What is sin?

 What Is Sin?

 

Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.

1 JOHN 3.4, NIV

Everything that does not come from faith is sin.

ROMANS 14.23, NIV

The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me.

JOHN 16.9

 

Remember the first day of school when you were given a list of class rules? No chewing gum. Raise your hand before you speak. No talking while the teacher is talking. Many people see sin as simply breaking God’s list of rules. They look at the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and think they are doing pretty well.

But we have to define sin the way the Bible does — in relationship to God’s law and his perfect character. John writes that “sin is lawlessness.” This goes to the root of all sinful actions and attitudes — our failure to trust God. Lawlessness is more than breaking the rules. It is living as though our own ideas are superior to God’s. At the heart of all sin is a lie that says to each of us, “What you are doing or thinking or feeling or wanting is not really that bad, because other people are doing things that are much worse. Besides, you can’t help it.”

Sin isn’t just limited to our failure to live up to a list of dos and don’ts given to us by God. In fact, many people have been deceived into thinking that things are okay between them and God because they don’t do the things from the “don’t” list, and they do at least a few things from the “do” list. But what they don’t realise is that this is just being moral or a good citizen or a nice person. It isn’t faith. And that means it won’t be enough to save them. Only Jesus can do that.