THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN SIN AND GRACE

INTRODUCTION

Although we are created in God’s image in love and sustained by God’s love, we also
have to deal with the reality of sin and its struggle to deprive us of our freedom to be fully
human. Sin is an offense against God, and it interferes with our ability to know God and to love
God and our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is the greatest single obstacle to authentic
freedom.

The concept of sin is depicted in different ways throughout the Bible. In the Old
Testament the early Israelites considered sin as a stain or defilement, being unclean in the eyes
of God, that would result in punishment. As the covenant narratives continue, sin is presented
as the crime of willful violation of Yahweh’s covenant relationship. Then the people began to
view sin in terms of the evil intent of the sinner in offending God and his neighbor; thus, was
seen as an interpersonal act.

In the New Testament, Jesus shows us that sin is a product of man’s freedom that
results in an act, either in word or deed or both, that is contrary to eternal law. The Catechism
for Filipino Catholics describes sin as:

- refusing to follow our own conscience’s call toward the good;

- rejecting God, our Creator and Lord, and our own true selves and others, by turning way
from God, our true end; and,
- breaking God’s loving Covenant with us, shown forth in Jesus Christ, dying and rising for
our sake.

Sin, therefore, is not simply doing something wrong, or making a mistake, or failing to do
good. In refusing God we make ourselves into little gods, in which process we deceive and
destroy ourselves. Oftentimes our sin is the failure to bother to love. We become complacent in
our comfort zone and do not want to risk taking bold step of caring for and loving the unloved
and unlovable. This was the sin of the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side of
the road when they came upon the man who had fallen victime to robbers in the Parable of the
Good Samaritan (Lk.10:29-37).

James Keenan, S.J. says that we have ‘domesticated” our sinfulness. He believes the
real measure of the morality of our lives is the moral goodness, that is, where and how much we
love, where and how much we strive to do the good and the right. Until we begin to recognize
the ways in which we have not loved and become truly aware of how far we have strayed from
God’s goodness, we cannot fully comprehend our sinfulness.

Our struggle with sin brings us into the experience of grace. God’s grace invites us to
return, over and over and over, to the surprising reality of being loved in the midst of failure,
weakness, and sin. God’s grace enables us to continue our journey toward being fully human,
toward holiness, toward freedom for excellence.

A. DIMENSIONS OF SIN

What is sin? The Catechism for Filipino Catholics (CFC) defines sin as a refusal of God’s
love. Such refusal entails refusing to follow our own conscience, rejecting our true selves,
others, and God by turning away from God, and breaking God’s covenant of love with us. We do
this by failing to meet our obligations to God and neighbor, by allowing a disorder of character to
overburden us with the guilt of being a sinner, or by consciously rebelling against God and his
commandments. In the world today we are conditionally faced with a loss of the sense of sin
and its link with conscience.

Three types of sin are:

1. Original sin – The creation story in the Bible attempts to explain our separation from God
through the sin of disobedience of Adam and Eve. Through our baptism we are freed from
original sin, and we enter into the community of the Church, the community of life. However, we
still suffer the effects of original sin in our lives through concupiscence (involuntary inclination to
evil) which moves us away from God. But as we open ourselves to the presence of Jesus Christ
and his grace in our lives, we can work to overcome the effect of original sin.

2. Personal sin – Personal sins are acts committed when we reject God, our own true selves,
and others. Factors which determine the gravity of a sin are:

a. the nature of the act;

b. the intention of the doer, and,
c. the circumstances relevant to the sin committed.

Venial sins are those sins that, while they do not involved the person’s fundamental freedom or
lead to spiritual death, harm our relationships with God and others by diminishing the fervor of
our love; venial sins may develop into mortal sins as awareness of our sinfulness lessens.
Mortal sins are those committed willfully, with sufficient knowledge of the seriousness of the act
and with malice or evil intent. They are called mortal because they kill our fundamental core
freedom as related to the love of God and Christ’s commandment to love the Lord, our God,
with our whole being – heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves
(Mk.12:30-31).

3. Social Sin – This refers to situations and structures that attack basic human rights and
dignity, and infect social relationships between communities and nations. Such social pressures
include economic, political, and cultural obstacles. This group of sins usually involves the
consent of members of a community or society, such consent being given willfully, being
obtained by force, or just by the members ignoring the presence of the sin. Social sins attack
human rights and basic freedoms, human dignity, justice and the common good. Every sin
against another’s freedom, dignity, honor or physical integrity is a social sin. Class struggle,
racial discrimination, economic exploitation result from social sin. However, we must remember
that labelling an act as a social sin does not abolish nor condone the personal sins of the
members of the community or society, for at the heart of every situation of sin are always to be
found sinful people.

Not only are there types of sin to consider but the Church points out three distinct
dimensions of sin (CFC #773). Sin can be described as a spiral, a sickness, and as an
addiction.

- As a spiral, sin can enslave us in a contagious pathological habit of vice that acts like a
virus, infecting social attitudes and structures such as family, social groups, etc.
- Sin may also be considered a sickness that weakens our ability to attain wholeness of
body, or mind and soul.
 - Sin can also become an addiction which renders us powerless in the face of its
compulsive and obsessive actions, leading to ever deeper deception of self and others,
and inevitably ending in damaged personal and social relationships. Examples of sin as
addiction are consumerism and militarism.
- Sin as sickness and addiction can also imply an absence or diminishment of the freedom
necessary for an act to be a seriously sinful act. The presence of addiction can lead to
greater objective harm, but it can also mean lesser personal culpability if the person
does not have adequate freedom to stop.

Moral life, then, requires that we recognize in ourselves that tendency to sin. St. Paul in
his letter to the Romans bewails this tendency: “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do
what I want, but I do what I hate…So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me…
For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Rom.7:15-19). He then
proclaims in chapter 8 that with the aid of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, we can
overcome our sinful nature.

B. THE TENTACLES OF SOCIAL SIN

Sin is an act of personal freedom of an individual, but each individual or personal sin is,
in a sense, a social sin since it, in one way or another, affects others. Each of us is morally
responsible for his own actions, especially as our actions have an influence on the good or evil
actions of others. The first principle of the Natural Law dictates that we are inclined to the good,
indirectly implying that we should not do the evil. If we reflect on this further, we can see that not
only should we do the good, but we should also help others do good and avoid evil.

The grasping and invasive tentacles of social sin intrude into our lives at every turn and
corner. It permeates the very essence of modern society. The headlines of national and local
newspapers shout of graft and corruption, economic oppression, terrorism and breakdown of
peace and order, of narco-politics, poor working conditions, environmental degradation, crimes
including “salvaging” or killing one’s perceived enemies, of violations of human rights and the
eroding of Filipino culture and values. Business is conducted within the tentacles of structural
sin. Cheating and lying and “making lusot” have become a habit with many, sending the wrong
message to our young people. We often end up rationalizing our misdeeds with the excuse:
“Everybody does it,” or “That’s just the way it is.”

Hormis Mynatty presents many helpful insights on social sin in an article that appeared
in Louvain Studies. He defines social sin as the conscious and willful participation of a group or
society in cooperating with sinful social structures, maintaining and perpetuating them, and
failing to do anything to change them when possible. From the perspective of a fundamental
option based on the Kingdom of God, it is the refusal of the community to cooperate in the
history of salvation.

There is the need to move beyond an individual, personal or private understanding of

sin, Mynatty continues. The social, economic, political, cultural, and religious structures are the
concrete realities where sin and grace are made manifest. Insofar as they foster love, justice,
and liberation, they reveal the presence of grace and the presence of the Kingdom of God.
Structures cannot be thought of apart from human responsibility. An institution or social
structure never exists in and of itself, independent of the individuals composing it. Both
individuals and groups contribute to the maintenance and perpetuation of sinful structures as
they take advantage of them or neglect to change them when possible.

Mynatty points out that people are not only the victims but also the agents of sinful social
structures. While participation in them need not be sinful in every instance and in the case of
every person, we must be careful that we do not benefit from nor promote these sinful
structures. We may seem powerless to be able to do anything about the situation. Yet we
cannot remain apathetic. He believes the key lies in responsible community activity for social
transformation.

Pope John Paul II presents penetrating insights about this reality of social sin in his
encyclical Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life. He describes it as a struggle between the
“culture of death” and the “culture of life.”

(To get to) the deepest roots of the struggle between the “culture of life” and the
“culture of death”… we have to go to the heart of the tragedy being experienced
by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, typical of a social
and cultural climate dominated by secularism… When the sense of God is lost,
there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life.

This “culture of life” must be developed with skill and serious commitment through
education for social transformation. The soul of a society is presented in its cultural values. It
reveals its fundamental option – its response to the innate human desire for God and to God’s
offer of love in Christ. This is present as the social ethos or value system that pervades the
whole social life, supporting, legitimizing, and sustaining the social structures and institutions. If
these enhance the development of the person and of society, they are graced structures,
promotive of the Kingdom of God. If they are oppressive, causing structural injustice and/or
violence, they may be considered sinful.

The tentacles of sin that work to obstruct this fundamental option and our freedom to
decide for and receive God’s love are commonly traced to three main sources: biological –
which include inherited handicaps and external factors such as drugs that interfere with normal
growth; psychological or interior compulsions, including those originating in the unconscious;
and, social pressures of economic, political and cultural origin.

The challenge the Church and every one of its members, each one of us, faces is to
permeate these social structures and institutions with transforming Gospel values. For the
power of grace and Christ is stronger than sin, and these together with our faith and love give us
victory over the world (1 Jn.5:1-12)

C. UNDERSTANDING GRACE

Just as we need to understand sin and its effect on our lives, so, too, we need to
understand “grace”, especially what is meant by “the grace of God.” What is “grace”? Grace is
the gift of God Himself to us. As such, it contains all other gifts, including the giving of his Son.
Grace radiates the generosity and love of God and embraces the one who receives the gift with
his own generosity and love. God’s love and grace can be known as blessings: life, joy, fullness
of health and strength, a personal and intimate relationship with the Savior. The well-known
words with which the Lord instructed Moses to bless the people (Num.6:25) tell us that grace
and love make the smile of God rest upon man.

Grace is love and God is love. God’s grace is unconditional, redeeming, trusting,
upbuilding, understanding, and non-possessive. It is freedom-giving and life-giving. Grace is
creative; God is always finding new and different ways to flood our lives with his grace and love.
Grace is merciful and compassionate, thereby opening us who receive this grace to God’s
transforming and redemptive power to bring about awareness and forgiveness of sins,
reconciliation with those who hurt us, and return to the loving embrace of our Savior.

How do we know grace is at work in our lives? There are many varied manifestations of
God’s grace (see Table 1). We experience God’s grace in our relationships with others, through
prayer, scripture, the sacraments, by the fruit of our lives. Participating in a strong Christian
community and parish life nourishes and strengthens the presence of grace. Grace is at work as
we reach out in unconditional love to our brothers and sisters; when we do this, despite our
flaws and weaknesses, we reflect something of the very nature and character of Christ.

Living and walking in grace is a matter of letting our obedience and freedom to grow out
of our relationship with God. God’s kindness in the face of our sin is meant to melt the
stubbornness and rebelliousness in our hearts. This experience of grace is also about letting
ourselves relax in his embrace, gathering courage and strength to walk our talk.

The grace of God looks for partners, an exchange, and a communion. We are asked to
use our God-given talents as he directs. It is a most special blessing when we are used as
channels of God’s grace to others. Grace calls for and demands ‘transformation’ and ‘action’.
We cannot just sit back and expect to enjoy a life of grace. God wants us to get up and act, with
no weakening or timidity on our part. Acting in grace then becomes an integral part of our faith
journey. In the grace of God, we succeed in becoming our true selves, we succeed in becoming
fully human.

Robert Crosby in a Discipleship Journal article presents some interesting thoughts on

grace. He says that without grace, labels abound. When we label a person, we judge according
to our own scales. In effect we are saying, “This is what you are, we have no hope for you to
change.” Without grace, comparisons emerge, and this breeds competition.

With grace, one can say to another person, “You are what you are by the grace of God. I
accept you completely and thank God for who you are and what you are becoming.” With grace,
Crosby writes, sin becomes the enemy, not people. Grace believes the best of people, and
draws it out of them. Grace enables us to face up to ridicule, slander, unforgiveness, and
hatred. Instead of reacting in anger and compounding the sin, we are empowered by grace to
see beyond sin of the enemy and love the soul, to look beyond an angry brother’s faults and to
see his needs. Crosby emphasizes that being gracious and giving grace does not, however,
mean that we tolerate or excuse the sin.

Some Types and Manifestations of Grace

Sacramental Grace or Sanctifying Received through the Sacraments
Grace Perfects the soul to enable it to live with God and to act by
his love
Is life-giving
Actual Grace Refers to God’s interventions that produces acts of love
Healing Grace Removes fear, hurts, frustrations, conflict, and anxiety
Builds and strengthens relationships
Promotes understanding
Illuminating Grace Inspires truth, beauty and goodness
Releases God’s creative powers in man
Inspires from within one’s heart and soul
Inspires through the medium of another person’s love
Grace of State or Apostolate Enables exercise of the responsibilities of Christian life…
And of ministries within the Church and its Body of people
(Rom. 12:6-8)
Special Graces – “Charisms” Favors, gifts from God intended for the common good of
the Church
Used to build up the Church and Community of God’s
people
Other Graces Grace of Generosity
Grace of Cheerfulness and Encouragement,
Etc…

Reference: Giordano, Pasquale T., S.J. and Nancy Russell Catan, Evangelizing Presence:
Living the Moral Life Today, 2007, Makati: The Philippine Foundation of the Brotherhood of
Christian Businessmen and Professionals, Talk 3, pp.44 – 52.