What Is Sin

What is sin?

also known as: disobedience of God’s commands/laws, wickedness, evil, iniquity, perversity, turning away from what Righteousness is good, while transgression, wrongdoing, and unrighteousness are not.

Sin is a term that signifies the intentional violation of God’s law—committing evil acts (or desiring to)—or not doing what is just and right as per His law.

“Sin is the transgression of God’s law” (1 John 3:4; Romans 4:15), manifesting in both the inner state and habit of the soul, as well as the external behavior of life, whether by action or inaction (Romans 6:12-17; 7:5-24). The moral nature of a person’s deeds is a reflection of the moral condition of their heart.

The inclination towards sin—the habitual inner state that precipitates a sinful deed—is also considered sin (Romans 6:12-17 ESV; Galatians 5:17; James 1:14-15).

Sin is not merely a violation of the law of our constitution or the system of things; it is an offense against a personal lawgiver and moral governor who enforces his law with penalties. The soul that sins is invariably aware that its sin is intrinsically vile and polluting, and that it rightfully merits punishment.

—Charles Hodge, Princeton Sermons: Outlines of Discourses Doctrinal and Practical

 

Origin of sin / original sin

Sin apparently began with a prominent and proud angel in Heaven, known now as Satan, and it spread to many other angelic beings. It is deduced that this happened soon after the Creation of Earth, and Adam and Eve, and before the conception of Cain and his younger brother Abel. As a result, Satan and his rebels were cast out of Heaven to Earth. The Son of God watched him “fall like lightning from Heaven” (Luke 10:18).

These supernatural beings (devils, demons) are treacherous, hate-filled opponents of all goodness and righteousness—relentless adversaries of God and man. Satan’s temptation and deception of Eve, led to the sin of

Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:1-6) consisted in his yielding to the assaults of temptation and rebelling against God by eating the forbidden fruit.

This sin involved…

1. the guilt of disobedience to a positive command
2. the lack of trust in God’s goodness in what He might do about his mate, Eve—she having been deceived by Satan into disobeying God’s command
3. the sin of unbelief, virtually believing God is a liar

• Tree of knowledge of good and evil
• Tree of Life
• Adam and Eve

Consequences

By this sin, Adam became an apostate from God, a rebel against his Creator. He lost the favor of God and intimate communion with Him; his whole nature became fundamentally depraved.

The sin of our nature is like a sleeping lion, the least thing that awakens it makes it rage. Though the sin of our nature seems quiet, and lies as fire hid under the embers, yet if it be a little stirred and blown up by temptation, how quickly may it flame forth into scandalous evils! Therefore, we need always to walk watchfully. “I say to you all, Watch” (Mark 8:37). A wandering heart heeds a watchful eye. —Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, page 148

This Great Fall from innocence to evil set consequences in motion that man and all creation groan under, to this day (Romans 8:22). Adam immediately died spiritually, and his body began to inevitably die physically.

Adam was created by God to be the head and representative of all his posterity, and therefore when he fell, they fell with him (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:22-45). His probation was their probation, and his fall their fall. Because of Adam’s first sin, all his posterity came into the world spiritually dead, in a state of sin and condemnation, i.e., (1) a state of moral corruption, and (2) of guilt, as having judicially imputed to them the guilt of Adam’s first sin.

Imputation—sin nature passed on in the DNA of all descendants

Our sinful propensity to do what is wrong, impure, hurtful and unholy is inherited from our parents, without exception. And this sin nature soon became evident, even when we were tiny children.

“Our first parents being the root of all mankind, the guilt of their sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature were conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation.”

The term “original sin” is frequently and properly used to denote the moral corruption of humanity’s whole nature, inherited by all from Adam.

This inherited moral corruption consists of:

1. the loss of original righteousness
2. Steals happiness

   “Sin is a robber. It steals your joy, your happiness, your fellowship with God.” —Franklin Graham

   the presence of a constant proneness to do evil, which is the root and origin of all actual sin

It is called “sin” (Romans 6:12, Rom. 6:14, Rom. 6:17; Rom. 7:5-17), the “flesh” (Galatians 5:17, Gal. 5:24), “lust” (James 1:14-15), the “body of sin” (Romans 6:6), “ignorance,” “blindness of heart,” “alienation from the life of God” (Ephesians 4:18-19).

It influences and depraves the whole man, and taking us downward to deeper and deeper corruption, there remaining no recuperative element in the soul. It is a total depravity, and it is also universally inherited by all descendants of Adam (Romans 3:10-23; 5:12-21; Rom. 8:7).