I recently came across this old post of mine and decided it might be worth giving an update. I had interacted with someone who had seemingly different views on sin than I did, and it confused me. Now I think I understand better what was going on and have a framework to interpret it.
I would now describe this person as a Christian materialist. The difference between a Christian materialist and a secular materialist is that the Christian believes in the God and miraculous events revealed in Scripture, trusts in Christ for salvation, and accepts the moral law. The similarity between the Christian materialist and secular materialist is that both have a heart attitude that the world as essentially an assortment of random atoms bouncing around. Accordingly, sin is believed to have judicial consequences (condemnation before the throne of God), physical consequences (fornication can cause pregnancy), psychological consequences (feelings of shame and guilt), but not spiritual consequences (curse and corruption). The specific spiritual consequences I have in mind are somewhat vague, but they would be anything not covered in the prior categories. A Christian materialist seems to reject the idea that sinning intrinsically brings a curse upon oneself and corrupts the soul. This would probably not be consciously stated, but it would be a heart attitude. The belief that sin brings a spiritual curse (bad karma) might be viewed as New Age superstition.
For the Christian materialist, the Gospel serves to remove the judicial penalty of sin and to remove feelings of guilt and shame over sin. Applying the Gospel to oneself is telling oneself not to feel guilty because one is forgiven in Christ. What is missing is a sense that sin is a terrible poison and that the Gospel brings freedom from the power of sin. Putting it this way leads me to see similarities with the Revoice controversy, though the person I interacted with was not a supporter of that movement. If sin is a physical transgression of the law of God and the Gospel is given to remove guilt, then why not exert great effort to remove feelings of shame about effeminacy and tell such people that they are fine so long as they don’t stick it in the wrong place?
I am happy to report that the person I had interacted with is no longer a Christian materialist. It turns out that there was a hardened conscience and a lot of damage from prior sins that greatly interfered with the ability to express and enjoy marital intimacy as God intended. All that had been suppressed into the subconscious, but the Holy Spirit has brought it out over the past year, softened the conscience, and greatly healed the damage. The root was a prideful and self-righteous desire to view sin as a technical violation of God’s law that had no lasting effects rather than hugely damaging and arising from an ugly heart.