Over the last months, I have been asked about sin by several parishioners. Today someone asked me, “What does Jesus save us from?” It’s a very good question. In my sermon on Sunday, I said that one important aspect of the incarnation is that in Christ we see the possibility of what humanity might be, what we were intended by God, and prevented by the fall from becoming. In fact, most traditional theology (the Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, et al.) argues that salvation offered by and through Jesus Christ goes beyond what we might have achieved on our own had we not sinned.

But what is sin? We tend to think of sin in terms of particular acts–going against the ten commandments, for example. But sin is more than that. As I understand it, sin is above all a way of describing the fact that as humans we are not as God created us to be. There is a fundamental brokenness in us that we experience in different ways: when our body betrays us, when we know what we ought to do, but cannot or will not do it, when we hurt others or ourselves out of sheer maliciousness or even ignorance. That brokenness we interpret as sin. God created us as good, but because of the fall, we are not whole beings.

I reject the notion of substitutionary atonement, that Jesus Christ had to die to save us from our sins, that “he paid the price” or that “there is power in the blood” to quote two familiar 19th century hymns. Rather in his life, in the cross, and in the resurrection, Jesus Christ shows us what humanity might be, could be, should be. In his self-giving love, he overcomes our brokenness and offers us a way that we, too, might overcome it.