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The topic of sin is an interesting thing. On one hand I think your common person on the street would quickly answer that they know exactly what sin is. It’s something you’ve done that’s bad or maybe something that you’ve done that hurts another person. But, I think if you press most people to start defining what bad is and even when something crosses from good, to neutral, to bad; you’ll start to see how complex the topic of sin actually is.

So, what is sin, then? There are many ways to look at it. On the libertarian or classical liberal side of the house, one might say that sin is when a man violates the rights of another. A man has a right to the property he owns, so stealing his bike would be a sin. Likewise destroying his home, burning his crops, or falsly imprisoning him would violate his rights and would thus be sinful. Simple enough.

But how do we know what rights to measure against? Do people have only so called negative rights or do we have possitive rights such as the “right” to education and healthcare? Is it a sin to not provide somone an education? Is it only a sin when your community hasn’t decided that it’s a positive right? Is sin, then, relative?

The simple, once again, has become complex and unclear.

To many across the ages, the solution to the above complexity is to try and apply a universal code of rules or rights. A common way to judge actions.

For the classical philosophers, it was reason and the natural law that were the guides. Sin, then, was anything that was unreasonable or against nature. This works in a way. But, we must remember that their system considered slavery, infanticide by exposure, and a host of other horrors as part of a reasonable and natural order. As a wholesale system, it just won’t do.

For many in the West for the last several centuries the common working model has been a mixture of liberal rights based thinking, classical philosophy, and the so-called “Law of God” found in Jewish & Christian scripture.

Now, we can see why this might be appealing. As long as you don’t dig too much, the liberal system of not doing “bad” things and not violating another’s rights seems pretty straightforward. The Philosophers give a handy way of thinking and reasoning through things that does an okay job of centering on a societal norm. And, the Bible does have a lot of very specific commandments about things. The merging of these systems seems to patch the problems in each one that I’ve previously discussed.

But, I’ve got two major problems with this framework. (Despite the fact that it’s been the working definition of sin among the vast majority of Western Christians for a very long time.) The first is that it’s not Biblical. The second is that it’s not true.

As anyone who has ever actually read the Bible in its true form. I.e., not random versus out of context, to prove a particular point about what is or isn’t sin. But has actually read it, in its real written form will tell you: the Bible is not some nice clean philosophical and moral guidance book.

You are not getting long deep passages of philosophy like you would think from the classical philosophers. You’re not getting interesting, nice, concise lists of rules and codes and rights and laws. The Bible from beginning to end is primarily a narrative. It is a story.

Now, of course, throughout this story of God’s interaction with humanity, you get God and his prophets talking about all sorts of things. You get talking about farming, and keeping a house, and marriage, and sex, and relationship, and health, and death, and life and yes, what is wrong and what is right and not stealing and not committing adultery and this advice and that advice.

Of course all of these things are there, which is why you can proof text it. You can find bits and pieces of moral codes and philosophies. But they aren’t written as a cohesive whole, right? Moses isn’t sitting down to write down a cohesive moral philosophy. Paul is not doing that. They are sitting down to tell the reader about God’s story. First among the children of Abraham and then as that story culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the opening up of the story to the nations.

And, I think this helps see why we can’t use the Bible the way we so often want to do. It is not a code of rules. We have to step back and engage with the Bible as an entire narrative and not look at this or that section in isolation.

So what do we have? We have the first book of Moses, Genesis, starting with this creation narrative of God creating the heavens and the earth. And he creates a human being, a human man, and he places him in a beautiful garden. Then it says this, of the man, in Genesis chapter 2 starting in verse 15. It says,

And the Lord God took the man [Adam] and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And I think we can note here that this first commandment God gives, this first thing that could be the beginning of things that are good and things that are bad. It is simply a single command about not eating the fruit of a particular tree.

Again, the Bible doesn’t start with, “And God sat down and taught Adam all that he should do.” Right? Here’s the rules. Here’s what you can’t do. Here’s what you can do. No. It’s that there’s just this tree. Don’t eat it. That’s it.

And then we have this beautiful bit about Adam in this original, created state. He’s sitting there and God is with him and is coming up with all sorts of cool creatures and he’s bringing them to Adam, and Adam’s giving them names and it’s this beautiful back and forth relationship. It is a relationship of creative storytelling and world building, where Adam is with the Lord.

As they are creating in the world, the Lord realizes, hey, you know me and Adam is great. But I think I think we need to add more to this right? He needs a helper, he needs a second part of his being. So God creates woman and the two come together to make this one complete whole. Mirroring God’s own triune life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And now we have this other triune life of man, woman, and God in this beautiful union.

So you see. We’re already 2 chapters into the beginning of this great narrative and it really doesn’t have anything to do with rules and a complete systematic handling of rights. It’s all about this story of relationship between God and man. And, you see it in this idea of walking and being together.

So you get to Chapter 3. They eat the fruit. Death comes upon them. They realize they’re naked. They suddenly know good and evil. They have this knowledge. Now evil has entered the world. This is the first time someone has sinned. This is the first thing we can clearly call sin. The original sin.

And then what happens? God pops in. He’s walking in the garden in the cool of the day as he’s presumably been doing all along. This time, however, in the world where sin has entered the picture, Adam and Eve immediately “hide themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.”

If we keep reading even after the fall of Adam and Eve, we’re still really not getting a definition of sin and good. Eating of the fruit breaks relationship with God. We can see that. They must leave the perfect garden now because they are no longer compatible with that way of life. God’s no longer able to completely commune with them and walk around with them. This beautiful, creative, loving, relationship is now impaired. Humans no longer walk with God. But, still, no lists. It’s all about God and man’s relationship to him.

We get to Genesis chapter 4 and we have Cane murdering Able. The whole story is written in the framework of two brothers' differing relationships with God. God speaks to both of them, plainly and clearly. Again, sin and evil enter when Cane walks away from the Lord and goes his own way. The story assumes that murder is evil, but the point of the story is the relationship between God and the boys, not an opportunity to write down when and when not it’s okay to murder. Very interesting, right?

So we get to chapter 6 and now we’re talking about Noah. And, again, we don’t start with a list of what Noah’s doing well and a framework for understand what everyone else is doing wrong. It says in Genesis chapter 6 verses 9:

these are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah [and this is important] walked with God.

“Walked with God.” Right. Noah is called just and good, but we’re still not getting a list of acts. We’re not getting a moral code. The thing that makes him just and perfect is the fact that he walks with God. Walking and talking with God as Adam once did. Walking with God as Abel did.

It’s the relationship between God and Noah in the narrative that makes Noah a just man. What makes Noah pleasing to God, to the point where he’s the only one that needs to be saved. Saved be a second Adam to start over again because humanity had become so wicked. We’re not given a lot of details about the what the wickedness is. We’re just told about sexual intermingling between humans and giants. We’re told they only thought of evil things continually. Unlike Noah, they have separated themselves from God and are not walking with him. They don’t have a relationship with him.

This pattern repeats over and over again. It is the metanarrative of Scripture. Not primarily laws. Not primarily philosophies of life. No. It’s about God. It’s about relationship with him. The whole moral code is:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

And Jesus extends it to:

[And], thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Jesus goes on to say that:

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

So, given the pattern the narrative shows us and the very words of Christ, I think we can now answer the question: “What is sin?”

St. Augstine says that sin, “is a word, deed, or desire, contrary to the eternal law.” And what is that eternal law? It’s to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart.” It’s to walk with the Lord. To be in relationship with him.

Sin, then, is anything that moves us away from deeper relationship with God. Anything that leads us to independence. Anything that leads us to love another more than him. Anything that takes us away from our walks with him.

St. Aquinas sees sin as a “withdrawing from the light of reason or of the Divine law.” Again, the law is that of loving God and being in relationship to him. Everything else, love of neighbor and all virtue flows from that Divine relationship of love.

Earlier we questioned other definitions of sin and critiqued all those who did not have a clear standard. The reason now is clear. God is the standard. He is the law. He is all that matters.

The code, the ethics, the way are embodied in God and his story with and among us from Genesis to Revelation. They are made known to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

So, to be honest, I don’t particularly care all that much about defining sin. I stand with St. Paul and say “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” I can go as deep as Augustine, Luther, and Calvin and say that everything is covered is sin, totally depraved, and that outside of God no man can do a single thing that isn’t sin.

I can say this boldly because I know that the Grace of God given freely through Christ to all who believe in him covers the deepest definition of sin possible with grace left to spare. Sin can be everyting and yet not consume the all of God’s love.

I want to know sin less and to know God more. In knowing God, in living into relationship with him, I’ll know when I’m naked. I’ll feel the shame of my evil works. But, I’ll also know that I should not run into the bushes as Adam did, but run straight to my Lord who is eager to forgive and continues to show me the way.

[Comfortable Words]