This Is Not That: Sin
The Ache Beneath It All
The other night, Eli—my eight-year-old—was working on a backflip.
Now, Eli is sharp. Funny. Creative. Curious. But when it comes to backflips? If he doesn’t nail something right away, the wheels come off.
That night it was acrobatics. He sat there with “how-to” videos, gripping the couch so tight his knuckles went white. His whole body tense, shoulders hunched, like the tutorial itself was against him.
“Why can’t I do this?” he groaned. “Other kids can do this. Why not me?”
I jumped in with reassurance: “Buddy, you’re fine. Other kids your age are learning too.”
But he didn’t buy it. He turned to me, eyes wide and glassy: “But I’m not like other eight-year-olds, Dad. How can I possibly be something I’m not?”
And I just sat there, stunned. That wasn’t a kid whining about a flip. That was a kid naming what most adults feel but rarely say out loud: I don’t measure up. I’m behind. I’m not enough.
So I reached for the classic line: “No one’s perfect.”
And Eli sighed, heavy, like someone decades older. “I guess I just need to keep reminding myself no one is perfect.”
That’s when it hit me. That line wasn’t comfort. It was poison. Because the truth isn’t “no one is perfect.” The truth is: no one was ever supposed to be.
The Real Problem
Do you see the difference?
One says: There’s a perfect standard, and you’re failing—but don’t worry, everyone else is too. The other says: Perfection was never the point. You weren’t built for that game at all.
But most of us live in the first story.
We think the problem is “badness”—not being good enough. That’s the misdiagnosis religion, culture, and politics keep handing us.
And if badness is the problem, the solution is always the same: work harder, do better, climb higher.
But Jesus told a different story. He said the problem isn’t badness. It’s blindness.
As He put it in Matthew 13:13: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”
In other words, you can have perfect vision and still be blind. That’s the story that began in Genesis 3, when humanity reached for control we were never built for—and one we will never have.
Like our first parents, we swallowed the lie that God was holding out on us, and with the right knowledge—we can bridge the gap.
That delusion gave birth to distrust—what Paul flat out calls sin (Rom 14:23). And that distrust gave birth to disobedience to all that is good for us. And that disobedience led to the death God warned of—not a divine execution, but existence as strangers to the very life we were created for.
So sin isn’t first about immorality. It’s about delusional distrust. About being blind to who God actually is.
And here’s the tragedy: once you buy the lie, it becomes really hard to let it go. Because if your sense of control—your sense of security—depends on the lie being true, then he truth itself feels like a threat.
That’s why people cling to the idea of a distant, demanding god. It gives them a way to measure, manage, and control their standing through what they’re doing—even if it’s exhausting. To admit that God has already united Himself to us all in Jesus would unravel the whole system they’ve built their worth on.
So it’s not that reality isn’t right in front of us—it is. It’s that we’ve built our identity on the delusion, and to release it would feel like losing ourselves.
Not because we don’t have eyes to see, but because we can’t bear to see.
The Villain – The Conditional God
And suddenly it makes sense. Why does the popular idea of God sound more like a banker with a ledger than a Father who loves unconditionally?
Because we’ve been taught to trade the God of grace for the god of conditions. The one who says:
You gain acceptance if you believe the right way.
You keep acceptance if you behave the right way.
That’s the mythical god religion invented. And it’s the same false god fueling today’s self-improvement culture—from churches to politics, causes, business, and beyond. Always the same obsession: prove your enoughness.
But here’s the tragedy: when your sense of security depends on being right, you can’t embrace the news that you already are. You can’t hear, “for freedom Christ set us free” if your survival depends on it being false (Gal. 5:1).
Which is why talks, debates, and soundbites—no matter how true—don’t set people free. They usually just rally the people who already agree, while they never reach those they seek to reach. Because when someone is addicted to self-justification, they don’t need more information—you need an intervention through ongoing conversations of grace.
The Good News – What Jesus Brings
And that’s where Jesus comes in. Not with another rulebook, not with another program, but with Himself.
Because Jesus alone is the covenant-maker and covenant-keeper. The One who came to help us se the God we’ve been conditioned to miss.
Contrary to everything religion pushes, Jesus didn’t come to help you win. He came to end the game we keep playing.
So here’s the scandal: If we think our problem—and everyone else’s—is disobedience to God, then Jesus becomes irrelevant to our daily struggle to truly do what we know is right.
But if we start with Jesus as the solution for us all, we discover the real problem was never our weakness, lack of knowledge, or failed performance. It was our delusional idea of the God who holds us.
It’s why His “thoughts are above our thoughts,” and His “ways” are not “our ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
We needed a God to come to us a Person—crucified and risen. (John 1:1; 14; Romans 5:10; Galatians 2:20)
No one expected a Savior who would die at the hands of the religion we wanted more than God—not so He could finally love us, but to show us He always had. (John 19:30; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:8)
And no one expected the Messiah’s resurrection—let alone that He’d return with the scandalous announcement that His resurrection wasn’t just His. (Rom 6:5; Col 3:1-4) It was ours. (Col 1:20; Gal 2:20) The world’s. All along.
In Jesus, God and humanity—right now—are more united than we’ve ever dared to imagine.
In John 14:20, Jesus didn’t say we can become one with Him if we believe. He said, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” Union is a reality to wake up to, not a reward to achieve.
In Acts 17:28, Paul wasn’t offering the Athenians a way into the presence of God. He told these unbelievers that the “unknown God” they longed for was already the One “in whom we live and move and have our being.”
And to make sure the point wasn’t lost, Paul went on to say there is “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6). In short: union isn’t reserved for the spiritual elite; it’s the reality of everyone—because in Christ, God has already “reconciled all things” (Col 1:20).
And That Changes Everything
The invitation is simple: stop solving the wrong problem. Stop telling yourself and others that “no one is perfect.” Remember instead: no one was ever supposed to be.
Because at the center of everything isn’t a ladder to climb so we can overcome our humanity. It’s the lark of grace—a prank on religion played by the God who never followed the rules we made for Him.
And as you take that in, don’t miss what it means for the people around you too. Every neighbor, every stranger, every friend you share life with—their seat is already set beside yours in who Jesus is for us all.
That’s the Church Jesus imagined: a movement of flawed and frail people who discover together what’s already true—right where they are.
It’s why Paul didn’t build services or stage debates on morality. He told the Corinthians, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Because until people see who Jesus already is for them, they’ll never have the security to question all the myths they’ve bought about why they are right, belong, or matter.
Faith isn’t the lever that makes God present with you—it’s the set of glasses that finally lets you see He always has been.
This series is about what could happen in the name of “church,” if we took Jesus at His word.