Againstthegrain Podcast. has reminded us that revival runs through getting right with God. On the face of, that’s true. However, we should do so with a right understanding of what the Bible teaches about sin & righteousness. If not, then our efforts to get right with God will surely peter out on the altar of legalism, works righteousness, & Situational Ethics.
“Stop stealing” (to take just one example) most certainly is the grounds of legalism if you define theft as taking property away from someone else regardless of the quality of the thief’s love for God, others, & themselves. God doesn’t define theft as a sin apart from the inner workings of the thief’s internal volitional mechanism.
Defining sin in terms of the bare act is at the heart of works righteousness & legalism. If God judges two cohabitating people sinners based on the bare act of them having sex & cohabitating without regard to their motives, then that means that God judges them sinners because they lack what amounts to a marriage certificate—not their love for God, themselves, & others. That is Works Righteousness writ large.
If true, God can be placated by the marriage certificate or the alcohol content in your bloodstream or in a mixed drink. All you need to do is check off items on a list — but the Bible is adamant in Amos that it wrong to keep a checklist of holy activities **with the wrong motives.**
I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5:21–24, NIV)
The norm that God has given for sexual immorality is in Matt. 5:28 - lustful intent. **Lustful intent** defines sexual immorality, not the bare identity of the target of your affections. Their identity tells what sort of sexual immorality you’re committing. The truth of the matter is that unless God unilaterally restrains you or permanently removes your ability to sin altogether, you & your spouse are in sin when having sex just as much as 2 unmarried people are when they are intimate with each other.
The view that sin & righteousness is reducible to a checklist of spiritual rigamorole is at the heart of judgmentalism that lets married folks moralize to unmarried people about sex & intimacy, which is hypocrisy according to Matt. 7. Yes, people ought to stop sinning - but they ought to do so with a correct understanding of what constitutes sin & righteousness— not the legalistic, hypocritical, unbiblical standard so very prevalent among American (and other) Christians today.
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