse in the New Testament on this topic.
Speaker:Paul uses sinners and gentil.
Speaker:Interchangeably.
Speaker:Same word, same category.
Speaker:You are a sinner because you were born outside the covenant, not
Speaker:because of what you did, it's just who you are and how you were born.
Speaker:Galatians two 17, Paul says, but if in seeking to be justified in Christ,
Speaker:we too were found to be sinners.
Speaker:Is Christ then a servant of sin.
Speaker:Paul's logic test, if being in Christ still makes us outsiders by the old
Speaker:system standards, does that make Christ serve the old system absurd.
Speaker:So this is really busting it up.
Speaker:Alright, and then other things, the rest of the New Testament confirms it.
Speaker:Let's look at some other items.
Speaker:In Romans five eight, while we were still sinners.
Speaker:Christ died for us before we were in, while we were still outside.
Speaker:The emphasis here is on status, not behavior.
Speaker:Not that we did anything differently with our behavior to get inside.
Speaker:No, it says while we were still sinners, Christ died for.
Speaker:US Romans five 19 by one man's disobedience.
Speaker:The many were made sinners constituted as outsiders to the covenant
Speaker:relationship not made morally.
Speaker:Bad.
Speaker:The status changed.
Speaker:Let's look at Matthew 26 45.
Speaker:Mark 1441.
Speaker:Luke 24, 7, all telling the same thing.
Speaker:The son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Speaker:The sinners here are the arresting party.
Speaker:Roman soldiers and temple guards.
Speaker:Those that are outside the system, not a moral description.
Speaker:It's a covenant category.
Speaker:They are.
Speaker:Outside God's purposes of that time, then let's look at, one Timothy one 15.
Speaker:Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am The foremost,
Speaker:Paul is calling himself the worst.
Speaker:Outsider because he actively persecuted the community.
Speaker:His sin was fighting against the new covenant.
Speaker:People.
Speaker:James four, eight.
Speaker:Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts.
Speaker:You double minded.
Speaker:James writes to believers straddling two worlds sinners, people trying
Speaker:to be in both camps and double mindedness is that category.
Speaker:Let's we get James five 20.
Speaker:Whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death.
Speaker:A sinner is someone who has wandered from the community.
Speaker:The solution is to bring them back in, not to tell them to stop doing something,
Speaker:dancing or having sex or whatever.
Speaker:No, it's to bring them back in, not.
Speaker:Punishing them and
Speaker:in every one of those passages center is functioning the same way.
Speaker:A boundary marker.
Speaker:In or out, member or outsider, and the people drawing that line
Speaker:were the ones who ran the system.
Speaker:The Pharisees used it on tax collectors, shepherds the blind and the poor.
Speaker:They used it on women.
Speaker:They used it on Gentiles.
Speaker:They even used it on Jesus.
Speaker:The label always meant the same thing.
Speaker:You're a sinner.
Speaker:You are not one of us.
Speaker:Now, one of the things we want to do is we could stay in the first century, but
Speaker:the thing that kept jumping out at me was how does that relate to what we do today?
Speaker:If I or we, or some of us have taken that word to mean something different,
Speaker:is it possible that we could be doing some things that may not be scripturally
Speaker:sound or biblically accurate in the way we go about doing our church
Speaker:or our lives in today's world?
Speaker:So I title this the reversal.
Speaker:How the modern church flipped the arrow.
Speaker:This is kinda like the bridge between the first century
Speaker:text and the modern audience.
Speaker:So, uh, here's what's interesting here.
Speaker:The Pharisee said.
Speaker:You are a sinner because you are not in our group, and there's no
Speaker:doubt that the word sinner was not a compliment during the first century.
Speaker:Just as, it's not a compliment today, but as we're saying here,
Speaker:there's a difference in the meaning.
Speaker:The label came from your position outside the system in the first century.
Speaker:Your occupation, your stature, your birth, your disability.
Speaker:We've already mentioned that the modern church, listen to what we've done here.
Speaker:The modern church has, we've reversed the direction.
Speaker:You're not in our group because you are sinner and we've made it.
Speaker:A moral behavior checklist as the mechanism.
Speaker:In other words, we are still in some ways saying that people are in or
Speaker:out, but we're doing it by looking at what they do and pushing them away.
Speaker:It's a different direction.
Speaker:It's the same result.
Speaker:People are either in or out, not necessarily social
Speaker:stature, but what they do.
Speaker:A boundary system that determines who is in and who is out.
Speaker:And we've seen it.
Speaker:We've seen it in our churches, we've seen it in religions.
Speaker:I saw it in Bible school, and it's still administered by the institution and
Speaker:people that are in leadership roles.
Speaker:It's a way of protecting that.
Speaker:Culture, and it's roughly the same thing.
Speaker:The Pharisees used it, like I said, occupation, stature of birth.
Speaker:The modern church uses behavior, doctrine, compliance, some gatekeeping,
Speaker:you know, same labels, same exclusion.
Speaker:What Jesus did, he was not arguing about which direction the arrow should point.
Speaker:He really erased the arrow.
Speaker:He didn't say it's about.
Speaker:Being in or out.
Speaker:He didn't really even say it was about behaviors or what you do or your titles.
Speaker:He basically said There is no in or out.
Speaker:We are taking away those boundaries.
Speaker:Everyone, woman at the, well, everyone, prostitute, everyone, uh, blind.
Speaker:Everyone is welcome.
Speaker:That is the power of what Jesus did.
Speaker:That is one of the powerful things about the gospel message.
Speaker:Here's the uncomfortable question we have to ask though.
Speaker:Have we taken the word sinner, which Jesus came to eliminate as a category
Speaker:and rebuilt it, or we continue building it as our primary tool for
Speaker:deciding who is welcome and who is?
Speaker:Not, I know myself, I've been in a lot of religious institutions
Speaker:that that is what they do.
Speaker:The same thing that happened in the first century, still going on today.
Speaker:So, let's take a look at some of that in a little more detail.
Speaker:We're gonna look at the arrow flip and, and see what, what that has to say.
Speaker:The Pharisees had their list, occupation, stature of birth, modern
Speaker:church, swapped in a new inventory.
Speaker:Uh, I sort of joke about this one.
Speaker:Dancing, drinking certain music.
Speaker:Sexual activity, sexual orientation, tattoos.
Speaker:We have almost created our own covenant.
Speaker:We've almost taken the old covenant and just applied it today, and we
Speaker:still try to say who's in or out.
Speaker:I also listed out here tattoos language.
Speaker:you know, the function is identical.
Speaker:It creates an ingroup and an outgroup.
Speaker:I'm sure many of us have been to churches where it would not
Speaker:welcome certain people that look a certain way and do certain things.
Speaker:That's not what Jesus did.
Speaker:In fact, that's the opposite.
Speaker:And so it's fascinating that if we truly understand what this word sin means,
Speaker:it's basically creating boundaries.
Speaker:Jesus busted it up.
Speaker:And he died for our sin.
Speaker:Then what we really should be looking at is how are we open as Jesus was open.
Speaker:Some people are gonna get a little uncomfortable with this because
Speaker:they start throwing around words that I'm saying, which I'm not.
Speaker:But, this is not a statement about whether those behaviors are good or bad.
Speaker:I'm not saying that.
Speaker:There are definitely some detrimental behaviors that we do not need to do.
Speaker:Dancing.
Speaker:I am against dancing.
Speaker:I'm, I'm joking about that.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:Being slightly, cynical about my, my Baptist upbringing.
Speaker:It's a different conversation.
Speaker:The point is this, the Bible does not use them as the primary definition of sin.
Speaker:We have added it.
Speaker:Just like the Pharisees did.
Speaker:The church built a gatekeeping system around them that mirrors
Speaker:exactly what the Pharisees did.
Speaker:The Pharisees would not eat with a shepherd because his
Speaker:occupation made him unclean.
Speaker:A modern church will not ordain someone, a woman or something like that because of
Speaker:who they love or who they are or whatever.
Speaker:It's a different list.
Speaker:It's the same mechanism, the same boundary, the same question
Speaker:who's in and who is out.
Speaker:Religion has added layers of sins that function as membership markers,
Speaker:not as the Bible's own definition.
Speaker:When you read the text in context, it really becomes hard to miss.
Speaker:But when you pluck something out and then try to apply it to the
Speaker:rules and regulations that we have.
Speaker:You can justify it, but if you read it in context, it's hard to do that.
Speaker:Now before we start wrapping up here, I want us to really look at the word sin
Speaker:as it's shown in the, the New Testament.
Speaker:It is a word, dunno if I could pronounce this correctly.
Speaker:Hamartia, H-A-M-A-R-T-I-A.
Speaker:And it really doesn't mean doing bad things, it means.
Speaker:In as the context we see in the, in the New Testament, missing the mark.
Speaker:And so it really causes us to sort of have to re-look at
Speaker:what this word actually means.
Speaker:The Greek word is hamartia.
Speaker:It's an archery term.
Speaker:it means missing the mark, being off target, missing the target, falling short.
Speaker:Of the aim.
Speaker:It doesn't mean crime, it doesn't mean violation.
Speaker:It doesn't mean you broke a rule and now you owe a penalty.
Speaker:Obviously, there could be some subset of that, but it means you are
Speaker:aimed at something and you missed.
Speaker:That is fundamentally a different framework.
Speaker:A crime requires a court, a judge, a sentence, and punishment missing.
Speaker:The mark just requires a correction, a re aim, a redo.
Speaker:A restoration, a turning.
Speaker:And that is exactly what this word, met means.
Speaker:That is the word that we translate as repent.
Speaker:It does not mean to feel guilty or to be guilted into something.
Speaker:It means repent, adjust, change, where you're aiming.
Speaker:It doesn't mean, grovel.
Speaker:It means change your mind, turn around and face the right direction.
Speaker:Sin is not a courtroom problem.
Speaker:It is an orientation problem.
Speaker:Are you aimed at the right thing or the wrong thing?
Speaker:Where is your aim and what Jesus does throughout the New Testament,
Speaker:he gives us what to aim for.
Speaker:That is one of the messages.
Speaker:We aim towards that right standing of God, and if we aim towards that right
Speaker:standing and we believe it and accept it, then we actually do the things, the
Speaker:actions and behaviors that we should do.
Speaker:Now, let's look for a second here at Hebrews.
Speaker:Because Hebrews, that's a fascinating book.
Speaker:I love my journey through Hebrews, especially in context,
Speaker:what we see is that sin really becomes kind of a trust problem.
Speaker:You know, this is where we have this reframe that goes on.
Speaker:The writer of Hebrews never treats sin as a behavior checklist.
Speaker:The sin Hebrews warns about.
Speaker:Is unbelief, refusing to move forward, choosing the old system over the
Speaker:new, hebrews three 12 says, take care brothers, lest there be in any of
Speaker:you, an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God.
Speaker:Hebrews three 13 says, the deceitfulness of sin.
Speaker:In context, it's kind of the slow pullback going back to that familiar system.
Speaker:You know, Hebrews, the message is really don't go back.
Speaker:And so it's saying that this actually is a sin to start moving
Speaker:and going back to that system.
Speaker:The quiet lie that the temple still works.
Speaker:That is the old way, and people believe it's safer and they want to go back to it.
Speaker:Hebrews three 19, they were unable to enter because of unbelief, not because of
Speaker:bad behavior, because they did not trust the wilderness generation is the example.
Speaker:They saw the miracles.
Speaker:They walked through the sea, they ate the manna, and they still would not
Speaker:trust God enough to enter the land.
Speaker:That is the hamartia hamarta, the missing the mark aimed at Egypt.
Speaker:When God was pointing at Canaan, they kept their eye on Egypt when they needed to
Speaker:be focused on Canaan the promised land.
Speaker:Hebrews 10 26.
Speaker:If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of
Speaker:the truth, and this is not about individual moral FA failures,
Speaker:that's pretty obvious in context.
Speaker:It's about deliberately turning back to the old.
Speaker:Sacrificial system.
Speaker:After experiencing the new covenant, the old sacrifices cannot help you anymore.
Speaker:There is no longer a sacrifice for sins under the old system because
Speaker:the new one has replaced it.
Speaker:Sin in Hebrews is a trust problem, not a behavior problem.
Speaker:In or out, holding faster, letting go, entering the rest
Speaker:or dying in the wilderness.
Speaker:Now, as we said, really, you know, we, we see sin as uncles at times,
Speaker:not necessarily a crime sheet.
Speaker:So in Hebrews 10, four, it is impossible for the blood of bulls.
Speaker:And goats to take away sins.
Speaker:The old sacrifices were repeated endlessly because they can never finish the job.
Speaker:They had to go on forever.
Speaker:The conscience was never clear.
Speaker:That was in Hebrews 10, two, the new Covenant Promise.
Speaker:I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.
Speaker:That's in 10 17.
Speaker:Sin in Hebrews is primarily a cleanness and uncles issue.
Speaker:Can you stand in God's presence rather than a crime and punishment issue?
Speaker:How much trouble are you in?
Speaker:Can can you be in?
Speaker:The presence of the holy one, that is the end that they're talking about.
Speaker:As we move into the new covenant, the old system address the outside.
Speaker:The new system addresses the heart or the conscience that reframes everything.
Speaker:Sin is not a scorecard of what you do or do not do.
Speaker:It's a question of whether you are walking in the reality of
Speaker:what has been done for you.
Speaker:The honest.
Speaker:Question we have to ask, does sin ever mean a specific action?
Speaker:And this is where we need to be honest, because I don't want to
Speaker:kind of present this theory and kind of have people say, so you are
Speaker:saying we could do anything we want?
Speaker:And all of that.
Speaker:And, and this is where I want to go when we read it in context and we are looking
Speaker:at the whole of the New Testament.
Speaker:Are there any places where specific actions are called sin?
Speaker:Yes, there are the New Testament names, real behaviors.
Speaker:And to be honest, we've got to say that.
Speaker:So let's look at a few of those before we wrap up here.
Speaker:James four, seven is the clearest whoever knows the right thing to
Speaker:do and they fail to do it for him.
Speaker:It is sin That is specific situation.
Speaker:You knew you did not act.
Speaker:That counts.
Speaker:Galatians five 19 through 21, the works of the flesh list.
Speaker:We've seen it.
Speaker:Paul names out things, specific behaviors, sexual immorality,
Speaker:idolatry, jealousy, drunkenness.
Speaker:But notice the framing.
Speaker:The list is presented as fruit of a miss aimed.
Speaker:Life, flesh versus spirit.
Speaker:The root is orientation.
Speaker:The behaviors are symptoms of that root, not just actions.
Speaker:Romans 1 24 through 32, we all know this list, Paul's list of
Speaker:behaviors, but let's zoom out.
Speaker:The passage starts with exchanging the glory of God for.
Speaker:Idols in verse 23, the behaviors flow from a mis aimed worship.
Speaker:The root is still that hamartia or hamartia missing the mark.
Speaker:And then let's look at Matthew 5 21 through 30.
Speaker:Jesus names anger and lust, but notice what he's doing.
Speaker:He's moving the definition inward, away from the external checklist.
Speaker:Toward the heart's orientation, he's not adding to the behavior list.
Speaker:He is replacing it with something deeper.
Speaker:So what do we find almost every time?
Speaker:The New Testament names specific actions as sin.
Speaker:Those actioned are framed as the fruit of a deeper problem, not the definition of
Speaker:sin itself, not a laundry list of things.
Speaker:The root is always orientation.
Speaker:Are you aimed at the right thing?
Speaker:The mark?
Speaker:The righteousness.
Speaker:The modern church has isolated the fruit, made it the whole definition in many ways,
Speaker:and built a membership system around it.
Speaker:Just like the Pharisees have.
Speaker:The Bible really starts somewhere deeper.
Speaker:That does not mean.
Speaker:Actions do not matter.
Speaker:It means the Bible treats actions as evidence of where you are aimed,
Speaker:not as the thing that determines whether you are in or out.
Speaker:Okay, so that one word sin, it's kinda like the first brick in the
Speaker:guilt engine that is built upon.
Speaker:It worked, and it was done in the first century, probably well before
Speaker:that, and even with what Jesus did, even though he busted that barrier.
Speaker:Over the last few thousand years, it's almost like we've just kept
Speaker:adding it back in and we've got that guilt engine that continues to be
Speaker:added to, and people still see it.
Speaker:Interestingly, sinner never.
Speaker:Meant bad person.
Speaker:Not in the New Testament.
Speaker:It meant outsider.
Speaker:A label was created by the system to Mark who was in or who was out.
Speaker:The Pharisees used it on tax collector shepherds.
Speaker:Like we said earlier, the blind and the poor, they used it on women, Gentiles.
Speaker:They even used it on Jesus.
Speaker:It always meant.
Speaker:The same thing.
Speaker:You're not one of us.
Speaker:And you know what?
Speaker:We do it in our churches today.
Speaker:We do it with types of denominations and definitions of how we read the
Speaker:scripture and how we interpret things.
Speaker:We do it.
Speaker:I've done it.
Speaker:We've all done it.
Speaker:Unfortunately, sin.
Speaker:That word hamartia never meant crime.
Speaker:It meant missing the mark.
Speaker:It's a trust problem, an orientation problem.
Speaker:The modern church reversed it.
Speaker:You're not in our group because you're a sinner.
Speaker:Different direction.
Speaker:Same result, same gatekeeping.
Speaker:Trying to keep people out instead of with open arms, welcoming.
Speaker:Them in Jesus did not argue about which direction the arrow should point.
Speaker:He got rid of the arrow entirely.
Speaker:When you redefine sin using the Bible's own definition, not the
Speaker:churches, the guilt engine starts to stall, but there's other fuel sources
Speaker:that it has, and that is something that we're gonna be looking at next.
Speaker:We've just redefined what sin is or better.
Speaker:We looked at what the New Testament really says about it.
Speaker:In the next episode, we're going to be looking at this word death.
Speaker:I kept reading through the New Testament.
Speaker:I'm going, I don't think that we call death, what they
Speaker:call it in the New Testament.
Speaker:The word the church turned into a threat.
Speaker:It does not mean what we think.
Speaker:That's what we're gonna be looking at next time on Seek Go create.
Speaker:So here's what I'm gonna be leaving with you.
Speaker:Don't take my word for it.
Speaker:I really want you to read this and study it yourself.
Speaker:The actual text.
Speaker:In the order that it was written.
Speaker:When you do that, then you'll start seeing things differently.
Speaker:The proper context, you won't be pulling things out and trying to make 'em fit
Speaker:what we're trying to do in modern day.
Speaker:So you'll find that the New Testament reads like one story told by one
Speaker:generation, and it will change you.
Speaker:Now, don't forget to go download the reading plan, get the information.
Speaker:That kind of helped me see a lot of this, to put it in context in an order
Speaker:that's K two M Foundation slash NT 90.
Speaker:Download it.
Speaker:Start wherever you are.
Speaker:But if you can go in order.
Speaker:And kind of do it in a 90 day timeframe, that would be great.
Speaker:And just see what you find.
Speaker:If it doesn't match what you were taught, pay attention to that.
Speaker:I'm Tim Winders, keep digging.
Speaker:Great to see you here.
Speaker:We're we'll see you on the next episode.
