What Hinders Your Turning to God?
Dr. John Snyder is the pastor of Christ Church New Albany, director of Media Gratiae, host of The Whole Counsel podcast, and author of multiple multimedia Bible studies including the Behold Your God series and Living with the True God: Lessons from Judges.
In Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically, Dr. Snyder describes the three great hidden sins from which flow all the sins that are apparent in our lives.
We must repent of both root and fruit sins.
If you have determined to turn to the God of the Bible, you will face a number of obstacles. The first obstacle we will discuss is the need to repent of root sins as well as fruit sins. Christian authors of previous centuries spent a great deal of time distinguishing between these categories of sin. It is true that all sin is serious because all sin is against God. Yet some sins are root sins or breeder sins. These root sins produce the fruit sins—the many outward expressions of rebellion against God. The fruit is obvious while the roots lie hidden underground. We must repent of both root and fruit sins.
from pride and unbelief and selfishness flow all other sins.
The three root sins we are going to look at are pride, unbelief, and selfishness. Pride tells us that we are the most significant beings in all the universe. Thus we believe our work, family, friends, and God Himself exist for us. Our desires must be given highest priority regardless of whom we hurt. Unbelief says that the things which God has told us about Himself and about our obligations to Him are doubtful. It questions whether sin is actually poisonous and whether holy living truly produces happiness. Unbelief, motivated by our pride, decides that perhaps our ideas about these matters are more trustworthy than the God who cannot lie. Amazingly, unbelief will always choose to act upon the assumption that sin (which always lies) is telling the truth this time. Selfishness whispers that we cannot be happy unless we get the things we want. We exalt self above all others. Thus, from pride and unbelief and selfishness flow all other sins.
It is a waste of time to attempt to deal with sin by merely putting away the external effects of the hidden roots.
It is a waste of time to attempt to deal with sin by merely putting away the external effects of the hidden roots. Many religious people live like this. We see sins on the surface of our lives—apathy, greed, anger, lust, bitterness— and we get very busy trying to fix ourselves. But we don’t get to the roots. Why do I continually drift toward this behavior? Is anger my problem, or pride? Is bitterness the big issue, or my unbelief? This does not mean that fruit sins are unimportant and should not be repented of. However, they cannot be dealt with honestly without repenting of the roots which have led to them.