Sin in the room during perilous times

Perspectives on sin, Biblical truth, and political power.

I went to church this morning to freely associate with sinners, and they with me. There’s sin in the room. Find me a church that would have no sin, and I couldn’t qualify to join, goes the old saw. But it seems like there’s a re-alignment going on in the church, and in life in general, where there’s more of a certain kind of sinfulness, a kind that’s hard to bring to repentance. I’ll get into that in a bit.

But first, some law.

Last night, our family Bible time was on Exodus chapter 20: The Ten Commandments. I’ll lay them out here in the compact form you usually see them.

1. I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a graven image. You shall not bow down or worship them.

3. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal

9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s possessions.

These are the basic laws laid out by God, on how to live a righteous life. God desired to write them in our hearts and on our minds, if we allow it. God also gifted us with wisdom, intelligence, imagination, and for those who choose to receive, the Holy Spirit living within us. Jesus said in John chapter 16 that the Spirit of Truth (the Holy Spirit) will lead us into all truth—not truth that we say is true for us, but God’s eternal truth.

Even within the Church, there are tremendous differences in what Christians believe to be eternal truth. Thankfully, for you and for me, I’m not getting into any of that. Instead, I want to stick to commonsense truth: Stuff you see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears. The Apostle Paul wrote two letters to his young protégé Timothy. At the end of the second letter, Paul reminded Timothy of some truths.

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.

(2 Timothy 3:1-9 NKJV)

I am not smart enough to unpack these verses. It’s really easy to say, “sinner, behold thyself, and thank God I am not this way!” Telling someone you disagree with—or despise—that they fit a whole parade of horribles while one remains standing above such things is a pretty natural human reaction. And it is, of course, completely wrong. This is the prescriptive, invective-laden place that American Christians find themselves these days.

Wisdom is what I seek here, having hauled out this verse and thrown it down with an audible splat. It’s a good thing I can find some wisdom in good measure.

One of the best gifts left to me by my father was a set of "Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible. They are five big books (the 2009 set has six volumes) that generally sit on our book shelf while the Internet beckons. The Internet almost never dispenses wisdom; the big blue volumes are chock full of it.

(You know what’s funny? I am sitting here in front of the computer with the fifth volume of Matthew Henry open and from the other room, my wife asked me why it’s not on the shelf because she was going to use it. Just so you know, we are not the kind of family that has to ration these books. We both laughed.)

For some wisdom on 2 Timothy, I consulted the book, which has that “old library” smell. So comforting. I sneezed several times.

The commentary says that “Timothy must not think it strange if there were in the church bad men; for the net of the gospel was to enclose both good fish and bad,” as Matthew 24 relates. Therefore “we must not be offended at it, nor think the worse of religion or the church for it. Even in gold ore there will be dross, and a great deal of chaff among the wheat when it lies on the floor.”

Also, what are “perilous times?” The commentary notes that perilous means “not so much on account of persecution from without as on account of corruptions within. These would be difficult times, wherein it would be difficult for a man to keep a good conscience.”

Perilous times shall come, “for such as have the form of godliness (v. 5) shall be corrupt and wicked, and do a great deal of damage to the church.”

“Note, 1. Sin makes the times perilous. When there is a general corruption of manners, and of the tempers of men, this makes the times dangerous to live in, for it is hard to keep our integrity in the midst of general corruption.”

“2. The coming of perilous times is an evidence of the truth of scripture-predictions; if the event in this respect did not answer to the prophecy, we might be tempted to question the divinity of the Bible. 3. We are all concerned to know this, to believe and consider it, that we may not be surprised when we see the times perilous.”

Throughout the Bible, Jesus warned of these times, that the wheat and the tares (weeds) should be harvested together. The entire Book of Jude warns of these perilous times.

But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

Jude was not writing about outsiders to the church, but those within it. The times are perilous not because of people outside the church persecuting believers, but because the church itself has corrupt people in its pews, pulpits and presbyters.

These are things we can all see with our own eyes. Entire denominations have decided to abandon two thousand years of Biblical orthodoxy in order to walk through “deconstruction” and “relevancy” to the reigning culture today.

“3. Pride and vain-glory. The times are perilous when men, being proud of themselves, are boasters and blasphemers, boasters before men who they despise and look upon with scorn, and blasphemers of God and of his name. When men to not fear God they will not regard man, and so vice versâ.”

I could go on with points 4-6, but for brevity, I’ll skip directly to number 7, then 11.

“7. The times are perilous when men are false accusers of one another, διαβάλλω—devils one to another, ahving no regard to the good name of others, or to the religioius obligations of an oath, but thinking themselves at liberty to say and do what they please.”

“11. When men are generally lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. When there are more epicures than true Christians, then the times are bad indeed…That is a carnal mind, and if full of enmity against him, which prefers any thing before him, especially such a sordid thing as carnal pleasure is.”

And finally:

“12. When notwithstanding all this, they have the form of godliness (v. 5), are called by the Christian name, baptized into the Christian faith, and make a show of religion; but, how plausible soever their form of godliness is, they deny the power of it.”

“(1.) Men may be very bad and wicked under a profession of religion; they may be lovers of themselves, etc., yet have a form of godliness. (2.) A form of godliness is a very different thing from the power of it; men have have the one and be wholly destitute of the other; yea, they deny it, at least practically in their lives. (3.) From such good Christians must withdraw themselves.”

In simpler terms: church folks might sing in the choir on Sunday and live like the devil the other six days. When you see such people, don’t get too involved with them.

But these are the people with whom many of us attend church, go to Bible study, sit at meals—some of them are our families. And some others who are not Christian by name or practice take up the righteousness abandoned by those in the pews.

Examples abound of sexual predation and coverups at churches and scandals rocking congregations and denominations. Should we be surprised at the existence of such things in perilous times? Timothy would not be surprised, nor Paul, nor Jesus.

For Americans who care about politics and our government (remember, America is not the only government on earth, nor are we by any measure the most righteous), it is indeed perilous. How can a Christian keep a “good conscience” these days? It seems that a vote itself denotes more than just a political decision, but is an endorsement of everything the candidate or party does or intends to do. This is especially true at the national level, and in a time when voters have been programmed for divisive, extremist radicalism.

Biblical standards of decency demand that we place our trust in someone who panders religion godliness while explicitly denying the power, and in fact mocking the power, thereof. But also, God’s commandments demand that we oppose a candidate who expresses contempt for those laws and the God who gave them.

But is our vote really an endorsement of either of those terrible positions, when the church itself is loaded with people who identify their political beliefs over their devotion to their Savior and love for their neighbor? Perhaps our own pride, love for ourselves, unforgiveness, and boasting blinds us to the truth.

The truth is that politics realign, and we are forced to associate with those who would place their vote—their political voice—in sinners, or with those who would advocate sinful policies. This makes for perilous times.

But how should Christians handle perilous times? For me, I turn to Psalm 20, the creed of Israel. Verse 7 says:

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

The Bible says that there will be perilous times. We are in perilous times. The Bible says that Jesus will prevail, and the Church will be victorious over the enemy of our souls. And so it shall be. The only course we can follow is to continue following the Lord and His commandments. We should do what Micah 6:8 tells us:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

The means when there’s sin in the church, we love mercy. When there’s lies, we act justly and seek truth. When there’s pride, we walk humbly, as we cannot claim exclusivity to our own version of what is eternal. We can only follow the Spirit of Truth that lives within every Christian.

So I go to church, and when politics comes up (if it does), I respect those who may differ from me. I understand that their vote carries the same weight, and expresses the same power in their voice as mine. I recognize that mercy requires me to love those who don’t have the same opinions as I have.

But when Christians act like the devil, lying, accusing, and blaspheming, I make sure to keep my distance. There’s sin in the room, but that’s going to happen in perilous times. Whether my brothers and sisters in the pews, at my table, or in my family vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, I am going to keep going to the room I share with sinners. Because I love them.

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