The “Who” of Sin
"For all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God." (Romans 3:23, Holy Bible, New International Version).
Last time I asked the question, "what
is sin?" This time I want to ask
the question, "who sins?" The obvious
answer to this new question is "everybody sins." And of course this simplified answer is
correct, but most of us (myself included) would gloss over this very important
question, usually with the platitude, "oh, well nobody's
perfect." Some of course would
answer the question of "who sins?" with this rejoinder, "that
depends on your definition of sin."
If your definition of sin is relatively narrow (i.e., narrow to the
point of excusing your peccadilloes), then you might conclude that there are people
who don't sin. But as we saw last time,
our definition of sin is usually too narrow; we need to scrap our definition
and use God's.
If we use God's definition of sin as
outlined in the Bible, then we are left with the obvious answer, which is
everybody sins. OK, so now what? The consequence of sin is that we have fallen
"short of the glory of God."
What does that mean? It means
that our sin (yes, even the most "harmless" white lie) alienates us from God. God cannot tolerate sin in His presence ("Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you
cannot tolerate wrong"). This
is called God's holiness. "Holy" has two basic meanings: 1) "to be holy" can mean "to
be set apart," to set apart something from its mundane use for a special
purpose as designated by God (for example, the Sabbath was a day "set
apart" for the people of Israel to worship and honor God). 2) Holy can also mean "purity" as
in moral purity. Both definitions apply
to God, but when we refer to sin and God's reaction toward it, we are referring
to God's holiness in its moral aspect.
God cannot tolerate sin because in Him there is no sin ("God is light; in him there is no darkness at
all"). Each time we sin, we
widen the gap between ourselves and God; each time we sin, we fall further and
further away from God's glory.
The problem with understanding sin is
twofold. First of all, we have a faulty
concept of what sin is (as we saw last time); a lot of the things the Bible
calls sin, we call "preference," or "self-expression," or
"idiosyncrasies." Secondly, we
have a tendency to down play God's holiness ("God can't possibly be upset
with me for THAT"). We lower the
bar of our sin, so that most of the things we do don't qualify as
"sin;" and we raise the bar of God's tolerance, so that God will only
react to the most heinous offenses. As
today's verse states, both of these lines of thinking are wrong. We do sin, and sin often, and each sin is an
affront to a holy God. God is holy, and
we are, by nature, not; and the Bible teaches, "without holiness no one will see the Lord." Sin is serious, sin is real, and sin
separates us from God's glory.