That title certainly got your attention, didn’t it?

So many people believe the common misconception that the point of Christianity is sin. More specifically, they believe that the point of Christianity is to not sin. But that simply isn’t the case.

God isn’t just interested in the covering over of our sins; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be. It is not just the removal of what’s being held against us; it is God pulling us into the people he originally had in mind when he made us. This restoration is why Jesus always orients his message around becoming the kind of people who are generous and loving and compassionate. The goal here isn’t simply to not sin. Our purpose is to increase the shalom* in the world, which is why approaches to the Christian faith that deal solely with not sinning always fail. They aim at the wrong thing. It is not about what you don’t so. The point is becoming more and more the kind of people God had in mind when we were first created. (from Velvet Elvis)

*The common meaning of shalom is peace, but it is much more than that. Shalom is the presence of the goodness of God and not just the absence of strife.

You see, sin just isn’t the point. Sin is a byproduct of the fall of man. It was never intended to be the point. But because of the fall of man, sin permeates everything in this world. And God is just dying (no pun intended) to restore the world.

Let’s go back to the beginning – to a garden out in the middle of the Middle East. It was there that life began. God created a man named Adam and told him that his job was to manage the rest of creation. Then God created Eve. Adam and Eve are the only two people in all of the world who have ever had a good and complete relationship with God. After the Fall, we all have a pretty distorted view of God, but Adam and Even walked in the garden with God.

Do you know how Moses described the main characteristic of a person before the Fall? Moses said people before the Fall were naked and weren’t ashamed. I’m not making this up. When he got to the end of chapter 2 of Genesis, the part of the Bible where he described what paradise was like, he concluded his description of paradise by saying Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed. It’s right there in the Bible; you can look it up if you want. (See Genesis 2:25.) (from Searching from God Knows What by Donald Miller)

So what? What does that have to do with Christianity, sin, or anything else? Everything! Did you know that in just about 100 words used to describe Paradise and the Fall, Moses repeated the idea of nakedness with no shame five times. Why so much? For him to have repeated it so many times, he must have wanted the reader to truly understand what he was saying.

The very first thing that happened after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was that they noticed they were naked. And man, I couldn’t stop thinking about it; I couldn’t stop thinking about how whatever happened at the Fall made them aware they were naked. This isn’t “hidden wisdom” in the text. It is the text. It is blatant, and yet I had never heard anybody unpack it before.

And then it all came together. It all became so obvious, it was actually frightening. Moses was explaining all of humanity right there in Genesis chapter 3, and because people were always reading it looking for the formula, they never got it.

Here is what I think Moses was saying: Man is wired so he gets his glory (his security, his understanding of value, his feeling of purpose, his feeling of rightness with his Maker, his security for eternity) from God, and this relationship is so strong, and God’s love is so pure, that Adam and Eve felt no insecurity at all, so much so that they walked around naked and didn’t even realize they were naked. But when that relationship was broken, they knew it instantly. All of their glory, the glory that came from God, was gone. It wouldn’t be unlike being in love and having somebody love you and then all of a sudden that person is gone, like a kid lost in the store. All of the insecurity rises the instant you realize you are alone. No insecurity was felt when the person who loved you was around, but in his absence, it instantly comes to the surface. In this way, Adam and Eve were naked and weren’t ashamed when God was around, but the second the relationship was broken, they realized it and were ashamed. And that is just the beginning.

If man was wired so that something outside himself told him who he was, and if God’s presence was giving him a feeling of fulfillment, then when that relationship was broken, man would be pining for other people to tell him that he was good, right, okay with the world, and eternally secure. As I wrote earlier, we all compare ourselves to others, and none of our emotions–like jealousy and envy and lust–could exist unless man was wired so that somebody else told him who he was, and that somebody else was gone. (from Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller).

You see, getting that relationship back is the point. The whole point of salvation is for God to restore the world into a place of harmony with its maker. Sadly, that point is often missed by today’s Christians (heck, I’ve even missed that point most of my life!). I know some pretty miserable Christians because they focus all of their time on how often they fail God. But sin isn’t the point (I can’t stress that enough).

The point isn’t my failure; it is God’s success in remaking me into the person he originally intended me to be. (from Velvet Elvis).

And originally, Adam and Eve were created naked. Completely secure in who they were and their relationship with God.

And that’s our job: to relentlessly pursue who God has created us to be. That is the point.