P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

THE BIGGEST SIN OF ALL

By all accounts, it was a botched job. Five crooks broke into a building to steal certain goods . . . and they didn’t succeed in getting out with a single one of the targeted items. A security guard noticed the lights on, the cops were called, the guys were arrested and arraigned, and the closely guarded Democratic Party secrets at the Watergate Hotel remained secure. A few months later, without the treasure trove of political dirt he might have gotten out of Larry O’Brien’s office, Richard Nixon cruised to a 49-state-to-1 triumph over the hapless George McGovern.

And you know, in the months that followed, with the Watergate trials and John Dean testimony and confessions of men like Colson, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, I don’t think anyone seriously argued that the clandestine assault on the Watergate was the major issue. And not only because the five thieves were apprehended and the vaults left untouched. Press secretary Ron Ziegler was essentially right when he called Watergate a “third-rate break-in.” Not a big deal. No, that wasn’t the sin that gripped America. What 250 million Americans wanted to know was really very simple: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” And as the secretly taped conversations slowly leaked out, it was soon clear that Nixon and Haldeman had discussed cover-ups just a few days after the whole thing happened. THAT was the real sin that caused Nixon to resign in disgrace.

It was the same back in 1998 when President Clinton was accused of having an affair with an intern. Now, as despicable and unworthy as those actions were, should a President be impeached for his “inappropriate contact” with a willing woman not his wife? Most of us would say no. We might not vote for that person ever again, but in America’s Constitution, that is not a “high crime and misdemeanor.” But that wasn’t the TRUE question either. What people wanted to know was this: Did our elected leader betray America’s trust? Did he lie? Did he attempt to obstruct justice?

What I’m getting at is this, friend. So often we get consumed by certain mistakes and failings – and certainly, the Holy Spirit wants to convict us of ALL our sins and lead us relentlessly to Calvary. At the same time, our fixation with some symptoms can prevent us from noticing that we are edging ever closer to the REAL sin, the true source of our separation from God.

In his book, Mere Christianity, author C. S. Lewis has an essay in a chapter entitled “The Great Sin.” He goes to the common misconception that somehow, sins associated with the Seventh Commandment are perhaps the worst, perhaps the center of our falling from grace. Are sex and pornography and adultery the core of all evil? Admittedly, in many denominations, when a clergyman experienced a “moral fall,” it IS referring to adultery. But notice what Lewis says about that.

“The vice I am talking about,” he writes, “is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the center of Christian morals did NOT lie there. Well, now, we have come to the center. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.” And now get this little bit of Watergate/Lewinsky prioritizing: “Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison.”

I think of a king once who probably had had something to drink on a hot August night. He looked across a Jerusalem boulevard and saw a beautiful woman. He summoned her to the Oval Office and slept with her. When she got pregnant, he concocted an elaborate scheme to fool the woman’s husband; when the plot failed, King David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle. Then he married the woman and thought all was well.

And we say: “Wow! That is a bad sin, in fact, a bad string of sins.” Lying, adultery, murder. That’s a torrid trifecta for the tabloids. And yet King David, even in the haze of his deception and his blood lust, had a heart that longed for union with God. He wanted wholeness. He wanted to be God’s man and God’s subject again. And so please understand when I say that what King David did was really three mosquito bites of iniquity. They were fixable sins because they were not the Great Sin.

Let me finish with C. S. Lewis’ paragraph about Pride; after calling this the essential vice, the “utmost evil,” he adds this scathing indictment:

“It was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete ANTI-GOD state of mind.”

It’s a shrouded mystery in God’s Word about how Lucifer, the highest of God’s angels, became the fallen devil or Satan. Ezekiel chapter 28 hints about it in a veiled parable of sorts about a king of Tyre who was in Eden, perfect in all his ways, “until wickedness was found” in him. Over in Isaiah 14, there’s a cryptic lament about a great being called “morning star, son of the dawn.” And what is his “great sin” that causes him to be cast down to the earth?

“You said in your heart,” Isaiah writes, “‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’”

And you know, friend, that’s it right there. That is the great sin, the core sin, the central sin, the sin that leads to all others. Lucifer was unwilling to say to God: “You’re up there; I’m down here. You’re high; I’m a bit lower. You’re the Creator; I’m the creature.” Plain and simple, Lucifer had an anti-God state of mind. He refused to be ruled; he would not let God be God.

We’ve mentioned these last few days that Pride so often is an unwillingness to accept our place, our common place, as redeemed trophies. We allow our goodness, our self-worth, to be formulated by our toys, our imported cars, our wardrobes . . . instead of being shaped by the purchase price God puts on us at Calvary’s checkout counter. And whenever we compare ourselves with others, when we feel good about ourselves because of what we have done or become, we are essentially refusing to allow God to be God, and for His grace to be the definition of our personhood.

Think with me about 12 disciples sitting in an Upper Room on a Thursday night. Now, the law of averages being what it is, you can probably bet that one or two – maybe even four or five – of those men had a problem with adultery. Maybe one had had an affair; likely, a few of them dabbled in the pornography of the day . . . and I guarantee you there was some form of porn floating around in 31 A.D. There may have been a few drinkers in the group; we know for a fact that Peter was a loud-mouth who couldn’t control his tongue. Thomas was a doubter; all twelve men loved to gossip and to grab for the top spot in life. So, yes, Pride itself was a slowly growing serpent in their midst.

But when it came down to Crunch Time, to the moment when Jesus was washing the feet and confronting the men by saying to them, “Are you with Me? Are you willing to have Me be your Savior and Redeemer? Are you willing to accept this gift?”, eleven of those unwashed, adulterous men wanted Jesus to be the Lord of their life. They were willing to have Him be above them and to give Him their worship. Just one man, Judas Iscariot, looked at this half-clothed servant from Nazareth, this Man wearing but a towel, this monarch on His knees with a basin of water . . . and he said to himself: “No way. I will not have this man to rule over me.” And he went out into the outer darkness of self-worship.

There’s a line that happens a couple of times in the book of Isaiah; in chapter 45, the prophet wonders aloud:

“Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’”

And this is Pride – our refusal to lie down on the wheel and be formulated, shaped, disciplined, guided, molded, ruled by a loving Father. Evolution says: “There’s no God to start us, to create us.” Atheism says: “There is no God to rule us or own us.” But even the religious person, the man and woman who goes to church and carries a Bible, sometimes says: “When it really comes down to the nitty-gritty of who’s in charge, it’s me. I may allow a piece of God in my life for appearance’s sake, but when the big decisions come along, it’s me that makes them . . . and I make them for me.”

Friend, I’m so thankful that Jesus is stoutly determined to keep us from this really big sin, this utmost evil. Sometimes, like He did with Peter, He lets us sink beneath the waves until our Pride is sufficiently doused and drowned. But He stands gently by to rescue, to take us, dripping wet, by the hand and ask us: “NOW? Now are You ready? To let God be your Father, and Me your Redeemer?”

And with gratitude, your clothes dripping wet, you climb into His lifeboat . . . and you let Jesus take the tiller.