The men’s discipleship study had an interesting conversation this week (prompted by the Didache — a second century pastoral manual) on the topic of “unintentional sins.”
In 1 Corinthians 10:13 Paul says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
Properly understood, this states that you will never face a situation where you have to sin. When you are tempted, God promises that he will always provide a way of escape.
Paul is dealing with the question of temptation. It is true — you will never face a temptation where you are “powerless” to do the right thing. Those who are in Christ now share in his Holy Spirit, and so we can never say, “I couldn’t help it — the temptation was too strong!”
But that does not mean that there is no such thing as “unintentional sin.”
Think about our catechism’s definition of sin:
“Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.”
The example I used with the men was the case of the stolen book. Sometimes, when you buy a used book, the “used” book was actually stolen from a library. You may have purchased the book innocently enough — but if you have purchased stolen property, then you are unjustly possessing the book of another.
It’s easy enough to remedy this if you know the truth — but if you never realize that it was stolen, then you may remain in possession of the stolen book, and thus you have perpetuated the injustice. You are (unwittingly) out of conformity with the law of God.
Of course, there are lots of situations like this. We frequently find ourselves (unwittingly) participating in injustice. If you are a stockholder in a company/organization that practices injustice, then you are investing in (and making money from) their injustice. If you work for a company/organization that practices injustice, then even if you are striving to conduct yourself justly, you are still participating in the corruption.
This shouldn’t surprise us. After all, if we believe what Genesis 6 says about us — that the inclinations of our hearts are only evil continually — that corruption has reached every part of us — we should not be surprised that there are “unintentional sins” where we are not even aware of what we have done wrong.
In other words, our problem is not just that we sin against God. Our problem is also that all creation and all human institutions have become corrupt. Corruption has spread to everyone and everything.
This is a problem that the Old Testament rituals were designed to correct. The sin and guilt offerings were designed to deal with “unintentional sins” — and then once a year on the Day of Atonement the “scapegoat” (Lev 16) was designed to deal with all these unintentional sins. Hebrews 9:7 says that the high priest went into the Holy of Holies “once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.”
And Hebrews goes on to say that Jesus deals with this problem more effectively: “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (9:14)
Notice that our problem is not just “guilt” due to our conscious sins. Our problem is also that we have become impure/blemished — we have become corrupt. And the blood of Jesus deals both with the guilt of our sin, and with the corruption of our nature.
Incidentally (pointing forward to our sermon in two weeks), this is why Peter speaks of baptism “for the forgiveness of sins” and the “gift of the Holy Spirit.” In Christ our legal problem is solved (we are forgiven for our sins) and our corruption problem is solved (we are washed/cleansed from our uncleanness).
Numbers 15 (which we will reach in early December) says more about unintentional sins — so stay tuned…
