We live in the age of people believing, generally speaking, that they're good people. This may be true from a societal standpoint: after all, they've never murdered someone, they pay their taxes, they do their civic duty. What is more, Christians seem to gather preachers based on the premise that we're all basically pretty good people. Yet, from beginning to end, the Bible tells us that we're all lost. Every one of us, even the basically good, pretty good, and generally good people. When people say to believers "I'm basically a good person," what they're trying to communicate is "I don't need God to be good," and this is the trouble that began all of the mess we're in now. It's why we need to have honest conversations about sin and repentance. None of us is good on our own. The choice of Adam and Eve wasn't about fruit picking: it was "You let Me (God), your designer and creator define good, or you (the creation) choose for yourselves what is good, yet this way leads to death." And it wasn't merely a physical death, but a spiritual death! Within a generation, murder was introduced, though God pleaded with Cain not to kill his brother. The next generation saw slavery and depravity of all sorts. We see the same thing happening today. We hear people say "I'm a good person, I don't need church," and yet we see people burning down cities, and others justifying their actions. We see people murdering others, and the murderer is lauded as a victim. We see lawlessness of all sorts, because people don't need God to be good. And the further away from God society gets, the worse it become, both in lawlessness and in tyranny.
This is why we need to talk about sin. Sin isn't merely a list of good or bad, it's a decision we make to deviate from our design and our designer. It's us saying "I don't need God to be good," when He literally breathed His life in to us and made us living beings. Jesus came to address sin and to pay the penalty for it. He literally died for it! Why don't we talk about it? If The Church wants to remove sin from their message, that means there is no repentance, which means there's no salvation. It's time we talk about these things (We'll talk more on repentance tomorrow), and do so lovingly, yet boldly. The world is lost in its sin, and there is only one solution, Jesus Christ! Ephesians 2:1-22 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
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