God Doesn't Hand Out Participation Trophies

For a long time now, the trend in Christianity has been to avoid talking about sin. Many pastors avoid talking about it from the pulpit for fear that it will offend people or drive them away. We don’t like to focus on things that make us feel ugly, embarrassed or like a failure. After all, we live in a time when everybody gets a trophy just for participating! And since we all like to think of ourselves as fairly good people, the subject of sin makes us uncomfortable. 

If you had fun, you won!

But is that the way it works with God? When this life is over, do we all get awarded with a trophy just for participating in the game of life? Unfortunately, the answer is, “No.” Eternal life is a reward that only those who are forgiven of their sin can attain. And there is no way on earth for us to attain salvation by our own good deeds. Without “atonement” for our sins, we are dead—separated from God and hopelessly condemned. The Bible is very clear about this in Ephesians 2:8-9 (and many other verses as well): For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

The bottom line is, we have to talk about sin. It’s exactly what is keeping us from God, and it has been the biggest problem in the world throughout all of history! Why wouldn’t we address “sin” in church?

But still, we avoid the topic because it makes us feel guilty. We all know that no one is perfect. We all have sinned and even as believers who sincerely seek to follow Jesus, we still sin—continually. Day after day, this sin problem plagues us because we were all born under its curse. Read Romans chapter 7 and you’ll understand that the struggle to overcome sin even exhausted the Apostle Paul. 

If there’s one thing we can learn from our Catholic brothers and sisters, it’s the importance of going to Confession. Though I don’t believe this should be viewed a holy sacrament--it is an important spiritual discipline that you should practice regularly. And though I don’t believe you need to make confessions to a priest, I do believe you can go directly to Jesus, our High Priest in heaven and confess your sins as many times as you need to.

1 John 2:2 says: My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

In other words, Jesus is our “advocate”, the one who speaks on our behalf before God the Father to provide cleansing and purification for our sins. Because of what Jesus did on the cross as our substitutionary sacrifice, we have forgiveness through Him whenever we confess our sins to him in prayer.

No doubt, sin is a bad thing. It is responsible for all our world’s worst pain and tragedy. But there is a solution. His name is Jesus!