What is sin?
Let’s think about it in relation to a crime and a court of law.
In that situation, there would be a criminal, someone who has committed a crime, and a judge.
With a just system, a judge would be fair and balanced, and the criminal would be handed down a just punishment.
Now let’s relate that example to scripture.
Sin, according to 1 John 3:4, is the “transgression of the law.”
A person who is in transgression of God’s law has committed a sin.
In our example, crime is an analogy for sin and a criminal is an analogy for sinner.
According to Galatians 5:19-21, a few examples of sin are impurity, sensuality, idolatry, jealousy, envy, drunkenness, and anger.
Now that we have a sense of what sin is, and how it can be related to the judicial system in our example, how does it all relate to us?
According to Romans 3:23, scripture tells us “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”
Reading Isiah 64:6 is humbling and helps put things into perspective. It reads “But we are all as an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; And we all do fade as a leaf; And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
We, as descendants of Adam, have a fallen nature. With that fallen nature, we all have sinned, and we all fall short of the glory of God.
Try as we may, our transgressions separate us from God, and our good deeds won’t fix that. If they could, then God wouldn’t be just.
Romans 6:23 tells us “For the wages of sin is death;” With that, we learn the punishment for our transgressions, an eternal separation of God.
Relating all of this to the example above, we are the transgressors of God’s law, the sinner, the criminal. Since God is a just judge, our good deeds do not negate our sin. Our just punishment is death, and that brings with it an eternal separation from the most Holy God.
With this video, I wanted to address the question “What is sin?” Thankfully God is not only just, but love. That love brings with it the Gospel, and as Romans 6:23 tells us “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
AMEN