a What Sin Is	3Back to Home

4 Navigation --------------- Homepage St. Matthew St. Matthew 2 St. Mark St. Luke St. Luke 2 St. John St. John 2 Acts of Apostles Acts of Apostles 2 --------------- The Letters --- Romans --- 1. Corinthias --- 2. Corinthias --- Galatians --- Ephesians --- Philippians --- Colossians --- 1. Thessalonians --- 2. Thessalonians --- 1. Timothy --- 2. Timothy --- Titus --- Philemon --- Hebrews --- James --- 1. Peter --- 2. Peter --- 1. John --- 2. John --- 3. John --- Jude --------------- The Apocalypse

How, then, does the Bible understand sin? Once again, the Genesis story, which is "our" story, gives us our best clue. Moving ahead to Gen., ch. 3, we find that man is tempted. And what is the temptation? It is the temptation to play the part of God: You will be like God, knowing good and evil ( Gen. 3:5). "You will be like God" -- there is the fundamental temptation. We are created to live as God's children and make him the center of our life, and instead we want to play the part of God ourselves. Sin, in other words, is centered in an act of rebellion. We rebel against submitting to God. We want to run the show. Let's translate that idea into our language, and see if this is not, indeed, "our" story: "My life's my own; nobody's going to tell me how to behave." "What's in it for me?" "I'll do as I darn well please." "You gotta look out for Number One." "I know just what I want to get out of life, and I'm jolly well going to get it." When I say such things, I make it plain that the center of my life is "I." This is what sin is -- making "I" the center of life rather than God. It is insisting upon my will rather than God's will; it is thinking primarily about myself. But I was not created to think primarily about myself. I was created to love and serve God. And rather than doing this, I say: "I will play the part of God in my life. I will be the center of things." And even if I get sanctimonious about it (look that word up sometime) and assert that I am only trying to do God's will, I find that I have an uncanny ability to make God's will coincide with what I wanted to do all along. I am still at the center. This is something that is uniquely possible to me as a man, because I have a freedom which can be abused. A tree does not "sin"; neither does a tiger or a turtle or a tomtit. But I do, because I have potentialities that the tree and tiger and turtle and tomtit do not have, and I rebel against using them as I should. Having a chance to love God, I choose to love myself. And in so doing, I separate myself from God. Now the unhappy consequence of separating myself from God is that I thereby separate myself from my fellow men as well. If I do not accept the fact that I am created for the high destiny of fellowship with God, I am not likely to feel that Bill Jones is created for that destiny either. If he is not a child of God, but a child of dust, then I do not need to worry too much about him, or about what happens to him. If the opportunity arises, I will try to "use" him -- manipulate him to my own advantage. He becomes a "thing." I am separated from Bill Jones, just as I am separated from Fred Smith and John Brown, and just as (by the same token) all the Joneses, Smiths, and Browns are separated from each other. We are all trying to "play the part of God" against each other, to "lord it over" each other, and we turn out to be pretty poor at playing God's role. And the result is disaster. Once more, the story in Genesis underlines "our" story. The consequence of rebellion in Genesis was expulsion from the "Garden of Eden." In our day the consequence of rebellion is the whole dislocation of human life. Our earth, which could be an Eden, is for great numbers of people a living hell. God conquers death God gives us the power to conquer The Only Real "Answer" A Question You Can't Avoid Some Current Answers -- a Dime a Dozen The First Part of the Biblical Answer What Is the "Image of God"? Some Consequences The Second Part of the Biblical Answer What Sin Is Supplying Some Documentation What Sin Is Not Getting Straightened Out How Can I Be Changed? The Third Part of the Biblical Answer The First Step After the First Step The Heart of the Matter Not Once and for All Some Hints for Growing -- Tried and Tested A Final Warning Why Isn't "Individual Religion" Enough? The Case Against the Church -a Bagful of Objections When Did the Church Get Started? Just What Is a "Covenant"? The "New Covenant" Becomes a Possibility Those Words of Jesus to Peter Those "Upsetters of the World" A Rebuttal of the Case Against the Church Why the Church? Last Judgment? Second Coming? What Do They Mean? The Inescapability of Eschatology The Point of Biblical Eschatology: History Is Going Somewhere The Dangers of Literalism Exploring New Testament Eschatology The Kingdom of God A Few Bits of Help The Gift of God Schatology and "What I Do Today" What Happens When I Die? Sheol -- Where God Is Not Present The Community of the Resurrection Paul's Attempt to Describe the Christian Fact A "Spiritual Body" The Facts of the Case I Try to Live a Good Life. Why Isn't That Enough? The "Micah" Variation The "Worship and Action" Variation The "Therefore" Variation The Biblical faith that God is the Creator