Our women's group at church is starting a study through Jerry Bridges' book, "Respectable Sins". Just looking at the table of contents makes me want to hide under my bed. He hits on things like ungodliness, anxiety & frustration, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, lack of self control, impatience & irritability, anger, judgementalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue, and worldliness. He calls them respectable sins because we tend to tolerate them in our lives and maybe even make excuses for them, while pointing out the grosser sins of others.
I've read the first three chapters and done my study guide homework. I can see this will be a challenging study. Who likes to have their "pet" sins exposed? Jerry says that sin is sin no matter how small we think it is. All sin is breaking God's law. All sin is despising God's word and God Himself. Ouch.
I shared some of this with a friend of mine, and he said, "Well, we all have short-comings or we wouldn't be here in the first place." This just illustrates a point Jerry makes about our society minimizing sin. My friend apparently felt that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves.
Jerry talks about how society has minimized sin....the disappearance of sin from society. A person didn't "cheat" ....they simply made a bad choice. He didn't lie, he just embellished the truth a little bit. She didn't commit adultery, she just had an affair. Homosexuality is simply an alternate life-style. He didn't steal from his employer, he just took what was rightfully his anyway....he deserved it. Our society and we as Christians have softened what sin is, so it is easier to tolerate.
Thankfully, Jerry also has chapters on the remedy for sin, and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us deal with sin and he has a chapter on directions for dealing with sins. At least he doesn't leave us high and dry.
I will probably post more on this as our study gets under way....
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