We have neglected the biblical teaching that the origin and essence of sin is rooted in the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:1-5). Consequently, we have tended to define sin as that which is evil, over against that which is good, rather than defining it more profoundly as that which is not in union with Christ, whether “good” or “evil.” Consequently, the church has tended to focus on symptoms rather than on the source of the disease. We have tended to define ourselves as the promoters of good against evil and have often seen ourselves as specialists on good and evil. We have consequently become judges of good and evil rather than lovers of people regardless of whether they are good or evil.
Things are good or evil insofar as they align with or oppose God’s will, not our wills. When God administers judgment, knowing good and evil, it serves God’s purpose of inviting agents into his love. When humans try to do this, however, it tends to facilitate death for ourselves and others.
God alone knows each human heart. God alone knows what each person was originally given to work with in terms of his or her psychological, physical, and even spiritual aptitudes. God alone knows the myriad factors that influence each decision people make. And God alone knows the extent to which people choose what they do out of their own free will and the extent to which their choices are the result of factors outside themselves. While there are intimate contexts in which we are to hold each other accountable (see chapter 12), Scripture uniformly testifies that God alone is able to judge and warns us to not judge (see chapter 6).
We are not satisfied being God-like in our capacity to love; we also want to become God-like in our capacity to judge, which is how the serpent tempts us. The essence of sin is that we play God. Instead of simply deriving life from that which is given at the center of our existence, we try to derive our likeness of God, our life and worth, from that which is forbidden at the center of our existence. Everything depends on humans remaining humans and not trying to be God – not trying to be their own source center. Without God as our center, we are not a source of life but a vacuum that sucks life. We become a virtual black hole.
In this fallen way of life, people and things have worth only to the extent that they fill us. Instead of ascribing unsurpassable worth to others because the Creator does, we ascribe limited worth to people depending on our judgment of them. Every judgment we think, speak, or act upon presupposes that we are in a position of superiority over the person we judge. It presupposes that we are “god” relative to the person or thing we judge. The judgment is invariably self-serving, for we are using it to fill the God-shaped vacuum in our lives. Our judgment cuts us off from our true source of life, and the person we judge becomes a source of life for us. Though we ourselves are sinners, we can, at least for a moment, drink from the well of believing that at least we are not “like that person” (Luke 18:11).
If we are to live the life God intends for us, if we are to participate in the ecstatic love of the triune God, God must be restored to the center of our lives. We must die to ourselves as center, die to our addiction to idols, and die to the perpetual judgments we entertain in our minds. God can only be our source of life when he is the center of our lives.
On the cross, Christ in principle condemned every person as a rebellious and empty center and reconciled every person to God by restoring God as his or her true source center. When we by faith say yes in the core of our being to what God has already done for us in Christ, we begin our participation in this new reality. The believer is a “new self” that lives in Christ and thus participates in God’s divine nature (Rom. 6:3-10). In a most profound sense, this restoration is already accomplished in Jesus Christ. Christ overcomes our separation from God and restores God’s Tree of Life in the center of our existence. The central goal of the Christian life is to yield to the truth of who we already are in Christ and thus manifest this truth in the context of a world that still lives as though it were not true.
Though we participate in the life of the triune God by faith, we only experience and manifest this participation to the extent that we put off all ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that are inconsistent with this divine life. We are already new creations in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Yet we must “put away [our] former way of life, [our] only self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts and … be renewed in the spirit of [our] minds” (Eph. 4:22-23). To the extent that we continue to identify with the old self, we experience this “putting off” as death. The Bible calls it “repentance” (metanoia). Though the term has come to mean feeling remorseful for our sin, it actually means “to turn around.” We turn from our old self that has lived as the center of everything, the judge of everything, and therefore as needing things as a source of life. The prospect of living a life with God as our only source center and, therefore, as the one judge of everything, is threatening to the old self. Yet this is what must be done if we are to experience life in Christ. We must repent. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal.2:20).
Boyd, Gregory A. Repenting of Religion – Turning from Judgment to the Love of God. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.