Sin

             On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:14)

 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.  “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)

The other night at a Bible study, I was presented with two definitions or perspectives. The first was an etymological consideration of the Hebrew word we translate sin. It is a term from archery and describes the fact of the arrow not hitting the bull’s eye. Sin is the amount one falls short of “hitting the mark.” There are at least 100 references to sin or sinners in the gospels, but today’s verse is the only one mentioned as the foundation for the second perspective. Reference was not even made to the parallel comment recorded in Luke 5.

By the time I got home from the study, my mind came up with the description of “Sin Light,” along the same lines as the difference between “Bud” and “Bud Light.” It’s sin without all the heavy, nasty, stinking, filth. It’s sin that needs to be addressed – he never suggests it isn’t harmful or important – but it doesn’t use words that make us feel like we’re evil. We’re the victims of a disease and can’t help but cough all over people. “Hurt people hurt people,” after all.

As I said, he’s not entirely wrong, he’s just basing his teaching on 1% of the verses that mention the topic in the gospels – and ignoring not only the other 99% from the gospels, and potentially as much as 99.9% of the rest of the Bible. Scripture describes sin in terms of debts owed and laws broken. Between Isaish 14:14 and Genesis 3:4-5, it seems clear that the basis for all sin is the rejection of God in favor of ourselves. That’s not an illness, a wound, or a weakness. It’s treason. And if we don’t understand sin more fully than the “Sin Light” idea, we are committing treason all over again by rejecting what God makes clear about it in favor of something that makes us look less culpable, and more an innocent victim. Even if we decide to go with the therapeutic, sin as sickness and woundedness approach, unless we understand just how damaging the sin is, we’re not likely to seek the level of treatment we need.