What is sin?

There are two subjects talked about more in the Bible than anything else and one of those two subjects is sin.

It doesn’t always say sin. The Old Testament, especially the Books of Kings, it talks about this king did what was evil in the sight of God, that king did what was evil in the sight of God. I’m reading that book right now, and it’s all over the place where these kings didn’t know how to do what was right for God.

And judges, the entire nation of Israel did what was evil in the sight of God at least 17 times in that one book.

And that’s another way of saying sin, they did what was evil to God.

Think about it, what really is sin? Well, we know that anyone that has been a Christian for a while knows when you sin, if you get caught, you go to jail; they convict you, and then they kill you, right?

Wait, no, they don’t kill you for sinning. As a matter of fact, most sins aren’t even illegal.

Lust isn’t illegal, but lust is one of the seven deadly sins. I’ll get into that a little bit more.

Some sins definitely are illegal, but pride isn’t illegal, vanity isn’t illegal, but it’s a sin.

So sin doesn’t mean you’re going to get put into jail.

Oh, that’s right. We’re Christian, so when we sin, we get excommunicated. We get kicked out of the church, God turns his back on us, and then we’re destined to live in hell for eternity, right?

Well, no, actually. The New Testament tells us that if we trust in Jesus, believe Jesus in our heart, and we speak it through our mouths, then we’re saved. It doesn’t say we’re saved and we won’t sin anymore. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if there’s ever been a human on this earth that didn’t sin.

Remember, Jesus was fully human and fully God, he wasn’t just human. Jesus, of course, did not sin.

I don’t think there’s anybody fully human that didn’t.

Unfortunately, some days I sin every minute in here in my head. I try not to, but it happens, especially when I get angry. But we won’t go there.

So, if we don’t die from sin, and we don’t get excommunicated, kicked out of the church from sin, what is sin?

When I first became a Christian, the pastor of the church that I went to talked about sin once, and he talked about it as

missing the mark, for the best of what God has for us.

I really liked that. I thought that it really conveyed what sin is. And I believed that for quite a long time. Now, I’m not saying that’s completely wrong, but I don’t think it’s completely accurate, either, because the Bible tells us, just like I’ve already said several times, what is sin?

Sin is doing evil in the sight of God.

Maybe not evil in the sight of man, but evil in the sight of God. Now, something I (jokingly) hate to admit, but. there’s one pastor that I know of that talks about how to stop sinning more than all the others, and he gets a really bad rap for it.

Even I have said that this pastor has got a great message, but It’s only part of the message. He doesn’t go into all these other things. He doesn’t really talk about sanctification, or the wages of sin, or even faith versus works. He doesn’t really get into the Trinity

Yes, he talks about these every once in a while, but he doesn’t talk much about the end times either. None of this.

Really, when he starts off every message, he says: “God loves you,” or “Jesus loves you.”

And for those of you that have watched or listened to other Christian podcasts or watched evangelists on TV, you already know who I’m talking about.

Yeah. Joel Olsteen. Who knew that he had it right the whole time?

What is the opposite of sin? Love. Love is the opposite of sin.

We think it’s hate, but it really isn’t. Think back to when you were younger, and you really liked a certain boy or girl, and you didn’t know how to express it.

This happened to me the first time, and I really didn’t understand love, I was very young. And I thought I hated this person. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. And I thought that I hated them, but it really wasn’t true. It wasn’t hate at all, I liked this person a great deal.

I don’t know if it was actually love, I might have been too young to actually understand true romantic love at that time. But there was something there that I thought was hate, and it wasn’t.

So I really don’t think that hate is the opposite of love.

I think sin is the opposite of love. Love and hate are very closely related. It’s very easy to hate someone that you love when they do something that you really don’t like.

I’m not I’m not talking about in the beginning of the relationship. In the beginning it’s like, oh, we’ll do anything, I’ll wash your car, I’ll clean your feet, I’ll do whatever you want.

But when you get into relationship, and they start understanding the things that really get you and really irritate you, and they start pushing your buttons, because they’re upset about something, and they want you to be upset too.

All of a sudden you got those feelings. They’re very closely related, so I’m not so sure that they’re really opposite. Another reason why I think that sin is the opposite of love is how God is described in the Bible.

The Bible very specifically tells us that God is love. And forgive me I’m not quite positive that this is actually in the Bible. It’s inferred in the Bible, but I don’t know if it’s actually in the Bible. But I’ve been told before that God cannot be around sin, because God is love and sin is the opposite of love. That kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

God can’t be around sin because it’s the opposite of everything that he is.

Think about it. What is sin?

Sin is anything that takes you away from God’s love.

It’s that simple. And we want to get sin out of our lives. We just need to love more.

Let’s look at the seven deadly sins. There are seven deadly sins in the Bible, and they’re listed thus. And no, I’m not telling you the truth in the least bit. The Seven Deadly Sins actually aren’t listed as that in the Bible. They are in the Bible, but they’re not called the seven deadly sins. But they are deadly in respect to our soul.

They start off with lust.. And I think Matthew 5:27-28 really spells that out. Well, I’m not going to do Bible verses for all of them, but this one in particular I will because I really like this Bible verse.

Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said that you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman or man lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.

Sin starts in our head, and in our heart. It doesn’t start with what we do, it starts with what we think. We start thinking on it too much, and then we start acting out on it, and then the sin gets even worse.

But sin starts in our head. We have lust we have gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath; Wrath is another one. And the Bible tells us that vengeance belongs to the Lord, not to us.

Envy, pride. I, I don’t particularly like the word pride, I would use vanity rather than pride because we can have pride in God and we can have pride in the work that we do for God, but you can’t have vanity in God: Vanity is all about me. “Look at me. Look at me, here I am, I’m vain, you’ve got to look at me, you’ve got to pay attention to me.”

And think about it, it’s not just vanity. Look at all seven of these sins. Every single one of them deals with one subject. Me, it’s all about me. Lust is me wanting something that I shouldn’t have in the first place. Gluttony is me wanting to eat something I shouldn’t eat in the first place. It’s not just eating but you get the idea. Greed. me wanting something that’s not mine already. If it was mine already, I wouldn’t be greedy for it. Sloth, me not wanting to do what I should be doing. Wrath. me wanting to act out on hate and anger. Pride. Hey, look at me. Vanity. Look at me. Look at how great I am.

They’re all about me, me, me, me, me. And to me, that’s what sin is.

If you’re wondering if it’s a sin, does it exalt you more than it exalts God?

If it does, it’s probably a sin, because we’re supposed to be here to exalt God first,.

Whenever we do any sin, we’re also telling God that we don’t trust His Word, that he’ll make all things right in the end, especially things like wrath. There are people that have done truly horrible things against me. And probably nowhere near as bad as they’ve done to some you. Truly terrible things.

But it’s not our job to get revenge, it’s not our job to offer wrath on these people. God will take care of it. He will make it right in the end.

But when we do these sins, we are taking control. But what kind of control do we have versus God? God’s the creator of the entire universe. He’s got a whole lot more control than we do. So how do we stop sin? Start loving. Is it easy? Oh, no, not at all. It is not easy to love, especially your enemy. In the Bible. Jesus very specifically tells us to love our enemies. Tough, not easy, but it’s well worth it because love is an act of serving others.

So sin is all about me, me, me, me, me.

Love is all about you, you, you, you, you. What can I do for you?

If you are in a relationship right now, and your relationship isn’t going great, I can guarantee you it’s not going great because one reason: You stopped asking the other person, “what can I do for you?” And and you started saying, “why aren’t they doing for me?”

I know, it’s tough. I’m sorry. It really is tough, but that’s why that relationship isn’t working. When we begin a relationship, we’re more than willing to do anything for that person.

But over a period of time, we stopped wanting to do as much for that person we started wanting them to do for us. And they do the same thing.

Now if you’re a man, remember, you are the leader in this relationship. You’re not the leader to tell them what to do. Leaders don’t tell they show. If you’re a man in a relationship, and you and your wife are having a tough time, you need to start every single day, maybe even physically asking her, “What can I do for you?” then you do it without grumbling, you do it with joy. You do it with love.

And if you’re the woman in the relationship, it might be more difficult because sometimes a man isn’t going to listen to you. But if he is a servant of God in his heart, he will. You can lead in this respect. And you can say “what can I do for my husband? What can I do for you?” When it starts out, they’re not going to trust you because they think that you’re going to have an agenda. It takes time.

This happened with me and my wife, and that’s exactly what I did. And it wasn’t easy. It took a couple months for my wife to turn around. Now my wife and I have a better relationship than we’ve ever had in our lives.

Love is an act of serving others.

If you want to stop sinning, start loving more, because love is also trust, especially trusting God’s word. A thank you so much for listening or watching this episode of the Simple Christians podcast.

Dr. Ty