What is Sin, Anyway?

How did God decide what He would or would not do with His Image?  Did He just throw a dart at a dartboard, or pull pieces of paper out of a hat with actions that He declared would be in the sin category?

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No.

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God’s thoughts, words, and actions flow from His character and are a reflection of it.  They are the visible and invisible expressions of His Image.

Given that human beings are created in the Image of God (Creation, of course, is debated in the secular world which is why many don’t believe in either truth or sin anymore with consistency), humans are supposed to do with the Image of God what He would do with His Image.  Anything else is contrary to the character of God and is therefore, sin.

It explains why Matthew 22:37-39 records this: “Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

God is love and His every action is loving.  To act in an unloving way toward God or our fellow man is to do what God Himself would not do.  It is sin.

It’s not always a choice per se because Scripture says we are prisoners to sin.

But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. (Galatians 3:22)

Here is another Scripture that speaks of our bondage to sin:

Romans 7:22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God– through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Ever since the Fall of Man, Adam and Eve (and by extension the rest of us) have been prisoners of sin.  We know what it’s like to possess the Image of God within us and yet in our brokenness, we desire autonomy and to do things with the Image of God that we feel like doing.  It is how we were deceived to try to be “like God” (Genesis 3:5).

But are temptations and sins always my fault?  Join me on the next page.

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