Foundation Topic

What Is Sin?

Sin is any disobedience to God’s revealed commands either in thought, word, or action. The Bible says that every one of us not only sins, but, by nature, is infected by sin. Sin is our human condition. Our default inclination is to rebel against God, to doubt his goodness, and to choose our way over his. See, according to the Bible, sin isn't just about what we do; it's who we are. And it's not just a problem in your life, it's the human problem.

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Why the Bad News About Sin Is a Good Thing

Every worldview includes a perspective about our identity as people. Understanding who or what we are as humans greatly impacts the rest of our worldview.

In many places, what the Bible tells us about ourselves resonates with our reality, but also rubs us the wrong way because what it says is uncomfortable. Sin is one of these uncomfortable topics.

No one likes to hear about sin. It’s not comforting to read what the Bible says about us and our sin. In fact, what the Bible tells us about ourselves and our world is really bad news.

The Bible doesn’t paint a pretty picture of us. In fact, it’s a much darker picture than we would imagine on our own. But friend, please don’t leave at this point in the conversation! What the Bible teaches, though really bad news, is very good for us to know. This is true for two reasons.

First, simply, because it’s what’s true! Imagine you’re suffering from pains all over your body that you can’t explain. You go to the doctor. After looking at your test results and seeing cancer, the doctor does not want to discourage you, so he says, “You’re healthy!”

You’d probably be upset if you found out he lied. You want to know what’s wrong, not only to understand your experience, but also to know how to respond accordingly.

In the same way, God’s Word diagnoses the state of our souls. It’s clear that there is much wrong in our world and within ourselves. We need to know the truth about ourselves. And, like a good doctor, the Bible tells us straight.

This brings us to the second reason that the bad news about sin is a good thing. When we’re properly diagnosed, we can find the proper cure.

When, in our thought experiment, your doctor lied about your cancer, he also cut you off from any cure. Unlike the doctor, the Author of the Bible loves us enough to give the dismal diagnosis so that he can lead us to the cure.

We want you to understand this before we talk more about what the Bible means by sin. Understanding sin can be a hard pill to swallow.

One of the wisdom books in the Bible, Proverbs, instructs us that only fools despise wisdom and instruction (1:7), reminding us that when we reject truth because it’s distasteful, we’re only hurting ourselves.

We believe the Bible to be the authoritative truth written by our loving Creator to lead us to him. Therefore, we believe his Word that there’s something terribly wrong with us (Jeremiah 17:3). We also believe he has provided the cure.

We share his Word with you because we know ourselves to be sinners in the way the Bible describes, sick with rebellion, regret, and wrongdoing—yet we have also discovered the cure in its pages. We know that if you understand yourself to be a sinner too, then perhaps we may have the joy of introducing you to our Great Physician.

He’s ready to see you, whatever your malady. For he told us, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).

We’re sick and in need of a cure. Will you entrust yourself to the Great Physician?

by Bibles.net

OPEN YOUR BIBLE

Theme Verse

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 JOHN 1:8-9 ESV

What Is Sin?
Article: 6 Min

An Honest
Look at Our
Wrongdoing

by Bibles.net
Quote

An honest man
with an open Bible
and a pad and
pencil is sure to
find out
what is wrong with him
very quickly.

Verse
Romans 1:18-32 ESV

How does the Bible define and describe sin? We can look at Romans 1 to find out. God explains our sinful condition and the way we progress in wickedness when we continue to reject God.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them."

READ MORE
Article: 8 Min

Sin, and How It Wants to Kill You

by Bibles.net

Videos

Bible Study

Genesis 2-3

At the very beginning of the Bible, we are told why there is sin in the world and in our hearts. Read Genesis 2-3 and write down a list of answers to the question, “What does this passage teach me about sin?”
Messages: 25 Min

What Is This You Have Done?

by Alistair Begg

Article: 15 Min

The World’s Joy-Tragedy

“The Lord doesn’t talk about your sin so you’ll think you’re trash...He talks about it just because you’re not. He talks about it because he made you in his own image, with an infinitely higher and brighter plan for you than the one you chose for yourself.”

by Tony Reinke at Desiring God

Messages: 60 Min

What Happened at the Fall?

by John MacArthur

Image

For all have
sinned and fall short
of the glory of God

Romans 3:23 NIV
Verse
Romans 5:12-13 ESV

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned. In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person’s account when there is no law.

Quote

We are not sinners
because we choose to sin.
We choose to sin
because we are
sinners.

Verse
Genesis 6:5 NIV

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

Image

every
inclination
of the human heart
is evil from
childhood.

Genesis 8:21 NIV
Am I a Good Person?
Messages: 45 Min

Whatever Happened to Sin?

by Russell Moore

Quote

No man knows
how bad he is
till he has tried very hard
to be good.

Verse
Luke 18:9-14 NIV

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Verse
Psalm 51:1-5 NLT

Have mercy on me, O God,
    because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion,
    blot out the stain of my sins.
Wash me clean from my guilt.
    Purify me from my sin.
For I recognize my rebellion;
    it haunts me day and night.
Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;
    I have done what is evil in your sight.
You will be proved right in what you say,
    and your judgment against me is just.
For I was born a sinner—
    yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.

Article: 10 Min

Do You Excuse Your Own Sin?

by Don Straka at Desiring God

Verse
Romans 3:10-12 ESV

As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

Messages: 40 Min

Source and Surface Idols We Are Guilty of Worshipping

by Matt Chandler

Verse
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Verse
Jeremiah 2:12-13 ESV

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Devotional: 2 Min

God's Wrath Against Sin and His Love for Us

by Nancy Taylor and Phil Ryken, adapted by Bibles.net

Quote

The Prophet Isaiah's Description of Sin

Eight hundred years before the advent of Christ the prophet Isaiah identified sin as rebellion against the will of God and the assertion of the right of each man to choose for himself the way he shall go. "All we like sheep have gone astray," he said, "we have turned everyone to his own way," and I believe that no more accurate description of sin has ever been given (Isaiah 53:6).  

by A.W. Tozer | Source
Quote

You’re the problem.
Your heart is the problem.
It’s not outside
of you; it’s in you,
which is why
you can’t solve it.

Verse
Romans 7:15-25 NIV

 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Books
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