What is Sin

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/45-49

Sin, is the most devastating, the most debilitating, the most degenerating power that ever entered into the human stream.  It kills everyone and ultimately, except by the intervening grace of God, would send everyone to an eternal hell.

The Bible calls it “the accursed thing,” Joshua 7:13.  It is compared in Scripture to the venom of snakes and the stench of death.  It is defined for us in 1 John 3:4 as “transgression of God’s law.”  Now, the Scripture characterizes sin in many ways.  And I don’t want to go back over some of the ground we’ve covered, but just as a reminder, let me state a few of the ways in which the Bible describes sin.

First of all, it says sin is defiling.  It is a pollution of the soul.  You might see it as this:  It is to the soul what rust is to gold.  It is to the soul what scars are to a beautiful face.  It is to the soul what a stain is to silk, what smog is to an azure sky.  It is a pollution.  It makes the soul black with guilt.  It is a bloody cloth in Isaiah 30.  It is sores from a deadly plague in 1 Kings chapter 8.  It is filthy garments in Zechariah chapter 3.  And even God, according to Zechariah 11:8, loathes the sinner.  Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians 7:1 “filthiness of the flesh and spirit.”  So, sin is defiling.

Secondly, the Bible tells us that sin is rebellion.  It tramples God’s Word.  It rebels against God’s law.  Sin is, as one man said, “God’s would-be murderer.”  If sin had its way, it would eliminate God.  God would cease to be if the sinner had his choice.

Thirdly, sin is ingratitude.  Romans 1 says, “Neither were they thankful.”  Like Absalom, who as the son of David, his father the king had kissed him and taken him to his heart, then went out and plotted treason against his own father.  Having been the recipient of all of his father’s treasures he then turned to be a traitor.  So the sinner indulges in God’s goodness, indulges in God’s treasures, indulges in God’s blessings in the world around him, and then betrays God by serving Satan, God’s archenemy.  The sinner then lives in abuse of all God’s gifts.

Fourthly, the Bible says that sin is incurable.  Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?  Can the leopard change his spots?  Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to evil.”  In other words, you have no more chance of changing your nature than a leopard does his spots or an Ethiopian his skin.

Paul wrote to Titus in chapter 1:15 and says, “Their conscience – ” that is the inward part of them, even that which triggers their right behavior “ – is defiled.” 

Sin is so utterly devastating, it is so utterly destroying, it is so incurable that even the eternity in hell cannot take it away.

The Bible also says that sin is hated by God.  In Jeremiah 44, God says, “O do not this abominable thing which I hate.”  Sin is also overpowering.  It hangs like blackness hangs to night.  It dominates the mind, it says in Romans 1:21.  It dominates the will, it says in Jeremiah 44:15-17.  It dominates the affection it says in John 3:19-21.

And then sin brings Satanic control.  Ephesians 2 says that one who is a sinner walks “according to the prince of the power of the air.”  He is a child of disobedience.  Jesus said in John 8:44, a child of the devil himself.

And then sin brings misery to life.  In Job 5:7 it says, “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”  In Romans 8 it says the creature is subject to emptiness, uselessness.  It takes away man’s honor, it takes away his peace, it takes away the meaning of his life.

Then finally, sin damns the soul to hell.  Revelation 20 talks about all those who know not God and Christ being cast into the lake of fire.