Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, And whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account- Romans 4:7-8 NASB

There are some words we just don’t hear anymore in churchy circles. 

Oddly enough the MIA words are not just the standard four-letter variety no one has ever said out loud in church. Nor are the absentee words the grey-area badish words that aren’t really BAD words but aren’t nice either, words like butt or crap or dang.

It is also conceivable this issue isn’t really an issue at all. It could be a figment of my fevered imagination and there is no “list”. Maybe the words ARE being used and I’m just missing them. This could be a geographical issue. I live in a unbelievably woke place. Politics and social standards affect all sorts of strange things, even how Christians do church.

That said. 

I’m not wrong. There really are words we don’t say in church anymore, or at least we don’t say them very often. These words were once a standard part of our Christian vocabulary. Old-fashioned Bible words like guilt, depravity and judgment. Then there’s the new S-word: Sin. No one says sin anymore. 

Sin, guilt, depravity and judgment are words many Christian leaders resist using in Church. There are reasons for the resistance to these words. Many of those reasons come from a decent place. All Bible believing Pastors and Bible teachers REALLY want to see people come to know Jesus. Sadly, we live in a culture where people hate to be offended by anything. Pastors and Bible teachers understand people are easily triggered by anything that smacks of the teeniest-tiniest iota of disapproval. The bottom-line result of all these factors is that many Pastors and Bible teachers have adopted a kinder, gentler gospel that does its level best to avoid triggering people and turning them off to Jesus with “insensitive” words like sin, guilt, depravity and judgment.  As well-meaning as this change of language is, it is also a truly terrible idea. When we stop using certain words, churches and Christians also lose a whole bunch of other spiritually critical things. 

These things include:

The ability to generate conviction- 

Conviction is the sense a person has violated God’s commands. Conviction, if handled correctly nearly always leads to repentance. Repentance is awesome. Repentance is best defined as “a change of mind” regarding our attitudes and behaviors (Acts 3:19, Acts 17:30, 2nd Peter 3:9). Repentance is the awakening of conscience that leads to a change of behavior.  Repentance is also the starting place of a right relationship with God. No one can have saving faith until they acknowledge their own sin and change their mind about it. When we stop using words like “sin”, “depravity” and “judgment” there is no good soil for conviction to take root. No conviction equals no repentance equals no salvation. All that equals no relationship with Jesus. 

Sorrow over sin- 

In his letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul talks about a spiritual experience he calls, godly sorrow. (2ndCorinthians 7:9-10) Godly sorrow is best defined as the sadness and regret a person feels when they realize they have violated God’s commandments and offended Him with their actions or attitudes (Galatians 5:19-21, 1stTimothy 1:8-11, Revelation 21:8, Colossians 3:4-10, Romans 1:29-31, 1st Corinthians 6:9-11). Godly sorrow is a very good thing because the Bible teaches all people have sinned (Romans 3:23, 1st John 1:8-10). Godly sorrow over sin leads to repentance and a clear conscience before God (1st Timothy 1:5). No one can experience godly sorrow without a clear understanding that sin is a violation of God’s laws and what exactly qualifies as a sin. If the word sin disappears from our Christian vocabularies no one will experience godly sorrow over their sin. 

Authentic salvation- 

Contrary to popular opinion, salvation is more than just “asking Jesus into my heart”. In order for salvation to take place a person must believe the following:

There is a God.

God has standards of behavior that are perfectly reasonable because He’s God and God gets to make the rules. 

Violating those standards is sin.

EVERYONE violates the standards. Therefore everyone is a sinner. 

All sinners will be judged by God for their sin.

God made a way for humans to avoid the penalty of sin (death). 

Faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ is the only way to avoid paying the penalty for our own sin. 

No one can experience salvation without understanding and believing those basic facts (Luke 19:10, John 3:16, Romans 3:23, Acts 2:21, Romans 1:16, Titus 2:10-11, Hebrews 11:6). It is impossible to explain salvation without using words like, sin and judgment. 

Because language is necessary for human communication, Christians have replaced the verboten words with new words The primary word used in place of sin or depravity is brokenness. Brokenness is a terrible substitution for both. The word “brokenness” sends the weird passive message that we (the human race) is messed up because we had a bunch of things happen to us that led to our “getting broken”. Sin, on the other hand conveys the message that we are messed up because of the things we did on purpose because we wanted to do them (lying, treachery, fornication, thieving, etc.). The Church must revive the doctrine of sin quickly, without it, salvations will become increasingly more rare and revival will be entirely out of reach.