sermon: The Burden of Sin
Charles Whitaker
Given 04-Aug-18; Sermon #1445B; 36 minutes
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There are a number of systems through which this world's churches generate converts. For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses employs a system involving door-to-door visitation. The invitation system, immensely popular over the last 2,200 years or so, is another such system, and it has become a major part of the stock-and-trade of evangelical preachers. In their parlance, they refer to it as a come forward call, you know, come forward to the altar or as an altar call.
Almost every student in an evangelically oriented seminary takes a course in homiletics, how to write, how to deliver sermons. And one of the units in such a course is the altar call, how to make it work.
Now your light man knows just what lights to dim, how much, and your organist has selected the most syrupy hymn that was ever written, soft now, not too loud. You have to keep the atmosphere, you see, the emotion charged, the demon-inspired atmosphere or ambience. And ambience is what you make it. Recently, one member told me of an evangelically oriented organization that dubs itself "Calling All Skaters" or calling all skateboarders. And members visit venues frequented by skateboarders, you see, preaching their version of the gospel.
In the thinking of evangelicals, the altar in the church, it is usually wooden, represents the cross. And in their symbolism, those who come forward, up to the altar, are indeed coming to Jesus on the cross. You see, it is a type of come-to-Jesus meeting. That is the way they look at it in their symbolism.
Well, we already here see some very major problems, do we not? Indeed, it would surprise none of us that the altar calls typically contain a pack of lies, and brethren, they sure do. What an agglomeration of misinterpreted, misquoted, misconstrued, misunderstood scriptures altar calls contain. I will give you some examples.
The evangelist might say something like, "Come forward. Don't be afraid to lay your sins on your Savior's shoulders as He's nailed to the cross." Or what about "Jesus is calling? Do you hear Him calling? He wants you to give Him your sins tonight. Oh, Jesus is ready tonight, waiting tonight, hoping that you'll throw the burden of your sins onto Him."
But brethren, you begin to understand perhaps why I have entitled my comments today, "The Burden of Sin." Evangelically oriented hymns frequently express this same sort of thinking. We will take a look at some example of these hymns. Evangelists will often lead the congregation in songs of this ilk, either just before or just after an altar call. Here are a few examples.
"All Your Anxiety" is one hymn is written in 1920 by a guy called Edward Joy. "Is there a heart or a burden by sorrow? Is there a life weighed down by care? Come to the cross, each burden bearing all your anxiety. Leave it there." Or what about "At the Cross"? This was written in 1907 by William Henry. "There thy soul shall find sweet rest at the cross. All thy guilt shall pass away, all thy night be turned to day when thy burden thou shalt lay at the cross." "Knock, and It Shall Be Opened." That is a third one. It was written in 1888 by a guy called Daniel Warner. And I want you to notice here the misquoted scripture. "See the blessed invitation, he that knocks may enter in. Will you now accept the offer, casting off your load of sin?" And finally, "Why Do You Wait?" This was written about 10 years before in 1878 by George Root, a very popular hymn writer. "Do you not feel, dear brother, his spirit now striving within? Oh, why not accept His salvation and throw off your bondage that's to sin."
Does God ask us, does God require us to to put our sins on Jesus' shoulders, to carry the burden of our sins to the cross and leave it there on Christ? Brethren, the answer is no. It is a flat no. Such a notion manifests the Protestants' major misunderstanding of the truth that Christ bears our sins. Yes, He does that. But they do not understand it correctly at all.
Today I want to take a look at Christ's work of bearing our sins, of carrying our sins. That is a concept that has been most recently brought to the fore by David Grabbe's comments regarding the symbolism of the Azazel. Now, we are not going to be focusing at all on the two goats, but rather we are going to talk about our place and Christ's place in the bearing of sins.
Let us start with one of the images of sin. Let us start with an old, old photograph. You can see it on the Internet. There is images of it on the Internet. It is black and white. It was taken probably in the late 1800s, maybe the early 1900s. It shows convicts. They are dressed in black and white striped clothes in a prison yard. Now one of them, apparently someone who has attempted to escaped and was recaptured walks around with a heavy chain. Now, each link looks to be about 10 inches long or so. It is a pretty heavy chain. And the chain itself is, I would think, about 8 feet long. One end attaches to his ankle and the other one attaches around around his neck. It is cuffed around his neck. It would weigh, I would say at least 50 pounds, perhaps a little bit more.
The presence of the chain impedes, but does not preclude his working, as he is just simply made to drag it along after him. And when he needs to walk at any distance at all, he lifts the chain and puts it up over his shoulder. The chain is part of his walk, and the chain is part of his work. It hobbles him and it restrains him. The chain is at once a restraint and a burden, and its presence makes further escape virtually impossible.
This image somewhat adequately describes sin. It is a part of us, something we cannot shed by ourselves, a burden weighing us down, hobbling us, a part of our work, and a part of our walk, part of our nature. The people of this world live with it, and they die from it. They, through their own efforts, cannot do much about it, anything about it at all. It is just there. Many become callous to it, many come to deny its existence, but nonetheless, it is still there.
Let us begin then by reviewing some Old and New Testament scriptures which establish that sin is indeed a burden. I am going to read these rather quickly, you will not be able to turn to these scriptures.
Psalm 38:4 For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
Proverbs 5:22 (ESV) The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
Isaiah 1:4 [the first part of it] (ISV) Oh you sinful nation, you people burdened down by iniquity.
II Timothy 3:6 [Paul writes] For of that sort who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down by sins, led away by various lusts.
Hebrews 12:1 (TJB) [this really does a very good good job in handling a scripture that very commonly is mistranslated] Therefore, seeing that we are encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, leaving behind all the weight of the sin which surrounds us, let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
The Complete Jewish Bible puts it, "Let us put aside every impediment, that is, the sin that so easily hampers our forward movement." And another very good translation of this passage is from The Voice, "Let us drop every extra weight, every sin that clings to us."
The Scriptures do indeed establish the fact that sin is a burden. It is like a heavy weight, a chain, that encumbers us and it restrains us. But I need to look further into this last passage. For you see, the evangelicals would say that I have painted myself into a corner, logically, at least, by quoting Hebrews 12:1. For does it not command us to lay aside, to put aside, or to drop sins? They therefore would argue that it is perfectly fine for them to admonish people to come forward, to come to the altar, to come to the cross and to lay this chain of sin on Christ.
Well, I need to address this, brethren, because this is quite an accusation that they would make. The verb translated lay aside, or drop, or leave behind, or put aside in these various translations of Hebrews 12:1 is a polythemic and it appears eight times in the New Testament. Its first use is very straightforward, very concrete. Acts 7, verse 58 because it uses a polythemic, and it talks there about those people who stoned Stephen laid aside their cloaks at the feet of Saul. But it very clearly it means lay aside, set aside. In all of its seven other uses in the Bible, the uses of polythemic refers to our putting sin out of our lives during our period of sanctification, not during the period of our initial justification.
Not in Hebrews 12:1, nor in any of its other uses, and we will take a look at all those uses, but not in any of them does a polythemic refer to our laying of sins on Christ. In all of these seven cases, the audience is church people, they are converted people—what they need to do in the process of sanctification, what they need to do in order to grow to become like Jesus Christ.
So the evangelicals who argue that this passage is correct and justifies their calling people up to the altar, they are all wet.
Let us take a look at those seven other passages.
Romans 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
So then, let us notice that it says us. It is the already-justified people in God's church. Romans 11 talks about the fact that Paul wrote to people in the church at Rome, and here he is talking to church people.
Ephesians 4:22 [Paul admonishes us] Put off [your old self] concerning your former conduct.
And just a few verses down in verse 25,
Ephesians 4:25 Therefore, putting away [there it is polythemic] lying, "Let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor."
Colossians 3:8 But now you yourselves [people in the church] are to put off all of these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and filthy language from your mouth.
James 1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word.
I Peter 2:1 Therefore, lay aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking.
We will spend a little bit of time on this verse. None of these passages, brethren, and these are all of the uses of this verb, a polythemy, none of them speak of laying our sins on Christ so that He can carry them away. Rather, these scriptures refer to our ongoing work of overcoming sin in cooperation, of course, with Christ as He works in us to sanctify us.
Sin is a burden. We have established that, the Scriptures do; it is a horrible burden. Now, let us look a little bit deeper into I Peter 2. I promised you we would spend some time there and consider what does it mean when we say that Christ bears sins? In a few words, it means that He carries sins out of the sight of God. The aphorism "God forgives and forgets" is probably germane here. Christ carries them so far away that God forgets them. We will see that later on.
Now, of course, Christ does not literally carry sins to, say, another galaxy or something like that. And I think we all understand, He does not physically carry them away. Not literally, in this sense. The apostle Peter, writing here in I Peter 2:24. It is quite plain. He says that,
I Peter 2:24 Christ Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.
He was stationary, largely. He was on the cross. So when we speak of Christ bearing our sins, carrying our sins, we do not imply physical movement or literal movement. This is kind of important, people do not always understand this. Someone tried to convince me one time that Christ carried away our sins when He preached the spirits in prison. That is described in I Peter 3:18. No, it says that Christ preached. It does not say He bore, it does not say He carried. That is the wrong verb. It does not prove it at all that Christ carried our sins in that time.
Another person writing a letter to the church absolutely insisted that Christ carried our sins away when He returned to the Father after His resurrection. I do not think so. I mean, the whole idea is to separate sin as far as possible from the Father, not to deposit them in front of the throne and the Holy of Holies! That does not make any sense. It is plain ludicrous on its face.
No, absolutely, Christ's bearing or carrying sins is a spiritual matter. In fact, Peter, writing in the same passage, makes this spiritual orientation of his words crystal clear. So let us spend a little bit of time here in I Peter 2. We will go up 20 verses or so and look at verse 4 and see what he says in verse 4 and following.
I Peter 2:4-5 Coming to Him [the context is prayer] as a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, like living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices [keep track of that spiritual sacrifices] acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Peter says we are like Christ, all living stones, constructed as a spiritual house to the end that we may offer spiritual sacrifices to the Father. Peter's teaching here is that we can offer effective spiritual sacrifices, that is, prayer, because Christ, as it said there in Hebrews 10, opened a new and living way for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, thereby giving us confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus. And I refer you to Psalm 141:2 regarding our prayers being a sacrifice.
Psalm 141:2 Let my prayer be set before You [before God] as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
I have digressed a bit, so let us kind of back up a little bit to the idea that Christ's bearing of our sins is a spiritual matter, just like prayer is. I mean, it is physical, we all pray physically, but it is spiritual, it is a spiritual sacrifice. God sees it spiritually.
Importantly, brethren, the verb "offer" that appears there in I Peter 2:5, where it says "offer spiritual sacrifices," well, that is exactly the same Greek verb as "bore" that we saw in I Peter 2:24, where it says that Christ Himself bore our sins. Same verb, same verb exactly. It is a verb called epairó. It means to lift up and therefore it can refer to the lifting up of our hands in prayer, and it can refer to lifting up an animal in a sacrifice, and that is the image that informs epairo in meaning offering. Christ offered up spiritual sacrifices, brethren, and so do we. His carrying of sins is a spiritual matter. It is very real, but it is spiritual.
With the understanding that Christ spiritually carries sins away from God's sight, let us briefly establish that God forgets about our sins, about those sins that have been carried away.
Isaiah 43:25 "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins."
Jeremiah 31:34 [this is quoted in Hebrews 8:12 so there is two witnesses of this] "For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
Isaiah 38:17 [this treats the subject metaphorically] For You have cast all my sins behind Your back.
Micah 7:19 [It also states forgetfulness, a true figurative language.] He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea.
God forgets our sins because Christ bears them away so significantly and so profoundly that they become out of God's sight, just as when we throw something behind our back, and it becomes out of our universe, as it were, or when we throw something into the ocean, usually you do not find the bottle again, do you? The adage "out of sight, out of mind" may be relevant here.
So brethren, with this background, let us turn to a number of scriptures which speak of Christ's bearing or carrying our sins on the tree. And we will start with the first couplet of Isaiah 53, verse 4.
Isaiah 53:4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Two verbs appear here. They are near synonyms, if not total synonyms, borne and carried. The first verb borne is nasá, and it appears some 654 times in the Old Testament. It is a highly polyvalent word, and that simply means it has lots and lots and lots and lots of meanings. It is kind of like the English verb put, just as an example here. It can mean you put somebody to death; you can put a question to the floor of the Senate; you put flowers on the table; you can put laws into effect; you can put money on a horse. A plant puts forth foliage. Put can even be used as a noun. Put is a polyvalent word, it has a lot of meanings.
In the King James Version, the translators render nasá in more than 10 different ways, ranging from bear, to forgive, to exalt, to obtain, to respect. All kinds of meanings, and colloquially speaking, brethren, they are not synonyms.
This state of affairs can make it very hard to pinpoint meaning so the translators really have to pay close attention to context when they run across this kind of thing. And hence to clarify this important point—and this is an important point to God—God inspired the use of a second verb in this couplet, and it is translated carried in this particular translation. It is cabal[?]. So, Christ carried, and He brought. He did two things. Now cabal[?] only appears nine times in the Old Testament, and the translators of the King James Version render it carry and bear seven of those nine times. The meaning is pretty straightforward. It really simply means to carry. It is pretty obvious. All in all, Isaiah's meaning becomes quite clear, the Messiah does carry our sins.
Please note Matthew 8. As I said, this was a very important point to God. God wants us to understand that Christ carries our sins, and so He provides a New Testament witness to it. He inspired Matthew to quote Isaiah 53:4 here. He is quoted, and this gives us more insight into those verbs.
Matthew 8:17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: "He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses."
Again, in this quotation of Isaiah 53:4, there are two verbs. one is translated took, the other one is translated bore. The verb bore is a Greek verb bustazo, and it means to bear. And a good example of that, a very concrete example, very everyday example, is Mark 14:13. And there, Christ, it is near Passover, He tells two of His disciples to go into Jerusalem and prepare for the Passover, and there they will find a man carrying a pitcher of water. We do not know whether he is carrying on his head, on his shoulder, on his hand, but he is carrying it. He is bearing it. It is very straightforward. A child would understand this.
But it is the verb translated "took" in this passage that is most telling. It's the verb lambano. And it appears 263 times in the New Testament, but by far and away, always in the sense of "to receive." When you receive something, you take it to yourself, you take it upon yourself. This is a very strong verb. For instance, the Passion Translation renders this particular passage in this way. "Christ put upon Himself all weaknesses."
This is the same take, lambano, as appears in Philippians 2:7, where Christ takes on the form of a servant. And this is the same verb that appears in Revelation 5:7, where Christ took the scroll. He took it to Himself. He received it to Himself. He brought it to Himself. This verb is about as straightforward as it can be. Christ took, He took to Himself in an active sense. There is no notion here of His passively taking sins dumped on Him by some person when he came to an altar, when he came to what they symbolically say the cross. That connotation is absolutely absent in these verses. The Protestants who teach this are wrong—dead wrong.
At this point, I am going to ask: in any of these examples, Matthew and Isaiah, have you seen verbiage to indicate that people throw or put their sins on Christ? The answer is no, you do not. I will answer the question for you. Christ voluntarily, He actively, and I want you to note, He did this in the past tense. He took our sins upon Himself. He initiated the carrying away of our sins, and He finished the carrying away of our sins. He is the Author and the Finisher of our salvation, as Hebrews 12:2 puts it. The Complete Jewish Bible calls Him the Initiator and the Completer of our salvation.
I call your attention once more to a scripture that we looked at earlier in a slightly different context, I Peter 2:24. He Himself, Christ Himself did it. He bore our sins in His body on the tree. The emphasis is on Christ's act. We did not dump our sins on Him. He himself took them. Any number of scriptures indicate this active participation by Christ in the removal of sins.
Take a look at some of those other scriptures. In Titus 2:14 Paul reminds us there that Christ gave Himself to redeem us from all lawlessness. John Ritenbaugh has pointed out that Christ was in complete control of the situation at His crucifixion. No one put anything on Him. No one took His life. He gave it voluntarily, and He gave it willingly. He said this in John 10, verses 17 and 18.
John 10:17-18 "Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, because I lay it down of Myself."
This concept appears over and over and over again in the Scriptures and in totally different contexts.
Matthew 20:28 [breaking into the middle of a thought] "Just as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
Galatians 1:3-4 [in the salutation of his letter] Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.
There is another scripture that talks about the sacrifice. Ephesians 5, verses 25 and 26, in the same chapter. Notice that this is in a totally different context. This is talking about a marriage situation.
Ephesians 5:25-26 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her.
And the sixth example, which is is a quick one.
I Timothy 2:6 [Christ] gave Himself as a ransom for all.
Please turn to John 1. As I wind down, let us consider a somewhat overlooked verb indicating Christ's actively bearing our sins away. Here John the Baptist prophesied concerning the work of Jesus Christ. We will take a look at verse 29.
John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"
The apostle John uses almost exactly the same terminology, same verb and everything later on in I John 3:5.
I John 3:5 [Christ] was manifested to take away sins.
The Greek verb rendered "take away" there, in both John 1:29 and I John 3:5 is iro. The translators of the King James Version commonly render iro as to take up, to take away, to take. It can be very strong in a case like away with (we will see an example of that). It can also be translated lift up and bear. This is a remarkably strong verb. In its first use, this is Matthew 4:6, and Satan is here using it actually, and he is quoting Psalm 91:11-12, and this is when he was quoting it to Christ at the time of the temptation of Christ. And he says at that point,
Matthew 4:6 "In [angels] hands they shall bear you up [that is I will bear you up], lest you dash your foot against a stone."
Iro appears as take up in Christ's statement recorded in,
Matthew 16:24 "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."
In Luke 23:18 iro appears in a particularly strong context, where the people shout, "Away with this Man, and release to us Barabbas."
As a fourth example, iro also appears in Matthew 27, verse 32.
Matthew 27:32 And they compelled Simon to bear His cross." [to take it up]
Finally, Colossians 2:14. This is a Pauline quote here. Iro also appears. Christ has destroyed what was written against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.
Looking at both John 1:29 and I John 3:5, looking at them together, we see the use of this decidedly strong verb to indicate that Christ took away sins. Brethren, we are powerless to remove the heavy chain of sin burdening us. It is fast connected to us. We did not, and we could not unfasten that chain. We could not remove it. We could not lift it up. We could not place it on Christ's shoulder on the cross. While we were yet sinners, Paul writes in Romans 5, Christ lifted the heavy chain from us—the chain that burdens us—and He took it on Himself in what was an active and overt display of His agape love, to avert that we ourselves can place our sins on Jesus, as some of these hymns said.
You see, to say that is not only theologically errant, but it is arrogantly presumptuous. Indeed, the evangelists issuing altar calls usurp God's prerogative to call. Because He calls, and He does not need an evangelist's showmanship to get people's attention. God does not need the light man, and God does not need the organist. The worldly evangelists grossly mislead people. Do not fall for that deception!
The evangelicals, with their altar calls, deny exactly what the Catholic crucifix so graphically denies, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both the crucifix and the altar call teach that Christ is still on the cross, just there waiting for people to lay on Him a burden of sin. Hebrews 10:10 belies that deception, brethren, indicating that Christ died "once and for all," as it says there, once and for all time. His work on the cross is finished, something that He made absolutely clear Himself. You can check, it is John 19:30.
Christ is now at His Father's side in heaven. He is interceding for His people. And just as Satan has deceived people into believing that He carries their sins away, so has Satan deceived people into believing that they themselves can lay their past sins aside. Rather, it just does not work that way.
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Sermon Topics
The Gospel
