What About Sin?

Some time back a member of one of my former congregations submitted a number of questions to me and asked that I respond. This person said that these are the kinds of questions that they are regularly asked about the Christian faith. My assumption is that all of us hear these kinds of questions from time to time, so I want to share both the questions and my brief answers with you. The answers are not entirely complete because the issues that were raised are complicated and require a certain amount of background in Biblical/Christian concepts that not everyone has. Let’s just say that it’s a start.

What about sin?  Are there differences in the level of sin, mild, moderate, severe?  If I am no better than anyone else, are you trying to say that as a good solid humble, Christian, that I am no better than a murderer, in God’s eyes?

   The word “sin” has caused some confusion in the Christian community because the word itself is applied in two different ways.

   The word “sin” in the Greek New Testament is “harmartia” which is a word that originally came from the practice of archery and meant “to miss the mark.”

   So, when we fail to live up to a standard (whether that standard has been set by God or by people) we could refer to that as “missing the mark” or “sinful.”

   The deeper question has to do with “why” we miss the mark? Social science has posited all kinds of theories about biological and behavioral influences that shape the way we act and react in society and I don’t disagree with all of what has been proposed. However, the Bible suggests that our fundamental problem is a spiritual brokenness that moves us to act out in painful and inappropriate ways. The word we use for this fundamental brokenness is also “sin.”

   So, sinful behavior is a symptom of a more pervasive disease and when we talk about Jesus coming into the world we say that he came to wash away the spiritual “stain” of sin in our lives but also to heal the brokenness that moves us to sin in the first place.

   For years I have been telling confirmation classes (and congregations) that “we are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.” The root problem is not our behavior; the root problem is our brokenness. Once the brokenness is healed then the symptoms of that brokenness should tend to go away.

   So it isn’t a question of “mild”, “moderate” or “severe” sin. The symptoms of our brokenness might be as severe as murder or they might be simple as self-centeredness or greed or lying and cheating on your taxes. The “good, solid, humble Christian” and the “murderer” start out with the same problem.

   It is the “nature” of our lives that keeps us separated from God and it is the nature of our lives that Jesus came to heal. He came to carry both our brokenness and our disobedience to the cross.

   The healing begins when we are willing to place our lives in Jesus’ care.