What is sin?

What the Bible says

The Bible gives a short definition.

Everyone who practices sin practices lawlessness as well. Indeed, sin is lawlessness.

1 John 3:4

Sin is going against God's standard, so it is first of all a wrong against God, and only then against people. David, who had harmed others badly, confesses: "Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight" (Psalm 51:4). Before it is a broken rule, sin is a broken relationship.

The story begins in Genesis 3. After making Eve doubt God's word, the serpent tempts her:

For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Gen 3:5

Here is the heart of sin: not trusting that what God gave is enough, and wanting to be the one who decides what is good and evil. Paul says the result did not stay with one person.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned.

Rom 5:12

Sin goes deeper than behaviour. Jesus taught that what defiles a person is not what goes in from outside but what comes out from within.

For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.

Mark 7:21-22

Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure" (Jer 17:9). So sin is at root a way of living with myself at the centre and God left out, and the wrong acts grow from that.

The Bible does not treat this as one person's or one nation's problem: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). Sin also binds. Jesus said, "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). Habit and desire pull us along.

The consequences are heavy, but the Bible does not stop there.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rom 6:23

Wages are earned; a gift is given. Scripture diagnoses sin not to condemn us but to lead us to the physician.

The church's witness

The church has never spoken lightly of sin. Augustine describes the misery of slavery to sin:

But whither does the slave of sin flee? He takes it along with him, wherever he goes; for his sin is within him. The pleasure passes away, but the sin does not pass away: its delight goes, its sting remains behind.

Augustine

In the same passage he says that Christ alarms us first and then gives hope: "He alarms us, that we may not love sin; He gives us hope, that we may not despair of the absolution of our sin" Augustine. In the Enchiridion Augustine also treated evil as the absence of good: not a separate thing created alongside the good, but damage to what God made good Augustine, Enchiridion 11. That helps us say that sin has not wiped out everything good in a person.

Christians understand differently how sin spread to everyone. The Western church, following Augustine, calls it original sin. Lutheran and Reformed confessions teach that this inherited sin is truly sin and brings guilt, and Reformed theology often speaks of Adam's guilt being counted to his descendants. Catholic teaching describes original sin as a state we are born into rather than a sin we commit: the loss of original holiness and justice, leaving human nature wounded, not wholly corrupted, and inclined to sin. The Eastern Orthodox often speak of ancestral sin: death and corruption came down from Adam and make us prone to sin, but Adam's guilt is not inherited. Despite these differences, all confess the same thing: every person is under sin, cannot escape it alone, and needs the salvation of Christ.

Matthew Henry sums up the matter: "Sin is the rejecting the Divine law" Matthew Henry. On Ephesians 2 he shows how deep it goes: "Sin is the death of the soul" Matthew Henry. But in the same place he turns at once to God's great love and rich mercy. Speaking of sin is for the sake of speaking of salvation.

In the original languages

The most common New Testament word for sin is hamartia (ἁμαρτία). Its verb, hamartano (ἁμαρτάνω), was used for missing a target, and the Old Testament chata (חָטָא) carries the same picture. Sin is falling short of the goal God set, a life of loving and glorifying him. "Fall short" in Romans 3:23 points the same way.

"Lawlessness" in 1 John 3:4 is anomia (ἀνομία), literally being without law, an attitude of disregarding it. So sin is both missing the mark and rebellion. The Old Testament adds pesha (פֶּ֫שַׁע), "transgression" or "revolt". The Bible does not use one picture for sin. It uses several: missing the target, breaking the law, rebelling.

Common objections

"Isn't sin an outdated idea?" Many people hear the word and think of guilt and condemnation. That has happened, and it should be admitted. But when the word disappears, the problem does not. People still feel that someone has done wrong and that the world is out of joint, and they reach for other words. The Bible is the book that most honestly faces this brokenness, and it also offers the remedy. Deny sin and forgiveness becomes unnecessary, but so does the idea that our choices truly matter.

"I'm a good person." That may well be true in many ways. Most people love, help and sacrifice. The Bible does not deny it, since it says people are made in God's image. And measured against others, we usually look all right. But the standard the Bible uses is not our neighbour's average. Jesus carried the command against murder into the anger of the heart (Matt 5:21-22), and James says, "Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin" (James 4:17). If we look honestly at our hearts, what we want to do and what we do do not match. Paul describes the same experience: "For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do" (Rom 7:19). That is not a verdict that we are worse than others. It is a diagnosis that even the best of us need healing.

"If I was born this way, how can I be held responsible?" The teaching that Adam's descendants are under sin can sound unfair, and the objection deserves a serious answer. As we saw, the church explains this in different ways, some speaking of guilt counted to us and others of corruption and death passed on. But in none of them does Scripture remove our responsibility. Paul writes, "because all sinned" (Rom 5:12), and people also sin by their own choices. It is also worth remembering that Romans 5 says grace in Christ is greater than sin in Adam: "where sin increased, grace increased all the more" (Rom 5:20). If one man's act bound us, one man's act can free us.

Going further

Looking honestly at sin is not meant to be self-punishment. John writes: "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). Admitting sin can be frightening, but Scripture promises that forgiveness lies at the end of it. And it starts from the fact that we are already loved.

You might ask yourself: where in my life am I living by my own standard rather than God's? What habit or desire keeps pulling me along? If forgiveness is real, what could change today?

To read further, see What is grace?, Why did Jesus have to die? and What is repentance?.