What is Sin?
Webster's Dictionary says:
1. an offense against religious or moral law
2. a. transgression of the law of God
b. a vitiated state of human
nature in which the self is estranged from God
God has many things to say about sin in the
Bible. Sin started in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. God commanded
them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:17). But they
disobeyed God (Genesis 3:6) and sin was born. This sinful nature is
something that all of us inherit from that very first transgression by Adam and Eve:
"For all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God" Romans 3:23
"Therefore, just as sin entered the
world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men,
because all sinned" Romans 5:12
God detests sin and can not accept us in our sinful
state, for
"For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23
Some examples of sins identified in the Bible are:
- Adultery
- Bestiality
- Blasphemy
- Bribery
- Cursing & Swearing
- Coveting
- Debauchery
- Disobeying your parents
- Divination
- Drunkeness/debauchery
- Envy
- Fornication
- Fortune telling
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- Greed
- Hatred
- Homosexual behavior
- Hypocrisy
- Idolatry
- Incest
- Jealously
Lewdness
- Licentiousness
- Lying
- Lust
- Murder
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- Necromancy
- Pride
- Prostitution
- Partiality
- Rage
- Rape
- Rebellion
- Selfishness
- Sodomy
- Sorcery
- Stealing
- Unforgiveness
- Witchcraft
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Slaves to Sin: The most dangerous
part about sin, is that it can actually take control and rule a person’s life.
God explained this quality of sin to Cain, who shortly after became the first murderer,
about sin's desire for him:
If you do what is right, will you not be
accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to
have you, but you must master it." Genesis 4:7
The Apostle Paul echoed this in Romans:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your
mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin,
as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as
those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as
instruments of righteousness. Romans 6: 12-13
We have the responsibility and power to resist our sinful
tendencies. God said we "must master" it, or we will become slaves to it.
By obeying sin’s evil desires, our body parts can become "instruments of
wickedness." Furthermore, obedience to sin leads to a "slavery to
impurity," enabling "ever-increasing wickedness:"
Just as you
used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing
wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
Romans 6:19
Like a fire growing out of control, sin will spread
to every area of your life in this "slavery condition." It opens the door
for all kinds of perversions, especially sexual perversions:
Furthermore, since they did not think it
worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do
what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness,
evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They
are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of
doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless,
ruthless. Romans 1:28-31
Jesus Christ died to give us eternal life: That
is the Gospel ("good news") taught in the Bible---that Jesus Christ died in our
place to pay the penalty due for our sins against God, that we might join God after our
death for life in Heaven for eternity! Jesus Christ is the one who gives us a new
life, breaking us free from the bondage of our sinful nature.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life
set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it
was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the
righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to
the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
Romans 8:1-4
For God so loved the world that he gave his
one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal
life. John 3:16
Home Peace
with God
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