This year students are learning twenty answers to twenty Catechism questions. Question #16 is, ‘What is Sin?’ Students are learning these answers to form a mental scaffolding of biblical truths which is important for the renewing of their minds. Before I share the answer to this question what would your answer be? Is it important to understand what sin is? How important? Well, the answer our students are learning is. ‘Sin is rejecting or ignoring God in the world he created, rebelling against him by living without reference to him, not being or doing what he requires in his law resulting in our death and the disintegration of all creation.’
“Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law:
for sin is the transgression of the law.”
1 John 3:4
Sin as law breaking relates to many people because our country set up laws rooted in biblical morality, so generally we think a certain way about theft, rape and murder. The connection often not made in our time is that sin when it coincides with law breaking is against God and him primarily.
The part of this definition that is most foreign to people is that sin is “not being… what he requires’”. Which means that at our core, our being is sinful, our very nature is sinful and that is why Jesus needed to come to give us a new nature, make us alive, give us a new heart, make us new creatures in Him. Oswald Chambers said that because many have forgotten this in the presentation of the Gospel, that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power.
The better our understanding of sin the more significant the Gospel message and the more amazing is the Grace of God.
