During the ’60’s and ’70’s, many musicians paid lip service to Christianity. One of my favourite popular songs during that time was Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky.
Some of the lyrics seemed very Christian (“I’ve got a friend in Jesus, so you know that when I die, he’s going to set me up with the Spirit in the sky”). However, the lyricist [Norman Greenbaum?] clearly didn’t understand the basics of Biblical Christianity.
At another point in the song, Greenbaum sings, “Never been a sinner, never sinned.” While I don’t know Greenbaum’s life, now or then, I can assure you that Greenbaum was a sinner. Everyone is. According to the Bible it is possible to sin in thought and word and deed – and we do.
It is likely that the lyricist was thinking, as many people do, that he hadn’t committed any of the ‘big’ sins. Adultery, murder, bank robbery – whatever else – of these sins he was innocent and therefore God would look on him favourably and take him to heaven when he died.
Biblical Christianity asserts that it is precisely because we are sinners that we need a friend in Jesus. Any of our sins – big or small – is enough to close the gates of heaven against us. Any of our sins is enough to alienate us from God – unless we have received his forgiveness. The forgiveness that God gives is based on our repentance and our faith in Jesus as the One who died to save us from our sins.
46 and [Jesus] said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. Luke 24:46-48 [NASB]
– SSXG