What Is Sin?

[Darris McNeely] Does your church talk about sin? A three-letter word, but a big one. How about your pastor, your favorite pastor? Your favorite television ministry? Does it talk about sin? Does it define from the Bible what sin is and help you to understand what sin does to your life? I want to give you three scriptures from the Bible that talk about sin and are critical to a foundational, basic understanding of what sin is, and why we should strive to turn against it.

The first scripture is in 1 John 3:4. Here we get a basic definition from the Bible of what sin is. It says, “Whosoever commits sin transgresses the law, for sin is the transgression of the law.” Very simple, basic definition. It’s the transgression of the law of God. What is the law of God? Well, it’s a number of different things. The Ten Commandments are the basic outline of what God’s law are. We are to keep the Sabbath, we are not to murder, not to steal, we are not to commit adultery. There are ten of them. Avoid stealing, avoid lying – basic human principles that when obeyed, makes society work quite well. This is the first scripture.

There’s a second one, Romans chapter 2 – actually, Romans chapter 3, verse 23. It says that “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). So it tells us that all have sinned, including you and including me. Everyone, every human being, is guilty of transgressing the law of God.

Now, there’s one final scripture for us to know here in this episode, and that is in Romans again, chapter 6, and again, verse 23. And it reads this way – it says, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). In other words, what you earn by sinning, by transgressing the law of God – and remember, all of us have done that – is death. It’s pretty stark, it’s pretty straightforward from God. But that verse concludes by saying, “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Eternal life is a gift. But we must turn from sin to begin to understand and realize and to be able to accept that gift from God of eternal life.

So again I ask you the question – does your church talk about sin? Does it help you to understand what the biblical definition of sin is? It’s important in your relationship with God and why, when we do sin, when we continue to flagrantly disobey the law of God and come under the penalty of that, we are actually cutting ourselves off from a loving, caring, grace-filled relationship with our God – thereby negating all the good that we think we may be receiving by our works, by our faith, by our attendance, or by our worship. Sin is a very important matter for us to understand. What is sin? It’s a transgression of God’s law. We have all sinned. And the wages of that sin is death, unless we change and accept the gift of eternal life that God gives to us.

The next Daily, I’m going to talk about exactly what that turning is, by way of something called repentance.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.