The Greatest Sin

Greatest Sin

I was asked recently what, in my opinion, was the greatest sin of the church. Now I am not one to pull the church apart at the seams, at least I hope I’m not, but I had to think a little bit before giving an answer. There are so many ways the church falls short and the single factor that spells out why this is so is that we are human. We have the power of reason. When you mix reason with intellect and ego you have the perfect recipe for disaster.

The church has always been inward looking. That is actually in direct disobedience to the Great Commission which speaks about going and making disciples. The church, particularly the church of the 21^st century, is apathetic. It is resistant to almost any change and wants to keep whatever status quo exists. The church, in general, is judgemental beyond any reasonable reason, but again, this can be put down to our humanistic tendencies.

I suppose all the false doctrine being touted around at the moment is pretty serious. You know, when people start to manipulate God’s Word to suit their own ends then I guess God must take a pretty dim view. Yet again though, this has been done for centuries. Look at the Pharisees. The devil isn’t real - hell doesn’t exist – one man/one woman is old hat and we make up our own rules in the name of the new god of political correctness. All these false doctrines giving false hope and false witness to a Holy God.

Another quite serious offence committed by the church has been the amazing display of disunity. One church claiming to be right and all others wrong and all because of a point of theological unimportance that is barely backed up by God’s Word. We call it denominationalism – a big word for what is mostly hot air !!!

After mulling over all these claimants, I had to settle on the sin of unbelief as being the greatest sin of the church in 2013. We chant our core beliefs week after week yet we never have acted upon them. We pray for much but, unbelieving, we receive little. The church has paid long and eloquent lip service to God’s promises as written in His Word but it has hardly ever acted as if it believes it. We question much of what God’s Word says. God our Provider, God our Healer, God our Protector, God our Teacher – seems to me that we say all these things but our actions deny each and every one of them.

God is our Provider, yet we prefer to provide for ourselves. We rely on our own efforts. We complain when God doesn’t give us all that we want but forget that He supplies all our needs.

God is our Healer, yet we run for help at every little turn. We pray for healing but we don’t even believe God heals in this day and age. We pay lip service only – there is no expectation or even much hope for our healing.

God is our Protector, yet we insist that we take every opportunity to insure against the most unlikely events. We rely on the protection that we can supply rather than on the protection that God will supply.

God is our Teacher, yet we rarely if ever learn from our mistakes. He says, “Trust Me,” but we don’t trust Him. He says, “This way,” yet we prefer to chart our own course. He says, “Listen to Me,” yet we listen to any other available voice.

At worst it is unbelief or apostasy by any other name – this is the besetting sin of the church today. Just my opinion – that’s all.