The Remembrance of Sin: A Reflection on Abba Epiphanius 15

One of my favourite teachings of Jesus is that we will ultimately be judged by the same standards by which we judge others (Matthew 7.2). It’s an important part of his general assault on self-righteousness, and something we’d all be wise to keep in our awareness. Today’s Saying from the Desert Fathers is little other than a repeat of this teaching, but puts it in a slightly different perspective, shifting the focus away from how we look at others to how we look at ourselves:

[Abba Epiphanius] said, ‘God remits the debts of sinners who are penitent, for example, the sinful woman and the tax-collector, but of the righteous man he even asks interest. This is what he says to his apostles, “Except your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven [Matthew 5.20].”’ (Epiphanius 15)

The Desert Fathers, and monastics more generally, are sometimes assumed to have been legalists, but Abba Epiphanius here shows that he at least understands grace. In no uncertain terms, he says that God forgives those who are penitent, that is, who acknowledge and confess their sins before God, and make steps to do better. As examples, he mentions the woman who washed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7.36-50) and the tax-collector from the Parable of the Tax-Collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). But, while God is quick to forgive the penitent, God demands ‘even interest’ on the debts of ‘the righteous.’

What’s going on here? Abba Epiphanius’s reference to ‘the righteous’ is an interesting turn of phrase, because the Scriptures are clear that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23), and that “No one is good, but God alone” (Mark 10.18). In a world as complex as our own, it’s hard to think of any act that is untainted by sin in some way. So, no one can rightfully be considered ‘righteous’. That’s only a problem if we think think of sin as something irreparable, or a ‘deal breaker’ with God. But that’s simply not how the Scriptures talk about sin. It’s a problem to be sure, but far from insurmountable because God is quick to forgive. But if sin is not an insurmountable problem, our refusal to acknowledge it is. Self-righteousness is. And that’s really what Abba Epiphanius means. He’s not talking about ‘the righteous’, an imaginary category, but the ‘self-righteous’, those who do not accept, acknowledge, or amend the ways they fall short and break faith with God and neighbour. For such willfully ignorant people, Epiphanius insists, God demands payment in full, with interest.

All this fits well with my insistence that we should talk more, not less, about sin — that we need to normalize it without minimizing it. As I’ve previously written:

At some point along the way, we in the West … have ceased to be able to recognize the reality of sin in our lives. I’m not talking about sin in the general: We are still great at pointing out the sin in the personal lives of other people, and in the impersonal, but no less real, systems and structures we have to deal with. We can even at times admit to sin in general terms, like when we talk about sin as being about broken relationships. But when it comes to our own, specific sins, many of us are blind, and completely unable to integrate the idea that we are sinful into our self-image. …

A few years ago, … I wrote about how part of our collective discomfort in talking about sin comes from an over-emphasis on personal sin over the past few centuries. (I used the classic (if awful) eighteenth-century sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as my prime example.) And this is, I believe, unquestionably true. The way sin was talked about was extreme, shaming, and punitive. It was spoken of to instill the fear of hell into people, rather than the “fear” — awe, wonder, amazement — of God in them. And after a few hundred years of this, it’s no wonder our society has largely opted out.

But now we’re in quite the opposite state of affairs. If a prayer, hymn, or sermon mentions sin at all, someone is bound to object to the ‘hyper-fixation on sin’.

I certainly don’t want to go back to the bad old days of misleading scare tactics and over the top rhetoric when it comes to sin. But, I do think we need to redress the imbalance. As I said, we need to normalize sin — because we all do it, all the time — without minimizing the negative impacts the ways we break faith with one another have in the world. After all, we cannot change what we do not acknowledge.

The point of all this is the meaning of the season: repentance. True, meaningful repentance, done with the full knowledge and expectation of God’s abundant and overflowing grace. And it’s as simple, and hard, as that.

“I believe, O Lord, and I confess that you are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God. who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first.” (Ancient Pre-Communion Prayer, citing 1 Timothy 1.16)