Oswald Chambers, in the early 1900s, pegged what has become a fundamental error of much of the modern church today – particularly the self-described “progressive” wing of the church.

Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The Christian religion bases everything on the positive, radical nature of sin. Other religions deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ faced in men was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power.

An increasing portion of the modern church has become preoccupied with “sins” – mostly of the social and culturally transgressive variety – while largely (if not completely) rejection the notion of “sin”. Certainly there are cultural sins to address in areas such as equality, but to focus primarily there is to focus on trying to treat the symptoms rather than the disease. The disease is sin. It is the inherent depravity, selfishness, and fallenness of all humans, who all have the impulse of the original sin as we shake our fists at God in our desire to assert our own morality, and our doomed attempts at our own holiness, over God’s divine morality and holiness revealed to us in scripture.

Until we address that, and repent of that, we are doomed to failure.