Q14. What is sin?
A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.
The Bible is not a dictionary or even an encyclopedia. We don’t get to the essence of what things are, or even what words mean, by a search for some concise definitions. However, there are a few places when the Bible does come close to an essential definition. At the very least, a main portion of the essence of the concept can be found in one place. That is the case with 1 John 3:4 and its statement on sin. It says this: “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” This should not be taken to exclude other important aspects of sin.
It may also interest us to know that this is one of the few places where the Shorter Catechism has the same question and answer as the Children’s Catechism. That is Question 28 of the Children’s. I bring that up because the next two questions in that catechism unpack those two parts, which is well worth consideration for adults as well. So that is what we are going to reflect on here. What is meant by these two expressions: “want of conformity” and “transgression”? One way to view this is to say that the first marks of sins of omission and the latter sins of commission. Sinners sin by omitting what they ought and committing what they ought not.
Hodge gives a more comprehensive definition of sin in order to justify this very answer: “It is included in these definitions, (1.) That sin is a specific evil, differing from all other forms of evil. (2.) That sin stands related to law. The two are correlative, so that where there is no law, there can be no sin. (3.) That the law to which sin is thus related, is not merely the law of reason, or of conscience, or of expediency, but the law of God. (4.) That sin consists essentially in the want of conformity on the part of a rational creature, to the nature or law of God. (5.) That is includes guilt and moral pollution.”1 That is comprehensive. For concise we turn to Brakel, who says that sin is “that which both in essence and in deed is contrary to God’s good pleasure.”2
As a last point of introduction, it should be clear that everything we are going to say about the nature of sin is true about both the first sin of Adam and Eve and every other sin which followed. So the Confession uses this language, “Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto …” (VI.6).
“Want of Conformity” is not being or doing what God requires
Hodge divides the nature of sin between questions that could be asked about its metaphysical and moral question.3 Of the first, one is asking what is it, purely and simply; of the second, one is asking what is in relation to either God’s law or else his character. This first half to the answer to Question 14 really does the same. In both the BEING and the DOING, one is in sin. It is sin to fail to do that which God requires of our action, and it is sin to fail to be that which God requires of our character. Classical thought did not divorce metaphysical essence from moral good. Hodge did seem to consign the metaphysical questions to the philosophers, whereas the moral to the church theologians.4 That is unhelpful. In the very first instance of sin after the original, we see sin personified in God’s speech to Cain. He says,
“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7).
Now if one moves in both directions in the narrative, before these words and after it, one will see Cain’s offering rejected on the one hand, and then Cain’s lashing out to murder his brother on the other. This divine counsel to Cain’s soul stood at the crossroads. Cain had first failed to be and to as a worshiper unto God, and this false worship issued forth into bad blood between siblings, so to speak.
But this idea of conformity to the law gets at the true meaning of the basic word for “sin” in both Hebrew and Greek. So Paul says that, “sin is not counted where there is no law” (Rom. 5:13). In all, there are eleven Hebrew words for “sin,” used in the Old Testament, the most prominent being hatah (חַטָּאָה). There are three larger categories that these have been grouped within: 1. deviation (sin, iniquity, perversity), or the quality of what is being done; 2. guilt (ungodly, wicked), or the personal dimension; 3. rebellion (trespass), or the Godward direction of sin, being against Him. In the New Testament, there are nine different Greek nouns used, the four most prominent being 1. hamartia (LXX for hatah); 2. adikia: iniquity, unrighteousness (Rom. 9:14); 3. peraptoma: willful straying or offense (Rom. 5:15); and 4. anomia: lawlessness (1 Jn. 3:4). But for the purposes of getting at this first concept, it is the word חַטָּאָה that corresponds to the Greek ἁμαρτία. Both have the sense of “missing the mark.” Even the Latin peccatum can carry the same sense: a moral lapse, failure, or error. This is the case of,
“all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
It is often compared to an archer missing his target; but all of this can be misleading without the backdrop of God’s glory. In truth, the “target” is really the original image and its end, such that the failure to conform is most unnatural and not an innocent mistake. Nor is it a falling short of something that the sinner is attempting with all of his might to arrive at. In fact, he is straying from the “target” in the whole of his being. So the more one thinks through all of the dimensions of sin, the more one sees the limits of this introductory piece of imagery.
These first words NOT BEING implies that not only actual sins but the disposition and desire to sin is also sin. In one sense, we can understand that about desire when considered in its conscious and contriving state. We call this motive because, in it, the will is set in motion already. The mind may be lacking in strategy and the body may be lacking in strength; but if these were overcome, such a soul in such a state would reach out entirely to the wicked end that it sought. So in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus condemned the lust of the eye together with the external act of adultery (vv. 27-28), and the hatred in the heart as bloodthirsty as the hand that could draw real blood (vv. 21-22). We can understand this about internal motive being sinful, just as external manifestation of sin. But we might struggle more with that sin of “not being.” So it is, however, that sin is not only that which is actual but dispositional. As Thomas Boston was examining the various texts showing how sinful man lacks various good qualities that even animals have, he adds,
“Nay, more than all this, the Scriptures hold out the natural man, not only as wanting the good qualities of these creatures, but as a compound of the evil qualities of the worst of the creatures; in whom the fierceness of the lion, the craft of the fox, the unteachableness of the wild ass, the filthiness of the dog and swine, the poison of the asp, and such like, meet.”5
In our day a controversy rages over whether one can identify as a “gay Christian,” a position which is very subtle. They will say that they agree that homosexual behavior is sin, but that the identity has to be affirmed. Acting out on it is sinful, but affirming it is not. The card trick lies in an equivocation over terms like affirming. Are we talking about acknowledging the sin as sin? In that case there would be no disagreement. No one in this debate is arguing that those who struggle with this particular sin cannot find forgiveness in Christ and still wrestle against that sin as a Christian. But it is wrestling against a sworn enemy, not an identity to be retained. A crucial passage that has been constantly offered by way of correction are Paul’s words of new identity to the Corinthians.
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9).
Objection. “This is an unrealistic view of sin.” Not at all. What you mean to say is that it is an unrealistic view of something you or I could overcome. And of course it is! But if you struggle with that, this is a clue that you do not yet believe the gospel. Think about that for a moment. You are struggling with running into a requirement of God that you cannot fulfill—but is that not what the law tells us in general? The Christian message is not that the law and sin is the story of something that you and I could get right to come to Jesus. We will come back to this when we get to those questions that take us into the gospel. But hear one more Scripture on this want of conformity: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (Jas. 4:17).
“Transgression” is doing what God forbids
The word trespass is one of the most picturesque and clarifying in the whole lexicon of theological terms. The word immediately conjures up the idea of ignoring a well-marked sign and slipping through the fence of someone else’s property. Except that in this case, the signs are the commandments in Scripture and the property is God’s. What is more, unlike the fence keeping out unwanted intruder’s in the average neighborhood, in this case there is no outside. All is God’s property and the signs have been posted even on your own body and innermost thoughts. In this sense of trespass we have the clearest sense of sin as a violation of God's law, or as Sproul famously put it, “cosmic treason.” Treason is trespass, but carries with it the suggestion of ultimate disloyalty. Not merely the wandering onto another’s property, but going AWOL from one’s camp. What distinguishes between a want of conformity and a trespass is the conscious action toward that things which we are forbidden. First the wicked desire leaps from the heart:
the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Lk. 6:45).
Here we have not only a mouth that would not bless, but can’t help curse: “‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness’” (Rom. 3:13-14). I use this example of bitter and course speech just to show how active or violent sin is in the case of a sin that our culture trains us to think is “no big deal.” Bitter speech is a tresspass because human communication is God’s property. It was set up for mutual edification and the praise of God.
Sin is neither internal at the exclusion of the external; nor external to the exclusion of the internal. Again, the Sermon on the Mount is Christ’s own clinic in this pathology of sin. However, it is often taken in that wrong way. Although Jesus drives down into the heart of the commandments, such as murder, adultery, false oaths, and so forth, he neither does away with the heinous nature of the external act, nor make the heart corruption of equal nature to the hands in every respect. So the lust of the eyes and hatred of the heart are the root of the same sin for which adultery and murder are the external fruit. Note the two extreme errors one can make. I have had church members ask me on a few occasions whether a wandering eye is grounds for divorce since “it is the same as adultery.” But this is an error of great practical importance. While the plant is the same plant on either end, nevertheless the root is not the fruit, and the fruit is not the root.
If they were the “same” in every respect, then there would be no virtue at all in halting such sinful thoughts from being acted upon. And surely no one would want to argue that! Likewise with hatred advancing to murder. We Calvinists especially will often speak of the sense in which the evil in our hearts is “no different” than that in Hitler’s heart. What is different is motive and opportunity, perhaps. But surely this does not mean that it was a grave injustice that we were not put on trial at Nuremberg with the other offenders! Hopefully we can begin to see the problem with failing to make these distinctions. A trespass is a trespass, yes; and it is all equally God’s property. But to suppose that he makes no distinction between wishing we had as much money as some celebrity, versus stalking him and stealing his wallet—all of this highlights that not all trespasses are equal in every respect. There are degrees of sin as much as of kinds. Jesus tells Pilate, “he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (Jn. 19:11), and Paul uses the language of “storing up wrath” (Rom. 2:5) indicating that the punishment becomes more severe as sins are committed. We can see this also in the division between “hidden faults” and “presumptuous sins”:
“Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins” (Ps. 19:12-13).
If anyone should take issue with this breakdown on the ground that more Bible verses are required, I would only point them to any and all commandments. These can come in only two kinds: Do this and do not do that. In other words, some things are commanded and other things forbidden. But what else is this but to say that God would have us be and do some things and not do others. The breaking of such laws corresponds to these two. There can be no other.
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1. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:181.
2. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:381.
3. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:131.
4. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:149-50.
5. Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, 67.
