Overcoming Sin through Christ

A Comprehensive List of Sins

(Alphabetically Arranged)

Richard Hollerman

The plan of this study is simple.  We will look at a large number of sins, one by one, alphabetically.  We will define the sin, describe it, and comment on it, along with noticing Scripture references on the particular entry.  Some illustrations will be offered along with the description.

Pleasing people

We know that our ultimate goal in life is to please God.  God the Father said to Jesus at His baptism, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).[1]  This also is the heartfelt desire of every child of God—to know that God is “well pleased” with us!  Paul was able to say, “We also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him” (2 Corinthians 5:9).  We should always be “trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).  Paul says that we are to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects” (Colossians 1:10).  So our greatest desire must be to please God.

However, we are also to please people, not just to please them, but to influence them for good.  Paul said, “I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be save” (1 Corinthians 10:33). Why did he please all men?  So that they may be saved.  We should also please others for their good.  Paul writes, “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves.  Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification” (Romans 15:1-2).  Instead of pleasing ourselves, we are to please others for their good.  We know that the married man also must seek to please his wife and the married woman is to please her husband (1 Corinthians 7:32-35).

In what sense are we not to please others?  Paul answers this at Galatians 1:10: “Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God?  Or am I striving to please men?  If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10).  Paul says that his ultimate desire was to please Christ since he was a slave of Christ.  “Paul poses two absolutely incompatible goals: pleasing man, or pleasing God.  There is no possibility of combining the two.”[2]  We can seek to please others if we do so in order to bless them, instruct them, build them up, or bring them to salvation in Christ.  In fact, we are to deny ourselves to bless others.

On the other hand, Christ Jesus must always come first and if there is ever a conflict between pleasing the Lord and pleasing people, we must always choose the former.  Even the slave was not to work “by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Ephesians 6:6; cf. Colossians 3:22). As the apostle says elsewhere, he was not “pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts” (1 Thessalonians 2:4).

The point is that we are servants of God and of Christ, and because of this, our ultimate desire in life is to please the Lord.  Yes, we seek to please other people—our parents, our spouse, our manager—but all of this is secondary.  We please people so that we can be good and worthy examples of God’s servants and so that we may win them to Christ Jesus.  Especially when there is a conflict, we must please God first and foremost.

 

[1] Mark puts it this way, with God speaking directly to Jesus: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased” (Mark 1:11).  God pronounced the same judgment on His Son at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35).

[2] ESV Study Bible note.