Doctrine of Sin
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
The result of sin for a Christian often stops short of becoming entrenched or habitual. While not being entrenched as a stronghold, sin can produce milder consequences. For example, sin not confessed and cleansed may produce a feeling of disquiet.
We think of disquiet as a sense that something is wrong, producing worry or anxiety. This feeling that something is not right results in inner restlessness or agitation. Such feelings of disquiet can be indicated by comments such as, “Something is wrong but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Isaiah 57:20 captures these feelings by an analogy with the sea, saying, “The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest.” The next verse gives us God’s point of view, “There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.”
Unconfessed sin can be the cause of a general feeling of disquietude.
Sometimes we experience this kind of result brought on by sin as a somewhat vague sense of troubling within our spirits.
Proverbs 22:8 long ago made the observation, “He who sows wickedness reaps trouble.”
In Hosea’s time, Bethel (“House of God”) had become a center for idolatry. The prophet then referred to it by another name, admonishing the people not to go up to Beth Aven (“House of trouble”). For that ancient generation of the people of God, sin had taken the form of pagan worship.
Whatever the nature of sin in the lives of God’s people, the results can show up as a general troubling of heart. Over time a troubled heart becomes a source of spiritual misery and sorrow.
After his infamous sins David experienced such inner turmoil during the time he did not make confession of his sins before the Lord. He described it in these words: “When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer” (Ps. 32:3–4). His subsequent prayer of repentance contained the plea, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation” (Ps. 51:12).
In our day the common label for the disquiet that results from sin is guilt. Guilt for believers can show up as a sense of being liable to punishment for something done that should not have been. It is the feeling that one has been bad or done wrong.
Guilt may well describe the source of feelings of having disappointed God, who loves us supremely, and fallen short of His expectations. The tendency can be to multiply guilt by seeking to avoid God.
Sense of guilt
When one feels guilty before Him the tendency is to keep one’s distance. Why do some people quit going to church or neglect Bible reading and prayer? It may well be that sin has wrought in them a deserved sense of guilt.
So rather than confessing it and receiving God’s offer of cleansing they seek to lessen the guilt feelings by avoiding the very One who can relieve guilt feelings.
Such was the experience of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God. When God sought to join them in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid from Him (Gen. 3:8). Unrelieved guilt can compound itself by causing a person to attempt to avoid God.
Sincere confession of sin sets things right with God. Forgiveness and cleansing is the way out of disquietude and guilt.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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