SIN

The following section focuses more closely on the topic of sin and man's helplessness, culminating in the assurance that deliverance is possible through God's grace which is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. 

What is sin (try and think of more than simply disobedience)?

What words would you use to define the human predicament?

Although looking at sin is not particularly attractive, we can find hope in that it is not the condition for which we are made, and we can be delivered from it by God's grace.

Adam and Eve's downward plummet began with mistrust; Satan placed 'distance' between God and Eve in her thinking. Sin entered through the mind: ".But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ" (2 Cor 11:3).

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. Titus 1:15

The first consequence of sin was that the idyllic community was shattered. When Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord in the garden they went and hid. They ran from God, indicating the breaking of fellowship with God, due to sin. They had also become vulnerable and covered themselves indicating that their sense of guilt and shame had marred the former sense of human community.

Sin is the refusal of a son to be a son, and of a daughter to be a daughter living in harmony with a heavenly Father. When we take away the Fatherhood of God as the explanation of our being then the world is reduced to chaos, where almost anything can happen and the 'parents' we learn from are the experiences we have gone through.

"Adam is made for intimate, reciprocal relationship with God, designed for relationship with his created others and born to the divine and creative vocation of earth-care and earth-filling."
'The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery', page 9.

Sin is our failure to live out our calling as God's image bearers - we fail to live in community with God, with others, with self and with our environment, whilst still retaining our unique individuality.

"What God has decided to create must stand in a relationship to him. The creation of man in God's image is directed to something happening between God and man. The creator created a creature that corresponds to him, to whom he can speak, and who can hear him."
Dr McFarlane in 'Christ and the Spirit', p93.

"The Christian worldview avoids the fatal traps of both individualism and collectivism. It declares from the outset that each of us is unique and in the image of God, but that the God in whose image we are made is communal. That is, at our core, we are social beings. We were made for God; we were made for each other."
Dr James Sire, in 'Discipleship of the Mind,' p 64.

In one sense the essence of sin is that we become our own masters. In doing so we fall away from the divine eternal life for which we were made. Due to the fall there is an unwillingness to acknowledge God's sovereignty and rebellion against the divine rule.

The Bible speaks of our human problem as failure before anything else. Sin is offensive to God and is the failure to live the way we were created to. Therefore, in its essential nature 'sin' describes our inability, or even our set refusal, to fulfil God's design for us. For example, even as Christians we can refuse to see God as a Father who loves us and reaches out to us in grace and mercy, because it is far easier to ignore and avoid someone whom we falsely believe does not have our best interests at heart.

"In sin, the self rather than God becomes our criterion of value. We may simply refuse to see ourselves as God's good creation or we may actually elevate the creation rather than Creator as our sovereign.we miss the mark of participation in the community of God which the Creator desires for his creations.It (sin) has an active, pernicious dimension, for it is also actually opposition to God's intent."
Dr S. Grenz in 'Theology for the Community of God,' p 243-244.

Due to sin we become self-centred and shut ourselves into our own little Universe. Even as Christians we can sometimes find ourselves asking God to help us rule our Universe, rather than stepping out of our
chains, and past the prison bars of our oft-erroneous world view and into His Universe - into fullness of life. 

"Our power has become poisoned power. We discovered the ultimate physical power in the universe, the power wrapped up in an atom - and the very first thing we did with it was to blow whole cities and their citizens into oblivion. And instead of gaining security by it we are filled with an increasing dread that it may be used on us - on us all. Our power has become power to ruin ourselves. Our very light has turned to darkness. Man has gained control over nature, but not over human nature."
Dr E. Stanley Jones in the introduction to his book, 'The Way to Power and Poise.'

We seek to create value in self and for self, instead of realising the source from which all value and meaning comes from - God.

To find real freedom we need to recognise that we were not created to be self-existent, but to exist with a dependency and total trust in God.

"He has lost the loving intercourse with the Father which he once enjoyed and all the graces and blessings which flowed from it, and in consequence of this loss even his natural capacities have been wounded and weakened. Nevertheless, his fundamental natural endowments remain. He can make intellectual progress, though it is a laborious and painful process, marked by many obstacles and divagations; the astounding scientific movement of the last four centuries is the most striking example of this."
Dr Eric Mascal in, 'The Importance of Being Human' page 87. 

O.T. words for sin include: 'avah' = bent or crooked; 'aval' = lack of integrity; 'avar' = to cross over, transgress; 'ra' = the rule of evil; 'ma'al' the breach of trust.

The most commonly used term is 'chatha,' meaning 'to miss the right point, or deviate from the norm. Underlying its theological meaning is its use as a verb of movement, "Missing the right point." Hence it can denote "to lose" as the opposite of "to find." "For whoever finds me finds life and receives favour from the LORD. But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death." Proverbs 8:35-36.
N.T. words for sin include 'parabasis' = the transgression of a boundary, and 'parkoe' = disobedience to a voice.

There is the need to remember that whilst sin perverts goodness, bondage to sin does not mean that we can never do what is right: "Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them," Romans 2:14-15.

Romans 2 shows us that those outside of Israel did not live in utter darkness with a total inability to tell right from wrong. There is a sense of knowing how to act in certain situations, yet conscience is not, as already mentioned, to be relied upon.

Sin seizes the opportunity the law affords. As the law defines what sin is, it arouses the desire to transgress (Rom 7:8-11). In the same way, knowledge only serves to heighten our responsibility not to sin (James 4:17; Jn 9:41).

"It is apparent in the Bible that God wants people to live with a certain mindset in order to know full mental and spiritual health. They must learn to live life with a claim on and a sense of God's forgiveness, even in the face of continued faults and failures. They must live with the confidence that God has a plan for their happiness and well-being in this life and that He provides a source of power to meet every challenge. Furthermore they must retain the confidence that even when they fail to appropriate that power God still maintains control."
Dr P. Cosgrove in, 'Mental Health- A Christian Approach'; page 40.

We began by saying that looking at sin is not particularly attractive, yet there is hope. It is not the condition for which we were created, and there is the possibility of deliverance through the grace and mercy of our heavenly Father. God seeks to bring us home.

When God makes His home with us through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ: -

Please review your answers - is there anything you would add to them? What does the last section (after 'when God makes His home with us) tell you about God?