In the previous post in this series, we examined the beginning of sin: the events of the Fall. We briefly covered the definition of sin. Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, defined sin as “any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature.” This is a much better definition than others I have seen, for it does not seek to define sin by one essential element, such as selfishness.
Grudem’s definition is multifaceted. First, it correctly ties sin to a lack of compliance with God’s standards. Second, it emphasizes sin is more than just an act. It also includes our attitudes, thoughts, and feelings. As Jesus taught, it is more than the act of adultery, but lustful thoughts and feelings are sinful (Matt 5:28). Finally, Grudem places sin in our nature, for our very nature is sinful, not just what we do, think, or feel. We, at our core—the essence of who we are as persons—are in rebellion against God (Rom 5:8; Eph 2:3).
As we saw in our last article, the origin of sin was shortly after creation when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. Let us be clear: sin is not a product of God. In creating man, and even Satan, God did not create sin or evil. The sins of men and angels were willful acts on their part. It was their choice to rebel against God. God is not the originator of sin nor is He responsible for the sin of His creation (Deut 32:4; James 1:13). The first to sin was Satan and the angels who followed after him. Adam and Eve sinned next. But their sin was so much greater. Adam and Eve were image-bearers of God, yet they rebelled against Him.
To really get at the depth of the effect of man’s sin, it would be helpful to look at some terms the Bible uses for it. We will not get into all the Hebrew and Greek, but we will look at the English terms used for many original language terms. We start with the concept of ignorance.
All acts done in ignorance were not determined by God to be sins requiring judgment (Acts 17:30). Yet there are times when ignorance is the result of man’s hardness of heart (Eph 4:18). Many of the sacrifices offered in the OT were for acts unintentionally done (Lev 4:1-3, 13, 27; Heb 9:7). Even when not intended, when one goes against the will of God, it is still a sin to be punished. Many times, people choose not to know, to claim ignorance. They then do as they wish to claim later they didn’t know it was a sin. This is willful ignorance and disobedience.
Error or mistake are common terms used for sin. We are not talking about 2 + 2 = 6, but moral errors (Eccl 10:5). Saul uses this in 1 Sam 26:21, where Saul was hunting for David to kill him. When David did not take advantage of an opportunity to kill Saul first, Saul confessed his sin, telling David he had “made a great mistake.” It carries the idea of going astray, as in a sheep which wonders from the shepherd (Is 53:6; Ps 119:66). Jesus warns us not to be led astray (Mk 13:5-6).
The most common concept of sin is missing the mark. On the surface, this phrase seems to fall into the category of a mere mistake, but the Bible speaks of it as willful and consciously choosing sin. It is not a picture of one having poor aim and taking a bad shot, but of one not even aiming at what is godly and right. This is always a sin against God, for it is the failure to live by His standards (Lev 24:15; Nu 32:23; I Ki 15:26).
We can think of many other terms: iniquity, lack of integrity, transgression, rebellion, and others. Some terms tell us just what God thinks of sin such as perversion, or abomination, which means extreme disgust and being inherently evil.
Volumes have been written about sin, but we only have a short article to deal with it. The first concept to get is sin or wrongdoing—even when done unintentionally—is against God. It is God’s law and standard we are breaking. We may wrong others but above all, we have rebelled against God (Ps 51:4). Second, there is a cost to sin (Rom 5:8), it cost Christ His life for ours.
Many sins are committed in the name of expediency, but the result is far from it. A former pastor of mine would say, “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”
It is important to understand the consequences of sins for us, those we love, and the world at large. Any sin brings death (Rom 6:23). At first blush, this may not phase us. We all know we are going to die. Most sins do not lead to immediate physical death, so we put the thought of death aside. We think “death comes to all of us eventually,” but we are not seeing the big picture.
Death, the wages of sin, is far-reaching. It is crucial to notice at the point of Adam and Eve’s sin, all life on earth started to die. There were no indication animals would have died before the Fall. Yet, not only did animals start to die, but the causes of death also started. Death came from bad health and disease. Death due to traumatic events such as earthquakes, storms, hail, tornadoes, fire, and the like filled the earth. There was also death by other animals. Instead of living in harmony, animals were divided into prey and predators, with many being both. We also joined the animals in violence against other people.
Not only did animals die, but whole categories of animals would now go extinct. A combination of competition and environmental issues caused not just the death of individual animals but the loss of whole species, an effect of sin still happening to this day. Whole varieties of animals, which once lived harmonious and healthy lives, wiped off the planet. Even if our understanding of animals is wrong and they did die before the Fall, extinction was not part of God’s plan.
Plants would have died before the Fall as many would have been eaten, and some would have died naturally to provide nutrients for the earth. Yet after the Fall, due to environmental changes, whole varieties of plants have also been lost to us.
Certainly, the sin of the Fall caused this upheaval in the created order, but our sin afterwards has only made it worse. Where we were to have dominion over creation and to subdue the earth, we exploited and abused it without regard for the consequences. We have also turned on each other. We assault, rape, mutilate, and kill one another in wholesale acts of violence. We do this in wars, to gain power and things from others, and at times, for no sound logical reason at all. Regardless of age, or gender, born or in the womb, we are just vicious. It sounds like we never stopped eating that fruit.
For humans, extinction is not an issue. Not because we couldn’t do it to ourselves, for we sure do seem to be trying, but because the Bible clearly tells us humans will be here in the end times. Yet Revelation also tells us of major destruction to large portions of our population (Rev 6:3-4, 8; 8:11; 9:18). The exploitation and abuse of nature are nothing compared to what we do to each other and ourselves. From murdering and enslaving our fellowmen, we go on to abuses beyond the imagination. Evil prevails in all we touch.
Whether we do it to each other or by natural causes, humans die, and as much as we want to say it is just part of life, it is not part of the life God intended. For most people, the idea of death brings fear and dread. We are fearful of the horror of physical death. The unknown drives their fears. Just about everyone believes in some form of afterlife, but what is it like? Even those who claim not to believe in anything after this life still deal with the nagging question of what’s to come. They are tormented by the concept they may be wrong and there is something beyond the grave. In a sense we all know we will have to meet our Maker. Many may deny this in their daily lives, but when the time comes, reality comes home.
Even as born-again believers in Jesus Christ our Lord, we know we are secure, saved, and destined for heaven and an afterlife with God, but we will also fear the process of death. Most of the time, death is not a soft passing into the night but a degrading, demoralizing battle filled with pain, anguish, torment, and sorrow. Pain not only for the dying but for those loved ones left behind.
Death is never good. When we know someone is now in heaven, we can be glad they have passed through death. We will miss them, but we know they are in a much better place now. Yet, death is the result of sin. It was never the way it was supposed to be. Even in war, it is tragic one must kill his enemy. In self-defense, while justifiable, it is still the killing of an image-bearer of God. As a society, capital punishment is a just and correct punishment, but we have still lost one of our fellowmen. A life has been wasted, along with the loss from the crime which required the execution. When people speak against God for the evil in the world, they need to look in the mirror to see the cause of the evil!
Yes, we all die physically. There is also the death of plants, animals, whole species, and eco-systems, but the real issue for us now and eternally is that without Christ, our souls are dead; we are spiritually dead. This was the immediate result of the Fall which Adam and Eve did not come to grips with. All they knew was they were naked. Realizing they were clothesless was symbolic of their being naked before God. They were no longer innocent but guilty and sinful, i.e., dead spiritually (1 John 3:14; 5:12; Rom 7:9; 2 Thes 1:9; Eph 2:1; Col 2:13).
God had said, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). Yes, they were now dying physically, but in the moment of rebellion, they died spiritually. The question is, what does spiritual death mean? While we will be looking at this more in a future post, the point to get here is death is separation from the source of life. For the body, this means separation from oxygen as breathing stops and blood flow as the heart stops. For the soul, this means separation from its source of life, God. While we still have a soul, it is a dead soul. The soul is not like a body which decays when dead. It even has some function when “dead.” Remember, we are using terms we know and understand from the physical realm to speak of the spiritual realm we don’t understand. The soul is dead in that we are separated from God by our sin. We are still humans with an active soul and not mere physical animals, but the soul is now defective. It has a “natural” tendency toward sin. We are now enemies of God, separated from Him. We no longer fellowship with Him in the garden but have been cast out of it.
While we are still image-bearers of God, being in the likeness of God was never an automatic product. Just as we have wisdom, we don’t always act wise. Unlike any other creature, we have the ability to reflect God and represent Him to the cosmos, but it takes a conscious effort to do this correctly. Yet in our sin, it is impossible to do this correctly.
We will be a reflection of something. We must choose what to represent, God or evil. Jesus said we are either for Him or against Him (Matt 12:30). Any middle ground is the same as being against. As lost, sinful beings we choose evil; even when we make it look nice so we will feel better, it is not God-honoring, God-reflecting righteousness we can mirror in our own sinful power. We are self-righteous, in other words: sinful.
The Fall did not only bring sin into the human sphere for the first time, but it also changed who we are and changed the very nature of man. Human nature is now one of sin and rebellion against God. Our ability to bear the image of God has been perverted by sin. We no longer naturally look to God but to ourselves. Plainly, Eve was not the only one who has heeded the urging of Satan and his minions. But let’s not blame Satan alone, we sin mostly from our own desires (James 1:14-15).
There is much more to say about the result of sin. In our next article, we will explore the curses handed down to Eve and Adam (and thus to us) as declared by God after the Fall. There is one other aspect of sin we need to see now.
Sin has spelled out our ultimate destiny: H-E-L-L. Every single one of us is on our way there. Jesus did not come to cast people to Hell, to punish those who reject His teaching or don’t do things His way. No, we are all condemned already and on our way to Hell. This is clearly stated in John chapter three: “Whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn 3:18). This comes right on the heels of the statement, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (Jn 3:17). Which follows the most famous verse of all time, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
You see, Hell is not your only option for eternity. For many, the correct phrase above would not be “on our way,” but “were on our way.” For in Christ, we have a better hope and a better destiny: eternity with Him. For Christ died for us, and Christ also died for you, paying the cost of our sin. You may even feel the Spirit calling you now to put your faith in Him. God will urge, call, seek you, but He will not force you. The choice to change your destiny is yours, but only as He calls you and only by His will. If you decide to reject His urging now, it is up to Him to call again. It is not your choice. Don’t presume on God, that He will wait until you are “darn ready.” Today is the day of salvation! Please take the time to read our post, “Do You Know God Personally?”
I know this has been a tense post full of dread and darkness. It has not been easy to write, but it is needed. We must come to grips with the reality of sin and its effect on the world and on us. We are praying for you as you work your way through this difficult material.
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg