The Church That Won't Say the Word Sin

A man sits in a padded chair on a Sunday and cries.

He cries because something is wrong and he knows it. He has known it for years. There is a weight on him he cannot set down, a thing he did or a thing he keeps doing, and it follows him into the parking lot and home and into bed at night.

Then the man on the stage tells him the weight is not real.

Not in those words. The words are softer than that. He hears that he is not broken, he is becoming. He hears that guilt is a lie the world told him. He hears that God does not want him to feel bad, God wants him to feel valued. He hears the word "journey" and the word "healing" and the word "authentic." He does not hear the word sin. He will not hear it this week and he did not hear it last week and he will not hear it next week either.

So he goes home still carrying the weight, and now he is confused too. Because they told him the weight was not there, and he can feel it.

You cannot heal a wound you are not allowed to name.

Let me say what I am not saying, before the anger runs ahead of the truth. A church that is shallow is not automatically a church that is false. A pastor who is tired and imperfect and slow is not a wolf. There are good men in small pulpits preaching real repentance to forty people, and they get it wrong sometimes, and God uses them anyway. I am not talking about them. I am talking about a specific lie. It has a shape. Here is the shape.

It renames the disease so the cure is no longer needed. It takes sin and calls it brokenness, so nobody has to repent of it, only recover from it. It takes repentance and calls it self-care, so you tend to yourself instead of turning from yourself. And it takes the holy God who made you and reduces Him to something that only ever affirms you. An idol with His name on it. It looks like church. It uses the songs. But it has quietly removed the one thing you came in the door needing.

Because if you are not a sinner, you do not need a Savior. You need a coach. You need a program. You need to feel better about the man you already are. And that is a smaller thing than what Jesus died to give you, and everyone in that room can feel that it is smaller, even the man crying in the padded chair.

Paul stood in Athens, in a city full of idols and clever men, and he did not flatter them. Look at what he said God requires of them. "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent" (Acts 17:30). All people. Everywhere. Repent. That is not a self-help seminar. That is a command from the throne, delivered to educated pagans who thought they were fine. The affirmation gospel could not have preached that sermon. It has no category for a God who commands.

Here is the mercy in it. God overlooked the times of ignorance. He was patient. But the patience does not end in a shrug. It ends in a command to turn. That command is not cruelty. It is the doorway. A God who tells you to repent is a God who has made a way back.

John said it plainer than anyone. "If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us" (1 John 1:8, 9, 10). Read that middle sentence again. Confess, and He forgives, and He cleanses. That is the relief the man was crying for. The church that will not say the word sin cannot offer him the second sentence, because it deleted the first.

Now turn the knife. I have to turn it on myself first and so do you.

Because it is easy to sit here angry at those churches while you quietly do the same thing in your own chest. You rename your own sin all week. You call your anger "just being honest." You call your lust "a rough patch." You call the way you treat your wife "stress." You do to yourself exactly what you hate the soft pulpit for doing to the room. You will not say the word about your own life. Take the log out of your own eye first. Go name the specific thing. Not "I struggle." The actual thing, out loud, to God, this week.

Paul warned Timothy this was coming. "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires" (2 Timothy 4:3). Notice who is at fault. Not only the teachers. The people gathered them. They wanted the tickle. So before you blame the man on the stage, ask whether you have been shopping for a church that would leave you comfortable. That is a sin too, and it has your name on it.

Brother, hear this next part slow. If you are the man in the padded chair, the one drowning in a guilt they keep telling you not to feel, you are not crazy. The guilt is real because the sin is real, and that is actually good news, because a real disease has a real cure. His name is Jesus, and He did not come to tell you that you are fine. He came to die for men who are not. Your church took the word away. Christ did not. Go to Him and use it. Say "I have sinned." Then hear the second sentence: He is faithful and righteous to forgive.

Do two things this week.

In your own house first: name one specific sin you have been renaming. Out loud, to God. Confess it plainly and take Him at 1 John 1:9. Do not skip your own eye to fix somebody else's.

Then, gently, go find the brother next to you who is drowning. Do not go as his judge. "Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted" (Galatians 6:1). Sit with him. Tell him the guilt he feels is not a malfunction, it is a mercy pointing him somewhere. Then point him at the Man who takes it away. Not to feel valued. To be forgiven.