The Nature of Sin
The Nature of Sin
Sin is both a noun and a verb. The word sin is used in scripture in a number of different ways. You are likely to read that sin is "missing the mark." That's true. Sin is also described in the Bible as "whatever is not of faith" (Romans 14:23). Elsewhere it is articulated as breaking the Law--Paul says in Romans 4:15 that where there is no law, there is no violation, which means that if there is a law and you break it, that's sin. At perhaps its most basic, sin is imperfection. Jesus said, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)
So, sins are attitudes and actions that are ungodly. Sin is also seen as a power or a personality with desires and plans. We see it represented this way as early as Genesis 4:7 where God tells Cain that sin is lurking at the door and its desire is to have him. Sin entered the world through Adam (Romans 5:12).
Jesus took away the sin of the world. (John 1:29) This is a big part of what Jesus did at the cross. Father was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself and not counting their sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
This being the case, the only thing standing between God and mankind is whether they choose to believe Him. In this sense the only sin that counts for anything is the sin of unbelief. Unbelief and obedience are nearly synonymous and rooted in the same Greek words.
When people seek fulfillment, righteousness, or justification through anything other than Jesus Christ, they sin. This is disobedience and it demonstrates that they do not believe God because they are attempting to be their own source. These sins, the verbs, are the result of sin, the noun. It is this dynamic about which Paul was speaking in Romans 7:19–20 “For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.” (NASB 2020)
The mindset of the world is self-reliance. The mindset of the Kingdom is dependence. Said another way, “the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace” Romans 8:6 (NASB 2020).
