I am fascinated by art restoration. Have you ever watched one of those videos online of someone painstakingly bringing old art back to life?
There’s soot and grime built up from centuries, maybe the paint has cracked or faded, maybe there are even tears or burn marks in the canvas… But then someone with just the right chemicals and tools and paint and skills manages to make a piece look brand new again. It’s crazy what they can do.
Of course it doesn’t always go so well. Do you remember this? An amateur painter in Spain thought, “how hard can it be?” And just absolutely butchered this painting of Jesus.
But you get the point: art restoration, when it’s done correctly, is kind of a miracle. It can give old paintings a new lease on life so they can continue being enjoyed and pondered for centuries to come.
So why are we talking about art restoration? Well, because I believe that this is a perfect illustration of what happens to us when we put our trust in Jesus. We are restored.
SERIES SETUP
But before we get into that, I want to say “welcome.” This is a brand-new sermon series we’re calling “Refocus,” and it’s all about taking a fresh look at a practice that should be common to every Christ-follower. At Grace we call it the practice of
Moral Integrity
Disciples of Jesus reject the corruption of sin and reflect Christ to the world as image bearers of God.
In other words, our journey to be free of sinful thoughts and behavior, to break away from harmful addictions, to be holy… this journey is a defining characteristic of what it means to follow Jesus.
Having integrity with our morals should matter a lot to Christ-followers.
There’s just one problem. These days, I don’t think it does. At least not for a lot of Christians. True moral integrity has kind of taken a back seat.
There are a couple of big reasons for this. First, over the last several decades, Evangelical Churches have leaned hard into what I’ll call “Sin management.”
This involves the idea that your outward displays of godliness are all that matter. We’re going to care a LOT about the things we can see: are you swearing or sleeping around or doing drugs?
And we’ll basically ignore the things we can’t see: are you harboring rage or lust in your heart, are you greedy? No one is going to hold you accountable for that. Just the stuff we can see. So it becomes kind of like a big show.
You’ve just got to manage your sin to look good like the rest of the happy, shiny people at church.
This is how I grew up. I was a pastor’s kid. I learned really quickly the types of things to do and say to make everybody think what an upstanding, godly young man I was.
It wasn’t until my mid 20’s that I finally started to deal with the absolute mess that was on the inside. Until that point for me it was just sin management.
Now, I bet that for some of you, if you’re honest this could be where you still are: you’re not dedicated to biblical morality on the inside. You’re managing your sin to look good…
So that is one big reason moral integrity is lacking these days. Sin management.
But there’s another significant trend in our culture right now and it’s kind of on the opposite side. I’ll call it the rise of hyper-individualism and the rejection of authority. Put simply, “You do you.”
It’s the idea that the very best thing for you is to discover your truth. To find what makes you happy. Nobody can tell you how to live. Especially not some old-fashioned institution using an ancient book full of outdated rules.
This mindset is very prevalent today, especially among younger generations. “I’m going to define for myself what’s right and wrong.”
Now, I know it can be easy to scoff at that perspective, but for people who grew up in “the Church of sin management,” this “you do you” attitude is a natural pendulum swing away from those extremes.
It’s a rejection of the shame and heavy-handed judgmentalism of those who expect you to put on a show.
Sin management is exhausting and disingenuous, and we don’t have time for it anymore. Especially when our culture offers a much more carefree alternative. You do you.
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So here we are. Some of us are acting. Others are saying “you can’t tell me what to do.” Regardless of which side of the pendulum you are, I think we all have a lot of room to grow.
Which is why, for the whole month of August, we are going to refocus our attention on the Bible’s call for moral integrity.
Now, I imagine some of you are like, “Oh, great. A whole month about sin.”
But hear me out. Because in this series I’m going to talk about the Bible’s morality in a way that might be new to some of you.
There won’t be an ounce of heavy-handed, shame-filled legalism, and yet the gravity of what we’ll discuss couldn’t be greater.
For those of us in the sin-management camp, we’re going to see that the biblical call for morality is far more profound than we often realize. This isn’t just about appearing godly. It’s about healing the very world we live in.
And for the “you do you” folks among us, we’re going to see that sin is far more consequential than we give it credit for. This isn’t about feeling guilty. This is about discovering your best possible life.
So let’s get into it. It’s time to refocus our attention on how the Bible calls us to live.
WHAT IS SIN?
So, we’re going to cover a lot of ground in this four-week series. But today I just want to lay some groundwork.
Specifically, I want to answer a deceptively simple question: What is sin?
How would you answer that question? My guess is that if I were to ask you directly, you might say something like, “Sin is breaking God’s rules.” Or “You sin when you do the things God said not to do.”
And that would be a totally normal response. But what if I told you that the concept of sin in Scripture is actually way less about rules at all and way more about identity?
Let me explain what I mean. To fully understand the biblical conception of sin and morality, we have to take a big step back and look at the grand, overarching narrative of the Bible, starting all the way back at the creation of humanity.
In the story of Genesis, God creates an orderly cosmos out of disordered chaos. He fills the earth with life: trees, fish, birds, squirrels… But then he adds one more creature to the mix: humans. And humans are created with a special purpose in mind.
Genesis 1:27-28
God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”
So humans are created in the “image” of God. The Hebrew word for “image” is
tzelem - image, idol
In the ancient world, if you went to the temple of a god like Apollo, you would find a tzelem - an image of Apollo - inside. A statue that represented the deity to be worshipped.
Ancient kings would do this too. In far off provinces they would set up statues - tzelem - of themselves to represent their power over people, even at a distance.
So, in the biblical imagination, this is what humans are. We are the tzelem of God. The image of our Creator.
And just like these ancient statues, we were created to represent the presence and power and character of our God to the rest of creation.
The birds and the fish were also told to be fruitful and multiply, but only humans were created to govern this world in God’s name. To reflect his life and order and peace and justice and abundance and joy and love to our world as his image. That’s why we’re here.
But here’s where the conflict comes into the story. We are not statues, are we? We’re not static symbols of a far-off king.
No, we are living beings with our own minds and desires and free will. Which means we are images that can choose whether or not to reflect God faithfully.
And almost immediately in the story, we choose not to.
The first humans in the story (Adam and Eve), and then all the humans after that, make the choice to trust in their own wisdom. To do what is right in their own eyes and reject the heart of God.
And that rejection… that rebellion. That is sin.
God created us as his image to reflect his justice. Instead, we spread violence and injustice.
God created us to reflect his others-focused love. Instead, we dehumanize and lust and hate and take advantage of each other.
God created us to reflect his order and life. Instead, we seem bent on spreading chaos and destruction and death.
We sin by misrepresenting God’s character to our world.
Martin Luther once called sin, “the human turned in on itself.”
The very creatures designed to be conduits spreading God’s abundant life outwards become completely self-obsessed. Curved in on ourselves. Sin has warped our original purpose.
Or put another way, The image of God in humans is disfigured by our sin.
MAGNUM OPUS
Let’s come back to this painting metaphor. Here’s why it’s so perfect. We were created as God’s masterpiece. Like the magnum opus of a master artist.
But our self-focused rebellion against God’s good desires for this world is like filth smeared across the canvas. Like a blade raked across the image. Like soot that fades vibrant colors to gray.
Murder, rape, violence, addiction, exploitation, envy, gossip, greed…
When you look at sinful humanity, you don’t see God’s desires anymore. You see ours. The image - the tzelem - of God has been disfigured by our sin, and left to our own devices, we just keep making it worse.
The painting of humanity is so disfigured that we can’t even tell what’s right or wrong anymore. It’s hard to even see the original image. And sin - our rebellion - just gains more and more power over us. You see this all throughout the Bible. Sin is described as:
Proverbs 5:22 - ropes that catch and hold us
Hebrews 12:1 - a garment that trips us up
Genesis 4:7 - a hungry beast crouching at our door
Galatians 3:22 - a jail warden keeping us imprisoned
Romans 6:18 - a slave master
James 1:15 - the mother of death
You can see why sin in the Bible is about way more than just breaking a list of moral rules. It’s a matter of identity. Sin - this disfigurement - prevents us from being who we were created to be.
We are the image of God but we have lost our way…
RESTORATION OF THE IMAGE
But there’s good news, isn’t there? The good news is that a disfigured image doesn’t stop being the image.
If you threw red paint all over the Mona Lisa it wouldn’t stop being the Mona Lisa. It would just be a disfigured Mona Lisa in need of recovery.
The image of God has not been lost in humanity. It simply needs to be restored. And our God is a master of restoration.
This is what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. First, he lived as a perfect image of God on the earth. He did what humans were created to do. He reflected God’s heart to creation without sin.
Let me be clear. The “sinlessness of Christ” is not about Jesus being a strait-laced rule follower who was no fun at parties. It’s about the fact that
Jesus rejected selfish desires and reflected God’s love to the world.
He was not curved in on himself. And because of that, everywhere he went people found life and joy and healing and community. He was the image of God on full display.
But Jesus wasn’t just an example of what we could have been. He also fundamentally changed what we can be now.
On the cross this perfect image of God willingly took all of our disfigurement on himself. Our filth. Our soot. Our damage. Our shame. Everything that had accumulated on our canvas from generations spent rejecting God’s desires.
He took it on himself, then experienced the consequences of that disfigurement. Death and separation from the Creator.
Isaiah 53:5
He was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
Our sin accompanied our savior into the grave - the grave that was meant for us… And then God’s Holy Spirit brought Jesus Christ back to life and invited every one of us to follow him into that new life.
When we say ‘yes’ to that invitation - when we follow Jesus into the transformation he made possible - the image of God in each of us begins to shine once more.
Like a master art restorer, the Holy Spirit carefully removes the disfigurement of our sin, restores the vibrancy of faded colors, and recovers who we were meant to be in the first place: The tzelem - the image of God in our world.
You and I can once more become the conduits of God’s life, abundance, and healing to this creation.
CONCLUSION
That is the story of the Bible. That’s the miraculous grace that you and I get to live into today. And I don’t think we can even talk about dealing with sin or moral integrity until we understand where we are in the narrative.
So, the foundation is laid. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to explore what all this looks like practically.
August 11 - Where does moral integrity begin?
(If we want to take sin seriously, where do we even start?)
August 18 - How do we know what biblical morality looks like?
(With all the rules in the Bible - everything from not murdering to not eating shellfish - how do we know which ones are actually God’s will for us?)
August 25 - What do we do when we fail?
(What happens when, despite our best intentions, sin gets the better of us once again?)
It’s going to be a really important month.
CHALLENGE
Before we close for today, though, I want to give a final challenge to each of the groups I spoke about before: those in the “sin management” camp, and those in the “you do you” camp. I’ll start with the second group.
If you find yourself thinking these days that biblical morality isn’t that big of a deal, or if you believe that your own happiness or fulfillment is the ultimate goal of this life, I want to remind you:
Humanity doing what was right in their own eyes is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.
You are right to reject the shame and judgmentalism that has so often been championed by Christians. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
God’s desire for you is not to slap you down with a bunch of heavy-handed rules. He wants you to come alive. To be his image in the world.
To experience the love and joy and abundance that comes from trusting your Creator. I’m as skeptical as anybody, but I am convinced that your best possible life is described within these pages.
I agree with the Apostle Paul in Romans:
Romans 8:12
Dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live.
Do you want to live? Then this stuff matters. “You do you” is a very attractive philosophy. But it’s a hollow one.
The image of God has been disfigured in you because of sin. Don’t make it worse by trying to restore it on your own.
Finally, to those of you who have been focused on “sin management.” Trying not to sin too much and making sure nobody sees it when you do…
I want to tell you that that is also not a biblical approach. Following Jesus is not about appearing righteous. It’s about whole life transformation. Again, Paul is absolutely right when he says:
Romans 12:2
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Over the next few weeks I am not going to be giving you a bunch of rules to follow to look godly at church. I am going to be inviting you to surrender your whole self to God and letting him - the master restorer - recover his image in you.
This might mean bringing some of your hidden sins into the light. It might mean acknowledging the ways you’ve neglected God’s call to love others.
Moral integrity isn’t about sin management. It’s about surrender. It’s about reflecting the life and abundance of our God into a broken world.
It’s time to end the show and start living into the image of God you were born to be.
How wonderful that Jesus has actually made that possible…