Many worldviews deny the reality of evil. There are many views which “solve” the problem of evil simply by dispensing with evil itself.

This idea is followed by various forms of pantheism, such as some Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, assorted New Age worldviews and mind-science churches such as Christian Science, Religious Science and Unity. They say, since all is ultimately divine, evil is unreal; it is only a problem of perception, and not a problem of objective reality.”

In the strongest of terms, Scripture affirms the reality of sin and evil. In fact, sin/evil are so real that the only way to eradicate them is by the Triune God of sovereign grace acting to save, centered in the incarnation of God the Son and His triumphant cross work on our behalf.

Scripture has no problem affirming the reality of sin and evil; it even contends in the strongest way possible that humans, especially in our fallen condition, do not take sin/evil seriously enough. This is one of the reasons why we, in our sin, see no need for a Lord and Savior to do what we could never do, namely defeat, destroy, and eradicate sin and evil in the universe and in ourselves.

Several years ago, Dr. Carl Menninger, a world-famous psychiatrist and head of the Menninger clinic, wrote a book called Whatever Happened to Sin?

He observed how the language of sin had gradually faded out of usage as a consequent of the rise of the modern therapeutic culture that had gripped Western society. Now if feeling good is your goal, then admitting your sin or even reflecting on your sin was always going to inhibit fuzzy wuzzy feelings of personal self-validation.

The upshot was that modern culture shoved sin under the carpet and tried to bury feelings of guilt with self-indulgent and self-affirming mantras. The vain attempt to deal with one’s own sins through a mixture of denial and hedonism was always bound to fail because, as the Bible says, “your sin will find you out” (Num 32:23 KJV) and “those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it” (Job 4:8 NIV).

This is an interesting perspective for a psychiatrist because today, in our culture, sin is not an acceptable diagnosis of anything. There is much talk about “values,” and we are called to stand up for “traditional values,” but that is impossible to do without a clear definition of sin.

Ann Melvin was a writer for the Dallas Morning News. she had an interesting column about sin. She said that most sins have gained respectability through politics or profitability. They are legalized, advertised, organized, supervised and taxed. She wrote that clearly we are foundering as a society, preoccupied with values and hopelessly vague on sin. Sin doesn’t really fit into the “self-esteem cult,” and it certainly doesn’t fit into the “victimization syndrome.”

As long as people deny sin, like the rich young ruler, they are unredeemable. A failure to understand our sinfulness, then, ultimately is the supreme gospel tragedy because it obscures the need to understand redemption and the Redeemer.
Charles Sykes writing, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character said,

Unfortunately, that is a formula for social gridlock: the irresistible search for someone or something to blame colliding with the unmovable unwillingness to accept responsibility. Now enshrined in law and jurisprudence, victimism is reshaping the fabric of society, including employment policies, criminal justice, education, urban politics, and, in an increasingly Orwellian emphasis on “sensitivity” in language.

Romans 5:12–21

12Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned:— 13for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come. 15But not as the trespass, so also is the free gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many. 16And not as through one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment came of one unto condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses unto justification. 17For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. 18So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. 19For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.

There is no focus on an individual or even a narrow focus on Israel and its role in the whole sweep of redemptive history. Here the canvas is all of human history. Here the canvas is all of humankind.

You begin with Adam, and you end up finally with Christ and all he has achieved, right into the new heaven and the new earth. Here is a sweeping canvas, and on this canvas you’re painting everything in contrast in order to help us see clearly what is at issue.

Here we’re talking about sin entering.

Later on, sin reigns. In chapter 6, sin can be obeyed. You can obey sin. In 6:23, sin pays wages. In chapter 7, sin seizes opportunities. In chapter 7 also, sin deceives, sin kills. In other words, what you get is a picture of sin seen not as the breaking of an individual rule, as an, “Oops, missed that one,” but sin as a power, a reigning authority that controls, contaminates, destroys, and deceives. Sin, powerfully personified.

Sin enters the picture

First, sin enters. What Paul has in mind certainly, with all of his background, steeped in the Old Testament, is Genesis 3. Sin entered into the world. In some ways, it’s getting harder and harder to deal with that sort of theme today, because sin is not the sort of word that is used commonly

It’s a religious word. It’s a theological word for people who are somewhat on the right, culturally speaking, or else it’s a word that has been relativized to the point that it has meaning only in particular subgroups.

What’s sinful to one person is not sinful to another person. The result of all of this is that sin isn’t odious to us. It’s not serious. It’s not offensive. It’s not heinous. It’s an, “Oops.” It’s not more than that.

We can not come to grips with this passage unless you see how deeply Paul feels about this matter of sin.

Adam and Eve fall in Genesis 3, Satan says, “Don’t you know that when you eat of this fruit you will be like God, knowing good and evil?” In one sense, of course, he was telling the truth. God himself says so at the end of Genesis 3. He says, “Now the man and the woman have become like us, knowing good and evil.”

Adam and Eve are presented initially as being gloriously naïve. They have no memory of wickedness, no memory of evil. Now they’re being invited to increase their moral horizons so that they will have introduced to them categories that are not yet theirs.

The problem is what they are not told is that there’s a stinger in the tail. They will learn about evil not as God knows evil but from the inside, by becoming evil.

God knows about sin in the same way he knows about everything. God knows all that has been, all that is, all that will be, and all that could have been under different circumstances, so of course he knows about sin, but that doesn’t mean he is sinful.

We learn about sin by shaking our fists in God’s face and de-Godding God. That’s what sin is about. Now we become god instead of God.

Originally there is God, and his image bearers think about him, love him, and are devoted to him. They wake up in the middle of the night, and they orient all of their thinking automatically toward him. They are rightly related to each other because they’re rightly related to him, and they know what it means to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. He is the center of their universe.

The entrance of sin does not simply mean, “Oops, I chose some fruit from the wrong tree; sorry about that,” but rather the defiance of God. What is introduced is not the breaking of a rule but the de-Godding of God, so that now, in effect, I become the center of the universe and God, if he, she, or it exists, had jolly well better serve me or, quite frankly, I’ll find another god. That’s the beginning of idolatry.

Now because I am at the center of the universe and you, you twit, think that you’re the center of the universe, then sooner or later we have to build fences and we have to fight over the spoils and we have to consider the introduction of war, envy, jealousy, one-upmanship, arrogance, malice, nurtured bitterness, all because I have de-Godded God and made myself god.

That’s the heart of the Bible’s picture of the introduction of sin.

That’s the kind of thing Paul presupposes when he says sin entered. He does not simply mean there was a broken rule, a nasty mistake but not too serious. He means rather that there was a revolution. God was de-Godded. He was relativized.

When you read through the Old Testament accounts, you come across plenty of and pillage and war and malice and family dysfunction and all kinds of things we see at a social level today, but what is it in the Old Testament when you read through it quickly that most narks God? What is it in the Old Testament that is repeatedly said to make God angry or to raise his jealousy? Murder? Profanity? Lust? Idolatry, again and again and again.

from God’s perspective, that isn’t the heart of the issue. That’s the result of the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is the dethroning of God, idolatry, the de-Godding of God.

That’s why in the New Testament Jesus says the first command is to love God with heart and soul and strength. What that means is that the first sin is not to love God with heart and soul and strength. It’s the one sin you commit every time you commit any other sin. You cannot commit any other sin without committing that sin. It is the foundational sin. It is the de-Godding of God. It is elevating you, your concerns, your wishes, your pleasure, or your self-identity above God.

Sin entered, and death ensued.

What that means is that we are not properly going to understand what Christ did until we see what Adam did.

In the Bible, our problem is defined first and foremost in terms of our relationship to God. That’s our mess.

But if your problem is first and foremost that you, like every other human being, are alienated from God, standing under his judgment, and righteously so, because deep down in all of us we want to be god … we want to be at the center of the universe, we want others to serve us, we want the world to revolve around us … then God help us.

We need someone who will bring us back to God. We need a mediator. We need someone who will deal with our rebellion.