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Homefront Family Services, here is this week’s Bible teaching clip, “The Great Equalizer.” The doctrine of sin is uncomfortable because it puts every one of us on the same footing before God - we have all fallen short, and we are all in need of grace. But the diagnosis is also what makes the gospel such good news: the same passage that tells us we have all sinned tells us that we can all be justified freely through Christ.
Check out the clip below, or view the full message below the transcript!
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Clip transcript…
That’s why I said earlier that the doctrine of sin is equalizing. It applies equally to the brilliant person and the dumb person. No, I’m not going to use examples. It applies equally to them.
It applies equally to the religious and the non-religious. Yes, you can point a finger at somebody who is living in sin and say, “That person, apart from the grace of God, is bound for hell.” You are correct—and so are you. Apart from the grace of God, we are all bound for hell.
The powerful and the powerless. Well, this will stick in the side of the woke and the Marxist, that those who oppress, yes, they’re guilty. So are those that are oppressed. They are just as guilty. They are just as in need of grace, the grace of God.
The moral and the immoral are equal. They need the grace of God. None stands before God on the basis of what he has done. All have fallen short, and all are completely dependent upon the grace of the Father.
And please understand, this is why I say it’s equalizing. Because the moment you accept that, what do you realize? You have no grounds for contempt, you have no grounds for judgmentalism. Apart from the grace of Christ, you’re lost, and you’re going to the same place as all of those people that you would judge.
So why is all of this so wonderful?
Listen, a doctor who tells you—and man, there’s a lot of us that do this; we know the problem of sin, but we don’t want to say anything about it—a doctor who says there’s nothing wrong with you when there is? Is that a good doctor? Is that doctor being kind in any way? No! The doctor’s being negligent.
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from an atheist. You know, Penn and Teller—they’re magicians? Okay, Penn Gillette is an atheist. He doesn’t believe in sin, the doctrine of sin. He doesn’t believe in God. None of that stuff. Listen to this. This is Penn Gillette.
“I’ve always said I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize—” meaning evangelize, meaning try to win me over to your faith— “I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward for you, and atheists who think people shouldn’t proselytize and who say, ‘Just leave me alone and keep your religion to yourself.’ —This line kills me— “How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”
Let me make an extension of that: How much do you hate somebody to know that they are sick with sin, and not tell them that there’s a cure? How, how much do you hate people to know that the path that they have embraced for themselves is, is curving inward? They’re worshiping themselves. You know that—and how do you know that? Because that was you—and you don’t bother to tell them that there is a solution. How much do we hate people?
The diagnosis that feels like bad news that nobody wants to hear, that is a prerequisite for the treatment. Only if you’ve been diagnosed do you start getting the treatment.
The doctrine of sin is not an attack on human dignity. It is an honest diagnosis of our real condition. That is what ails all of us, and it makes the gospel make sense. And not just that, it makes every human experience make sense in a way that the world—and H. G. Wells—could never understand.
It explains why all these idealistic movements, and people have the best of ideas and they want to do all the best things, and then they end. These movements end in ways that horrify the people that started them.
It explains how people are so convinced that they’re doing good, and in actuality, they’re doing terrible things. It explains how that happens.
How about this? This one’s personal. It explains how we know exactly what we should do, and yet we end up doing the precise opposite of what we know we should do, and it frustrates us. It’s Paul in in Romans 7: “Why is it that the things that I want to do I don’t do, and the things that I hate I do?”
The doctrine of sin explains that. It explains how good becomes corrupted. It explains how power, even in the hands of good people, becomes abused.
And most of all, Christians, the doctrine of sin is the only diagnosis that will bring about the best news that any person could ever receive.
I read Romans 3:23, or quoted it, earlier. I want to read verse 24 now. This is amazing. Don’t just stop with Romans 3:23. It is incredible. The diagnosis comes in verse 23, and the unbelievable cure is in verse 24. You ready for this? You know the problem.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,—” Keep going. Verse 24—“and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Amen. That’s it. That is why it’s so great: that same doctrine that announces universal sin and universal condemnation—all of us have fallen short of God’s glory—it also announces universal grace that will save everybody. It will save every person who accepts it.