the wages of sin
reflections on the fear of divine punishment
The fear of divine punishment was impressed on me early in life. The flip side of every Sunday school lesson about accepting Jesus in my heart was a warning of Hell’s eternal fire. I knew God loved me, but I also knew he was always watching. Each time I told a small lie or stole a piece of candy from the pantry, I’d look up into the sky to spot the lightning before it could strike.
This fear evolved as my faith did. By my teenage years, I worried that if I “missed the mark” of faithfulness or “fell short” of obedience God might revoke the blessings predestined for me. The degree of good things taken away, in my mind, must be proportionate to the severity of the sin: If I used my allotted lunch money to buy soda instead of a sandwich, maybe God would lead one less person to raise their hands during youth group worship that evening. But, if did something more heinous, like cheat on a test, perhaps God would tell college admissions departments not to let me in.
This cosmic nit-picking, too, gave way to a more subtle (but equally terrible) questions of divine punishment: Did God’s grace and forgiveness come with an undisclosed tally? What if God gracefully relents from punishment for a time, but if we continue to sin, an even greater punishment awaits us after we reach our allotment? What if I was living my life in sin and didn’t even know it because God was withholding my punishment—giving me the time to find out what this sin is and correct it before the floodgates of terrible consequences broke?
My early years in Bible college did little to squelch this fear. If anything, it only gave more robust theological language for it. I heard from Augustine, “make sure you order your loves correctly!” and from Martin Luther, “if you’re ultimate trust isn’t in God, you’re sinning!” (To be clear, this is not what Augustine or Luther are saying, but it is what I heard at the time).
I could continue on with stories like this, but I imagine you get the gist.
My shift in understanding the nature (and wages) of sin became part of a larger theological shift in my latter years of Bible college and time in seminary. This shift, as I’ve written before, was a move from understanding Christianity as a divine “exam” to a series of open-ended essay prompts. Rather than measuring my Christian faithfullness according to “right” knowledge about God, my understanding of Christianity turned towards good relationship with God and others.
Two (very different) systematic theologies that I’ve engaged with recently are helpful here in illustrating this further:
The first is Kevin W. Hector’s Christianity as a Way of Life, which I reviewed (forthcoming) for the Christian Century. In contrast to the Christian “way of life” as an orientation to and by God, Hector positions sinfulness as an orientation “to and by the world.” (“the world” here functions as “worldiness” that is set against “godliness,” not the material space we inhabit). Rather than allowing our thoughts, words, and deeds to flow out of our relationship to and with God, “sin” is that action which is driven by treating the world as if it was ultimate.
In this frame, Augustine’s ordering of loves is not listing “God, Family, and Football” in a Twitter bio; it is an admonishment to treat God alone as an ultimate end, our ultimate desire. All of our other pursuits (money, happiness, vocation, even love of neighbor…), then, are a means to this end, not ends in themselves. Luther’s account of sin as the misplacement of trust, too, can be reframed as a life marked by that “blessed assurance” that God will care and provide for a creation God has called good.
On this account of orientation, we can understand sin as those actions which are produced by treating this world as the final end and finding our reassurance in that which is temporary rather than God.
The other systematic theology I’ve read recently is Terry Stokes (
What is pertinent here is how both Kevin and Terry center relationships in their understanding of sin and harm. The priority here is recognizing practices and patterns that disrupt, burden, and distance our relationship to God and neighbor. To be sure, neither approach rejects the presence of the Law in the Hebrew Bible or the commands Jesus gives his followers. However, it does reframe the driving force behind following such instruction as love rather than self-interested duty.
I do not have a neat bow to put on this essay. Sin and its wages are complicated and often frustrating topics that have us running in theological loops. However, what I can leave you with is this:
What if God is not watching over us with a bolt of lightning in hand? What if, instead, God is calling us out of ourselves and beckoning us to join together in community marked by the presence of the Holy Spirit?
And, what if “sin” is less about prohibited activity and more about those things we think, do, and say that hinder us from hearing God’s voice and bearing witness to redemption and reconciliation in the world around us? What is sin is a fog that blinds our eyes and minds with an imagination of the world that doesn’t bring God into it? What if clearing this haze begins with reaching our hand out to our neighbor?
Reading:
Lynnette Woo, “On the Elegance of Slowness” (Ekstasis)
Emma Yeager, “The Soul is Symphonic” (
)David Brooks, “The Feminine Way to Wisdom” (Comment)
Watching:
The Romantics (Netflix)
Amar, I am so thankful you wrote this piece. The idea that maybe, "'sin' is that action which is driven by treating the world as if it was ultimate" is intriguing. I love how you posit that sin is that which hinders us from "hearing God’s voice and bearing witness to redemption and reconciliation in the world around us?" I resonated deeply with your article and came away with so much food for thought. Looking forward to reading Hector and Stokes!
I love the questions at the end. It has me thinking about Barth saying that sin is the rejection of God's grace. Framing sin in terms of relationship with God and creation is so different than judicial, legal, or financial infraction. This opens onto good conversations about atonement theology during the patristic age such as deification and recapitulation.