Sin. What’s That?

Another way of looking at this is to see that a human being fully alive is another way of saying “saint”, for a saint is a person who, by God’s grace, has achieved their full human potential. They have become all they were created to be. They are fully and gloriously alive and complete in Christ. To quote the Epistle to the Ephesians they have “grown up into the full stature of the humanity of Christ Jesus.”

This is the destiny of each of the baptized, and not to reach the destiny is therefore to “fall short of the glory of God.”

Consequently, “sin” is anything we do or fail to do which keeps us from achieving this total and complete glory, freedom and abundant life in Christ.

How our confessions would change and our lives would change if we could see sin in this way!

It is so sad to see people wrapped up either in anger and guilt or in laziness and indifference about sin. They see sin as a guilty shameful thing when they should see it as a fault and a problem which is keeping them from reaching their full potential in Christ. Individual sins are the result of this deep wound. Furthermore, this deep wound has got infected by repeated sin and living in an atmosphere of sin.

When we see how this keeps us from the full freedom and joy of living in Christ, then we have the true motivation to confess those sins, receive forgiveness and receive the graces necessary to move further up and further in to the glory that God has in store for each one of us.

See sin, therefore as an athlete sees a failure to reach the goal he has set. See sin as a musician sees a bad note or an out of tune instrument. See sin as a wrong turning in need of a correction. See sin as a wound that comes from a fall, and then see Doctor Jesus and Nurse Mary as the ones who administer the everlasting healing.

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