As a Matter of Fact

WHAT IS SIN?

At times Christianity can be confusing. When you start to read the Bible, there can be names of people and places you have never heard before, words that have little to no meaning outside of the world of faith, and recognizable things that have a more profound meaning than you’d ever imagine. Like the word sin. Do you know what it means?

THE STORY OF SIN

The first thing that stuck out to me when I started reading the Bible was story after story of people doing horrible things. It was pages of murder, rape, betrayal, and lying. Sometimes I couldn’t even make out who the good guy was. But let’s be real: not much has changed in today’s day and age. We have all been wronged by someone and we have also all wronged others. We all have seen bad things that demand justice. It doesn’t take much to prove the existence of sin. But, it still begs the question, “What is it?”

In its essence, sin is a coup against God.

Sin is “transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4) that occurs because we know God’s will (Romans 2:14-15) but reject it for our own. But it’s not just that you make a mistake or have to say sorry from time to time. At its root, it goes past outward actions to the very root of our nature, which is that we are all born with an evil bent. Because we are naturally in rebellion to the standard of good (God), we are incapable of being good (Romans 3:10, Luke 18:19). In its essence, sin is a coup against God. That is the root of all evil, and that’s all of humanity’s nature from birth. 

THE STORY OF GOD

But it wasn’t always this way. In the book of Genesis in the Bible, God declared that He made humans in His own image. Everything was good, but sin defiled and corrupted everything (Romans 8). Worse yet, it destroyed our relationship with God. The hard truth is that sin does not get  committed out of obligation, but rather out of desire. We want it. Sin is deceitful because it promises to give us what we think we want, but it ultimately destroys every good thing God intended. It leads us to believe that God is a liar.

Every human  is rightfully subject to the devastation of sin and punishment of sin, and once you get to know God, you’ll more clearly understand why He can’t just leave the guilty unpunished (Exodus 34:7). He is a God of justice, and the end result of unchecked sin is death (Romans 6:23). So, what’s the answer? How do we fix it when we can’t do anything good (Romans 3:10)? The good news is that although we’re incapable of remedying this on our own, Jesus did. Salvation is through faith alone, through Christ alone:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins.  It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” - Romans 3:23-26, ESV