Are We too Comfortable with Sin?

By: Dr. Danny Purvis

I want to relate an incident to you that happened a few weeks ago. But I also do not want you to get the wrong idea about why I am bringing this up. It involves the open admission of sin from a person that claims to be a Believer and who also serves as a sitting member of the US Congress (though that is not really relevant to our conversation). The misunderstanding I want to avoid is that you would conclude that I am calling her out for her admitted transgression. That is not the point of this discussion.

Make no mistake, I have no problem identifying sin when it is evident in the life of a Believer. In fact, this person acknowledged the sin herself. Identifying sinful behavior is not judging other people or their actions. It is merely identifying the actions. God judges sin and sinner. But nowhere do I see in Scripture that we are to not identify sin when our Brothers and Sisters openly engage in it. There a myriad of circumstances in Scripture where this is talked about. However, that is NOT the point of this article. Especially since the person in question has actually acknowledged transgression. This is not a: “Did you see what she did”. Instead, there is a deeper issue here that I find very concerning. One that has been percolating in evangelicalism for some time. But let me set up the scenario for you. I am not going to name names…again…that is not the point. But if you’re interested you can do a quick Google search to if you want your curiosity satiated.

Here is what happened. A few weeks ago the Washington DC hosted a National Day of Prayer event. I was actually fortunate enough to attend the White House event when I served as a Navy Chaplain. Like with any other event, it follows a predictable pattern. Generally one person opens up the ceremony…followed by a few people with short speaking parts (in this case mostly prayers)…followed by the guest speaker and then finally the conclusion. This particular person was given a small speaking part. I never saw her participation in the flow of the ceremony so I cannot say if she was the guest speaker…but I suspect she was not. She was, however, given a speaking part. She then preceded to tell an anecdote related to why she was almost late to the ceremony. She then regaled the audience with a short tale that revealed that her significant other wanted her to linger in bed a little longer before she left to…engage in some level of intimacy. The problem she did not seem to notice was that everyone was well aware of the fact that she is not married.

And let’s be clear. Even if she had been married one could rightfully argue whether the National Day of Prayer event was the proper location for an obviously risqué and personal anecdote of that nature. But that aside, there was a more pressing issue. At the National Day of Prayer breakfast…in front of what would probably be millions of people watching live or later on streaming…a person who claims to be a Bible-believing Christ follower made an offhand remark related to fornication. And please…do not misunderstand me here…I am not pointing out this sin for the purposes of piling on. No, what amazed me and flabbergasted way more than the sin itself (we all sin…so I expect that) was the nonchalant way she communicated the information.


In her mind and in her heart, she thought that joking about committing willful, open sin to an audience gathered together for the purpose of prayer was no different than telling you she was late because her car broke down. It wasn’t the sin itself that surprised me. It was the comfort level she had with sin. She was completely ok with it. It did not seem to bother her. At all. Flippantly telling her story of sin was as natural to her as breathing. I gotta say. That’s a problem. It is one thing to for the Believer to live with the battle with our old nature that leaves us with a daily struggle with sin (1 Cor. 9:27). It’s quite another to get comfortable with sin. The more comfortable we are with sin, the more we are likely to see it as no big deal. She has gotten to the point in her life where she sees open sin as no big deal and in fact feels so comfortable with it, she will joke about at the National Day of Prayer event. I feel like we are through the looking-glass here.

And you know how social media is…well they pounced with both feet. One pastor posted: it was nice of her to delay her fornication so she could be on time for the National Day of Prayer event. And that was one of the tamer responses. But I think the commenters kind of missed the nuanced point we have been discussing. The vast majority of the comments had to do with her actions…the specific sin. But none that I read mentioned the bigger problem and that was her lackadaisical attitude towards it. After the internet released its religious fury, she made an interesting comment that seemed to me to even more reveal her attitude towards sin. She said: I don’t go to church because I am a saint, I go because I am a sinner. Now, technically there is not too much wrong with that statement. Though theologically we could argue that God’s Word actually does refer to His Believers as “saints”. But for the sake of this discussion that would be getting a bit in the weeds. No, what her statement said to me (and make no mistake, there are millions of Believers who feel exactly as she does) was that sin is an inevitable part of our lives and we are forgiven so it’s no big deal.

We have taken God’s grace and His forgiveness of sin and used it as a means of making us comfortable with our sin. I was talking to a person not too long ago about how we (Believers) still fall short and still struggle with sin. The person then got a smile on their face and said: Yep, well we’re all gonna sin. And in their fatalism, they moved on. I didn’t see any grief. I didn’t see any pain related to sin. It is right to be joyful of the fact that our sin is forgiven. But we need to grieve our sin. Believers now are becoming indistinguishable from the world. And the main reason has been our comfort with sin. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, warned us about this very thing 2,000 years ago. “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1-2)” In other words…don’t feel free to sin because grace has bestowed forgiveness. Don’t get comfortable with sin. Hate it. Despise it. Mourn over it. Paul was so grieved over his sin that he referred to himself as a “wretched man” (Romans 7:24) and the “chief of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Jesus consistently said: Go and sin no more. He did not tell us to feel any comfort level in our sin. Our comfort only comes from the fact that in spite of our continued sin, we are forgiven. I feel for this young lady we’ve been discussing. I feel for her because sin has lost its sting for her. She is completely comfortable disobeying God. My heart goes out to her. I want to hate my sin…not brush it off. I want to mourn my sin…not openly joke about it. I know what my sin costed Christ. I don’t ever want to be comfortable with that.
- Dr. Danny Purvis