Defining Sin
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I am glad you are here tonight!
We are entering out 16th lesson as we study the New City Catechism - a grouping of 52 questions and answers to help ground us in the Gospel.
The NCC is divided into three groups
Creation, the fall and sin, and the law
Christ, Redemption, Grace
Spirit, Restoration, Growing in Grace
We have four more questions in this first section, and we will then be moving on to the second
Thus far we know
Q 1
Q 4
Q 6
Q 13
Q 14
Q 15
Which brings us to Q 16
What is sin?
Sin is rejecting or ignoring God in the world he created, not being or doing what he requires in his law.
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.
Turn with me this evening to 1 John 3
1 John has been said to be like a family picture album. It describes those who are members of the family of God. Just as children resemble their parents, so God’s children have His likeness too.
He addresses the false teaching that denied Jesus’ incarnation and the atoning significance of his death and resurrection.
John had four purposes according the Christian Standard Study Bible:
First, he wrote to promote his readers’ fellowship and joy.
Second, he wrote to help readers avoid the pitfalls of sin, yet find forgiveness when they stumbled.
Third, he wrote to protect believers from false teachers.
Finally, he wrote so they might know they had eternal life.
So in chapters 1-2, you will find John’s perspective on the truth about Christ, the believers lifestyle and the believers relationship to the World.
And then in chapters 3-4 you have a message for God’s children in how to be and act while awaiting eternity. It is within this framework that we come to out text for tonight.
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.
Plain and simple, as the third part of the longer definition states: Sin is not being or doing what he requires in his law. Sin is breaking of God’s law.
But it’s deeper than just that: 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
Oswald Chambers once said:
Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The Christian religion bases everything on the positive, radical nature of sin. Other religions deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ faced in men was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power.
The sin nature is passed through Adam as either the federal or seminal head of humanity.
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—
John Lin writes
One very important way of understanding sin is that sin is rebellion against God’s law. It’s not doing what he requires of us, not living as he has called us to live, and, therefore, never fully being who God created us to be.
Sin is living without reference to God, not viewing him to be the defining reality of our lives around which our entire lives need to be centered.
And when we don’t live as if God is who he is, we violate his law and all the good, loving, protecting guidelines that he’s provided to us for how to best and most fully live.
Think about it this way. If you were to walk off a cliff saying, “I don’t have to live by the law of gravity; I can live by my own rules,” you would, on the one hand, be disobeying a very specific rule and commandment—namely, “Don’t walk off a cliff.” But on the other hand, you would also not be living in reference to gravity. You would be living as if gravity were of no consequence or importance in your life.
You would never say the law of gravity is arbitrary, or that it is unreasonable that you have to obey it. You would never say that, because you understand that gravity is something that we must live in reference to. Of course there are guidelines to honor and boundaries to acknowledge. You know the result of walking off a cliff and trying to break the law of gravity: death and disintegration.
When we don’t live as if God is God, when we break God’s loving law, when we fail to honor who he is, when we say or imply by our actions that he’s of no consequence or importance in this or that part of our lives, we fail to fully be the people God created us to be. And it leads to death and disintegration.
This illustration might help.
Our solar system exists harmoniously when all the planets orbit the same center: the sun. If, however, the planets all decided on their own what to orbit, or if some of the planets chose not to orbit anything, what would happen? Death and disintegration. The solar system as we know it would unravel and fall apart because the planets would not be orbiting the correct center. They wouldn’t be living in reference to the sun. And therefore everything would fall apart and be destroyed.
Not living in reference to God not only leads to our personal death and disintegration; it’s the reason why the entire cosmos is subject to death and disintegration.
God created Adam and Eve to be the centerpiece and the pinnacle of creation. When they sinned, their disobedience of God’s loving law not only had implications on their lives, it also had implications on the entire cosmos.
Paul writes that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Sin leads to death. And yet the gospel is that Jesus Christ experienced death so that we could live.
So What is sin?
It is intrinsic - You get it honest…
It is unavoidable - You can’t run from the reality of it’s effects in your life
It is costly - It requires payment - Jesus died to free you from it
Ravi Zacharias - Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive
1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,
2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,
3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
What is sin?
rejecting or ignoring God, it’s rebelling against him, and it’s not being or doing what He requires.
Sin is originally a battle in our hearts!
The reality is that we are all in sin, until we come to Jesus - and then we are in Him.
No longer bound to sin, but freed to live for Jesus.
Do you find yourself struggling with your flesh? Do you fight with that battle of rejecting or ignoring God, or rebelling against Him?
You won’t find victory in your own strength or ability tonight, but you will find it in the person of Jesus and in His expression of love through the Gospel.
Identify your sin
Confess it for what it is to God
Ask for His help in submitting and depending upon the righteousness of Jesus