In the newest Relevant Magazine (type in p. 62), I have a piece on sin. Some of the points I make are that there is a widespread apathy about sin because we’ve embraced a God who is so gracious and loving that God has become avuncular, or a God who will ignore our sins. Another point I make is that sin wounds, always wounds, and it wounds because it eats away at our character and our capacity to love and to become holy.
But this raises the question of how we define sin, and for many sin is defined in narrowly legalistic categories. Sin is offense against one of God’s many, many laws. Sin then becomes a kind of checklist — did I do this one or did I not? Trot out the laws, all 613 of them, and see how we measure up. Or, take the big ones — the Ten Commandments — and test myself on how I am doing.
There can be no doubt that sin can be defined legally because there’s a legal dimension to how sin is understood in the Bible. But there’s so much more, and I would contend a legal definition of sin reduces sin to manageable proportions. Sin is robust in the Bible. It is personal, deeply personal — and that is why Jesus had to reinstate Peter.
I’m convinced we don’t read Genesis 3 carefully enough; I’m convinced we don’t see the inner fabric of the Ten Commandments well enough; and I’m convinced we don’t understand the gospel focus on Jesus as Messiah (King) and Lord. So, let me give a whirl at this on this site. What I’m arguing is that sin is in its essence usurpation. Sin makes us usurpers; as usurpers we sin. Sin is about our desire, an aching desire, to be God ourselves.
In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve wanted to be God. In the first two commandments we are taught to make God truly God because the essential command is to live before God as the one true God. And in the Gospels we learn that Jesus is the face of God whom we are to follow.
Hence, as can be found on nearly every page of One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow , the Christian life is about following Jesus, and following Jesus is “kingdom holiness.” This call became concrete reality on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, particularly Capernaum (to the left). We reduce sin to manageable proportions when we reduce the “Christian life” to “accepting Jesus” (not carefully understanding even what “accepting” means) and when we fail to see the massive focus of Jesus on “following him.” Sin, in other words, is the failure to follow Jesus — and following Jesus is about the first two commandments because it is about making God truly God in our life, and following Jesus is ultimately what Adam and Eve faced in the Garden of Eden: either do what God calls us to do or not.
Sin is about usurping, and for us Christians that usurping takes on a powerful christological shape in the NT: it’s about Jesus, it’s about following him. When we choose not to follow Jesus, we choose to become usurpers.
Sin is not reduceable to a checklist. It’s too deadly serious for that.
Would you say that sin is an orientation in life or a direction of life rather than a specific act or group of acts?
Conversion is a reorientation of direction in accord with God’s plan. Repent and follow Jesus.
Why must we make it so complicated?
Jesus say the Law hands on this: Thou shall love the Lord your God will ALL your being. And that loving your neighbor as YOUSELF is not lesser, or secondary but EQUAL to loving God.
Sin is FAILING to love God, and failure to love other humans, pure and simple.
I have to say on this matter I very much agree. Schaeffer used to use the word “autonomy”, but his point was the same. We want to be our own God and stand in rebellion. And the rebellion is not just moral, it is intellectual. We don’t even want to think without the assumption that the human mind is sufficient to unravel every mystery and answer every problem. We don’t like what God has revealed so we redefine, revise and reinterpret. Professing ourselves wise we embrace foolishness. The law, according to Paul, was to show us our sin, to leAd us to Christ, rather than to be a legalistic checklist. It was to show us our need and expose our rebellion.
Sin is anything that we think, say, or do, apart from God. Anything that does not glorify God can, in most part, be sin.
The irony in Jesus’ teaching: “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts…” sums up our dilemma in very short order. Jesus is not talking to some fallen angelic being standing in close proximity to Peter when he uses the term Σατανᾶς.
With an “avuncular” God, the 1st part of the Great Commandment seems meaningless. There are no consequences to not loving God. The 2nd part of the Great Commandment has taken center stage and “sin” is defined on the human plane, and righteousness becomes doing things to make it right with suffering humans. (I am not saying there is no place for human-oriented love via caring deeds.) The robustness and insidiousness of sin as presented in the Bible is reduced to acts *we can make right* by our efforts. And Uncle God smiles upon us for this. Sin as a nuclear affront to a holy God is considered passe. Psalm 51 is absent from the liturgy these days.
rjs, It is both specific acts and an orientation.
Ninure, since loving God and loving others are the bedrock of all commands, I would agree with you. All sin is the choice not to love God or not to love others.
Reaching back a few days to the discussion on 2 Thess, could “the man of sin… who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 2 Thess 2:3-4 be everyman?
I don’t think people who sit in pews and pound pulpits are safe from this:
“in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Thes 1:8
I think there needs to be a revival of “the fear of the Lord” as there was when Ananias kept secrets and Sapphira agreed with him unto death (Acts 5).
Speaking from the shoes of a woman who has been deeply wounded by the porn/sexual addiction of my seminary trained, former Christian college professor husband of 28 years…
Over the past couple of year’s, my wife and I have started thinking about sin as fundamentally a “rebellion of autonomy” rather than a “rebellion of actions”. Specifically, in this framework, I recognize sin as my desire to NOT need others in order to function successfully. I want to be independent, not so that I can “do what I want”, but rather so that I don’t have to need others and deal with the vulnerability that entails. Recognizing, admitting, and accepting that, at the core of my heart, I was not meant to be alone has been transforming for me (and my wife) like nothing we’ve ever experienced before as Christians. Transforming of behavior occurs through focusing on vulnerable communication of our core longings and needs.
Do you think this is consistent with what you are saying in this post?
A second question – you emphasize “following Jesus” is key, but how am I supposed to do that (relationally) when it seems I can’t experience him anything at all like I can real flesh and blood people? God and Jesus have seemed silent to me for a decade or more now when I pray. I feel like I’m trying to follow a set of abstract concepts rather than someone I can touch and converse with. How can following Jesus not turn into a set of rules then? My only hope in this seems to be to try to be real with real people, and that is great, but it doesn’t make me confident at all in the reality of God in this life or the one to come.
I’m not sure I understand this definition of sin. From an anthropological perspective man has long pursued following god(s). Why would man cultural pursue belief in forces that control their lives – from stars to animal spirits to deities – if our real drive is to rule ourselves? I’m not sure it’s observable that people want to be God or even that they want to be in charge of their own lives. As a pastor I have people asking me to tell them what to do all the time. If sin was merely not following Jesus why would so many cultures develop the need to follow something other than themselves? And these god(s), spirits, etc. are often not kind, benevolent or avuncular and sometimes demand a heavy price from their subjects.
I find this account of sin very helpful, but I think we need to be careful as well not to view sin as JUST an individual thing. It seems to me that there are systemic injustices in which all of us are entangled, and community sin is as devastating and pernicious as individual sin.
If we say that we have not sinned (Gr., ἁμαρτάνω hamartanō), we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (I John 1:10).
If we say that we have no sin (Gr., ἁμαρτία hamartia), we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (I John 1:8).
All have sinned (Gr. ἁμαρτάνω hamartanō) and come short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
Here’s the definition I found for the Greek word: 1) to be without a share in, 2) to miss the mark, 3) to err, be mistaken, 4) to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong, 5) to wander from the law of God, violate God’s law, sin.
It’s a sad human being who thinks he or she has never erred, been mistaken, missed the mark, wandered from the path of uprightness and honor, done or gone wrong, wandered from the law of God, or violated God’s law.
A more popular way to say it nowadays is “flawed”…C.S. Lewis called us a planet of “bent ones”…but “usurpers” works, too. Not eikons, but cracked eikons…
Luthers emphasis that we cannot break a command without first breaking the first commandment has been a guidepost for me. To see all of sin as idolatry or within those terms is helpful, I can not sin apart from elevating something to the place of God, namely myself.
I definitely agree that sin is about usurping. My 4 year old proves this every time she says she wants to do it HER way and not our way. We talk about God wanting us to do things His way – surrendering to His Lordship….His Kingdom, not our personal Kingdoms.
I like RJS’s word “orientation” – and I wonder if this is meant to include every aspect of our being? I look at sanctification as a process whereby we are becoming more Christ-like/Kingdom-oriented with outward actions AND in the heart. So our desire is less for our own way and more for God’s way as we are sanctified. If areas of the heart are changed, certain outward actions change. In fact, so much more than one “check” on the checklist is changed when the heart changes. I like to use the analogy that changing outward actions is like charity – attempting to help or change the world one action at a time. Heart-change is systemic change. The fruit of the tree changes not by taking off the bad fruit and pasting on new one at a time, but by becoming a totally different kind of fruit tree, producing crops of the new fruit. All of this is accomplished by the grace of God…which makes heart-change feel out of our control. But this is where the spiritual formation movement helps us understand how to best put up our sails to catch God’s winds of grace as it often (though unpredicably) flows. Choosing to act in a Kingdomly way is a very important aspect of heart-change, but it isn’t necessarily heart-change.
Based on my personal experience and walking through life with others, I think a legal definition of sin leads people to believe they have complete control (& power) over their ‘goodness’, which leads to either an inflated or deflated view of themselves – both of which the ‘self’ is the focus. Understanding sin as usurping (and the desire to usurp) & sanctification as inside-out change is helpful for obtaining and maintaining humility- our humanity (helping us love others better b/c we know we also desire to usurp at times) and an understanding of our personal, on-going need for Jesus.
Scot’s love-assessment (I don’t remember what it is called) examines the heart – how loving we are. My understanding of heart-level change makes it hard for me to hear people accuse assessments like this of being “naval-gazing”. Introspective assessment can be a very helpful tool for re-orienting toward the Kingdom through repentance and surrender…thus effecting all our actions – not just the ones we’re focused on in a particular moment.
To acknowledge our sin righteously is to seek forgiveness; reconcilliation with God. Confession commits one to repentance and healing. So much of our Lords healings were facilitated through a forgiveness of sin. We honor our Lord when we seek forgiveness. When we seek His forgiveness, we acknowledge our own limitations, our dependence and we let God be God.
“Forgive me Father for I have sinned”. A powerful statement of faith and truth. The true context of our lives.
#10 – I wonder if the reason humans have always sought out gods is because they want to make sense of the difficulty of living life here on earth. I wonder if Christians give off a message that IF you do what is right, blessings will follow. Could it be that, though there may be a measure of desire to obey when folks ask what they should do, there is also a desire to manipulate or take advantage of God or figure Him out so we can be happier? Could the desire to obey be based on fear of judgement more than love of God?
Yes!
I routinely get into mini debates these days with those who say that you have to accept Jesus to be saved. When questioned, the knowledgeable folks generally get down to the point that accepting Jesus means following him. The part they don’t see is that the phrase “accepting Jesus” does not really mean that to most people on the surface, therefore it is grossly misleading. It is Christianese that hides the true nature of the relationship.
Scot, I enjoyed your One.Life book and the orientation around following.
As I have been participating in these conversations on this site over the past year my view of sin has definitely changed. Sin is an orientation that is not following Jesus. I am also becoming convinced many of the sins in today’s world are sins of apathy and lack of effort. Our modern society and its dissociation of the means of production for so many of consumed goods from those who use them hides many of the evils present and cause sin. If we lived with the people who produced our goods we would view it differently.
This relationship with our whole consumer value chain has been lost and must be found.
Amanda, I would agree: systemic evil is the residue of sinful behaviors and orientations.
Perhaps more precisely – systemic evil is the residue of sinful behaviors that arise out of an orientation away from the purposes of God.
Systemic evil and sinful behaviors are a consequence of Sin – and we just treat the symptoms if the emphasis is not on the the total change of orientation (individually and collectively).
Or at least this is what I’m thinking at this point.
Scot, absolutley. Its this more robust understanding of holiness and the pervsiveness of sin that has led me to lean toward universal restoration. Even aside from those who have never heard are all of those who have heard, prayed the sinners’ prayer, and have continued to live the destructive (but socially acceptable) lifestyle of sin. Will God shut the door on them? Now we’re back to a minority of humanity “getting it” prior to their first death. And if salvation is about growing and cultivating God’s holy character in place of our sinful character’s, will that happen suddenly as some have claimed or will it be gradual, which seems to fit with experience of the great saints?
Another question about this paradigm shift. Can God’s holiness tolerate the existence of sin anywhere in his Creation, even if its confined to “hell”? It could uner the legal exchange system, I’m not sure it can under a more robust understanding of sin.
Dr. McKnight
If sin is an orientation, and Romans 1 illustrates that orientation for us, why did Paul use homosexuality as an example? Does homosexualty involve a higher degree of disorientation than, say, gossip, or gluttony?
Don’t we need to distinguish sin (an orientation) from sins(individual acts? We can be doing individual sins and still be oriented toward God. When those individual acts of disobiediance cause us to hide our face from God, we turn to sin and are in danger. Sin is an orientation away from following the King. Things that get in the way are sins and can lead to sin at some point.
As a Lutheran, I view sin as something I am, not so much what I do. Just as a slave has no choice but to be a slave, as a human I’m born a sinner and cannot free myself. That is why I thank God that God loves me, sent His Son to die for me, the righteous for the unrighteous, sought me out, made me His own in Water and the Word, forgives my sin and my sins, and placed faith in my heart through His Holy Spirit. Life is now between the New Adam within me and the Old Adam who remains until physical death removes Him. I’m with Scott that sin and sins are all about our desire to be “just like God.” To live in faith, then, is to daily nail that Old Adam to the cross and with open hand and heart receive all blessing God has for me — now and forever.
I don’t think sin is the desire to be God or to be like God. I think that when God said “Let us make man in our image”. He meant to make humans like Himself, like God. So, it seems natural to desire to be like that.
Sin, therefore, is the attempt to be God without BEING GOD. For example, I want to be All Powerful like God, but I don’t want to be Sacrificial, like God.
How that pertains to the Genesis 3 story? The serpent said that Knowledge of Good and Evil was the way to be like God. He said that God was forbidding that knowledge so that humans wouldn’t be like God.
But if love is the central essence to who God is, then loving is the way to being like God. KNOWING will fall short of that. You can’t KNOW your way to God.
So, when God says eating from the tree of Knowledge will kill you, He’s not saying it’s a poison or a punishment. He’s saying there’s no nourishment there. The Knowledge of Good and Evil is not the way to life.
This has significant impact on how we westerners operate.
Scot, I think that no matter which way the pendulum swings (as you put it in the Relevant article), there is always the issue of people seeing sin & grace through a lens that is either erring on the side of legalism or on the side of permitting sin. I grew up in an environment that planted some deep seeds of legalism in my heart, and I’ve spent the better part of my adult life trying to weed them out. Personally, I’m EXCITED that the church is moving to a place where God’s grace and love are proclaimed in place of a rules-based, behavior-policing gospel. It’s ultimately His kindness that leads to repentance, His grace that fosters change, and His love that prompts us to follow Him.
So I don’t think I’m disagreeing with anything you’ve said. I just have a different reaction to this shift in church thinking. Do we run the risk of being “soft on sin”? Sure. And that’s something that needs to be kept in check at all times. But I’d rather that than run the risk of being steeped in legalism.
I think we are called to err on the side of Grace. It seems if somehow God can gives us the Grace that we received maybe we should start affording that to others as well. Maybe sometimes we should take the person into account as well… sometimes some people know how terrible there actions are and the last thing they need is a word judgement and instead need words of hope. At other times if someone is proud and believe they are more than ok in their sin maybe they need a word to let them know that God is the ultimate judge and is holy. Scripture seems to lift up the broken and weary and tear down the proud and haughty so why can we approach individuals in this matter instead of acting like there is no difference in each individual?
Scot, I just read your article yesterday and appreciated it. I loved this line: “Sin is like satire: If you feast all the time on the foibles of others, you eventually destroy them and yourself.” It got me thinking about the cynicism I find so much in those of my generation.
But I wonder how different the legal categories of sin really are from the relational. Since the personal God is the Lawgiver, breaking the law is always personal isn’t it? Sin only gets reduced to a checklist when the Lawgiver is detached from his law. Every act of lawbreaking is first an act of idolatry or “usurping.”
Peter G., when you say sin is always personal you’ve enhanced/expanded the legal into the relational.
Concerning kingdom holiness I would like to think of the effect of God’s redeeming, transforming grace in Christ in regard to sin. We are brought into right relationship with God and with others, in which love reigns. A love which is Jesus-like, and therefore cross-shaped.
Concerning sin, I like your emphasis here, and what John Frye seconds. That indeed it must start with a keen awareness of being against God. And from that violating those made in God’s image, for whom in God’s love, Christ died.
This is very interesting and I appreciate everyone’s comments. This is a difficult subject for me to grasp. I tend to ask people how they would define sin. My daughter says sin is anything contrary to the nature of God. I always heard it was “missing the mark.” A pastor I once had said there were two problems with making a list of sins: (1) it was too long; (2) it was too short. I’m hopeful this discussion can continue to be helpful to me. I usually know when I have sinned; I just resist calling it that.
“Sin is failure to follow Jesus”. That is a good definition, but now Jesus is ascended to heaven, it it not failure to listen and obey the Holy Spirit.
Peter#27, what generation are you? Just curious since I don’t think any one generation is more cynical than others.
I read the article, and I agree that among some sectors of the church we need to talk more about sin. Among other sectors, though, the concept is like a dead horse; it is being beaten with little understanding, explanation or sympathy. The point in those sectors is to get people to “accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.” There is very little help with what to do after one has “made a decision,” so I hope your book sells very widely, Scot. I think people do need to really wrestle with what it means to follow Jesus, and to do what God calls us to do, without getting tied up in knots about having to know every detail about “God’s will for our lives.”
Now, I am known among my friends for asking “Why?” about these knotty questions. So I would ask Scot, Why do you think it is that people want to usurp the place of God? And I would wonder, and ask you to consider, that we want to live, really live, and we want to be God from a place of staring non-existence in the face, even if we can’t articulate it, *already having lost* (or never really known to begin with) trust in God. That we do it because, like the first Adam, we don’t trust God to be the source of our life; and, like David @9 said, we don’t really want to open ourselves to the aspect of our existence being dependent not only on God, but on others – not simply because it makes us vulnerable, though that’s scary enough – but also because we, like Jesus, are called to very serious humility and self-offering. It’s Heb 2.14-15 yet again. (And it’s also Ziziolas’ “Being as Communion,” which is on my short list.)
The Jesus Creed, of course, is the goal. Being a person who loves God and loves others is what our life here is meant to be about. And becoming that kind of person takes effort. I know you don’t believe that holiness is magically instantaneous on “making a decision for Christ,” but a whole lot of Evangelicals do. There’s something “in the air” among non-sacramental Protestants that keeps them from actually taking up tools that would help us get to the heart of that existential difficulty. One thing is, that existential problem is rarely seen and essentially never addressed; it’s all about the checklist. The other thing is that any kind of praxis (except bible reading, which is also supposed to magically make us better Jesus-followers) is seen as trying to earn salvation by “works” and so the tools available that can help us to become better Jesus-followers are never even touched. “Magical thinking” about them needs to be avoided, too. But I’m just saying…
Dana
God is Love. Sin is anything that violates Love. No need to complicate everything; just begin learning about the reality of what Love is. It requires a mind-shift; an awakening, and then freedom!
Dana, on the “why” question… I’m not sure anyone knows fully. In part, because we are made in God’s image to co-rule with one another and under God, and instead of that we want to rule alone. We are made by God to rule, and we have distorted what that ruling is to be.
On the “why” question…
If we look to Gen. 3 for answers, there may be a hint in the serpent’s exchange with Eve. The serpent questioned God’s goodness & ability and then Eve, presumably, began to wonder if God was holding out or not all she thought He was. Then she took of the fruit and ate. Perhaps it is evil’s scheme to cause us to doubt God and thus usurp His rule.
Scot, I’ll go for that as part of the answer. It still doesn’t speak to the existential thing, though. Thanks.
Dana