The gospel and systemic sin

Preaching Today shares some earth-rocking thoughts from Mark Buchanan on preaching the gospel:

Sin is the enemy of our soul. But sin also infuses the broad texture of our whole lives. There is a systemic, endemic, structural reality to sin. It's found in capitalism and socialism, the county office and the country club, the school board and the church board, your neighbourhood and local rotary. The sin that is present in these places is not simply the sum of its parts—the result of simple arithmetic that says one sinner plus one sinner plus one sinner equals three sinners. There is an exponential factor at play. Sin inhabits the ground on which we gather. Sin is the leaven in our life together, working its way into everything. We are not just better together; we are also worse.

And the gospel is remedy for all.

I missed this my first decade of preaching. I often preached—and still do—about personal sin and the need to repent and receive God's cleansing. But increasingly I lean to texts such as Matthew 5:13–14 ("you are the salt of the earth … the light of the world") and Romans 8:19–21 ("the whole creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed") and all of Romans 12 (we are "transformed by the renewal of our minds," learning to "test and approve God's good, perfect, and pleasing will," so that we will "not be overcome by evil, but instead overcome evil with good").

Amen. Please read the whole article; the conclusion is dynamite.