Sin?
Song of the Week: Rushmere by Mumford and Sons (2025)
Book of the Week: Far As The Curse Is Found by Michael Williams (2005)
It’s been a while since we spoke about this so I’ll let you know the mile a day rhythm of life is going swimmingly. It’s been a great exercise in discipline and time management, as well as an ongoing lesson in the value of hard work. I’m excited to continue!
We’ve been going through a book on our staff that essentially lays out covenant theology. It’s called Far as the Curse is Found, written by a professor at Covenant Seminary and it’s super readable! If I can read it, you can read it. This last chapter we read is on sin and it’s probably one of the most helpful chapters, not only of the book, but of any systematic content that I’ve read in terms of ministering to people. Here are some of the themes.
One major theme throughout the chapter (and the book (and the Bible)) is that Creation was, at one point, whole, and even in its current state, redeemable. “God’s creation did and can exist without evil or sin.” This is helpful in so many ways, but it’s mainly a great reminder that things are not the way they are supposed to be. There is hope, our situation can be reconciled, and it currently is being redeemed and restored, ultimately to be finished when the Lord returns. Why does that matter - it matters for the story you believe you’re a part of. There’s an overarching narrative to creation that you, whether you like it or know it or not, are a part of, and when you start to explore that, you’ll find yourself asking the question “is there a point to all of this?” You may encounter a season where all you can see is death and destruction around you and how you wrestle with that will determine how you interpret your past, how you interact with the present, and how you think about the future.
Along the same lines, I also submit to you the unfortunately foolish errand of trying to find a rhyme or reason for sin and brokenness. This sounds dismissive, but I’ve actually found this to be quite freeing. From Williams: “Augustine quite rightly said that seeking a rational explanation for the origin of sin is like trying to see darkness or hear silence.” I know communicating this to people can seem a little gaslight-y - this maybe wouldn’t be the word I’d communicate to someone who just lost a loved one, or experienced deep pain or brokenness in a relationship, but all of us have tried to figure out why bad things happen. When we think of the former point, about how sin wasn’t meant to be a part of our experience here, we can easily find ourselves asking, well why then? As hard as it may seem for an individualistic westerner to accept, the path forward is paved with trust and the understanding that your grasp of the goings on of this world is minute - will you release and see God use the bad for good?
One of the other most impactful points was the function of obedience to Law as a maintainer of relationship, not as conditional for the relationship itself. I’ll let Williams’ illustration speak for this. A father asks his son to clean his room. If the son doesn’t, there’s a relational consequence, there will be disunity, lack of harmony and possibly discipline, but not only would a good father would not let the entirety of his love for his son ride on a clean room, but the father son relationship precedes the command to clean. If the relationship were based on a clean room, impersonal from the subject, “a visiting playmate could clean the room and earn the right to be the son”, but that is not so.
This is what I’ve been thinking about, I pray it is helpful.
In love,
Josh
