Sin

What is sin? Often times the word sin is thrown around and talked about, but what does it really mean? And if it really means something, is it important? And if it’s important, what should we do about it? And if then, what causes sin in our daily life? Well, to me sin is a very important thing to fully understand. But, let’s start off on the right foot. What really is sin? The definition I will be using for sin is one that I got from my Bible teacher in 8th grade. The way he described sin is “the degodding of God.” I one hundred percent agree with that definition. I would like to explain it a little more though.

Here are a few ways that I would like to try and explain sin to you.

1. Sin is when we stop depending on God for FULL support and start depending on ourselves. We don’t trust that God will provide for us or we don’t want God to provide for us and we would rather provide for ourselves, so we quickly replace God’s provision with our own. However, we constantly fail.

2. Sin is when we stop leaving God at the top and try and bring ourselves there. God has created us as humans to be FULLY dependent on Him. However, when we sin, we take matters into our own hands and try to figure it all out for ourselves, replacing the slot where God was before.

3. There are many things that God does for us and when we try to take that place we fail. God provides, decides right from wrong and takes care of us. However, because we are human, we cannot do any of this in full capacity

Therefore, for the above reasons, I am going to use my definition of sin. The more you look into it, the more you will see the truth behind the matter. Sin is whenever we take God out of His rightful place and put ourselves or some other sin there. I know I have heard the argument many times that God just gives us a list of rules that we are to follow. However, when we take a closer look into these rules, we can often find that many of them are for our own safety or our own well being.

The thought that has been crossing my mind a lot recently is how all of our sin is a selfish desire. Our world is corrupt and broken world and it’s because of many of our own selfish desires. I believe that sin and selfish desires are connected very closely. I believe that much of the brokenness in our world is due to the fact of our own selfishness. Look around you and you’ll begin to see too. People are selfish in more ways than one. I don’t want to be mean and say that everyone is selfish, because I have actually met some people who are very selfless, but from time to time, I think everyone has their moments of selfishness.

It breaks my heart to think about that, because it should not be. When we are Christians, we are called to follow Christ with our whole life and when we are walking around being selfish and sinful, what kind of example is that to those who have not met the amazing Creator? What example are we leaving for them? According to many studies done, there are many reasons people don’t like Christians. Here are a couple common reasons: because we are hypocritical, because we enforce our religion on people and don’t give a care about they have to say, and much more. (I had a list of them, but I can’t find it anymore, please let me know if you know what I’m talking about.)

I believe that sin is very important and it’s an easy trap to fall into. It ranges from many different things and we need to pay attention to it. In Hebrews 12:1, it says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off EVERYTHING THAT HINDERS and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance, the race marked out for us.” We are being called to throw off everything that hinders and entangles us and run forward. But the thing is, sin is so addicting, and I can speak for myself from experience, but also from stories of others, but the Lord is faithful to those who desire to remove sin from their lives. They can be simple things like lying, hating people, to deep and harder things like strong addictions, but God wants us to get away from them, and best of all, He’s so ready and willing to help us with that.

He loves us so much and longs for us to simply depend on Him for everything and anything that is going on in our lives right now. There is a lot of sin out there that can take hold and grab onto us and it can bring us down and stop us from being a wonderful example for the Lord, but with His strength, we can come out of it. We will never be perfect, in fact, we are very far from it, but when we throw out the sin we see in our lives, it lets God work more openly on us, and lets us be a better example to those around us. So, what do you say? Are you willing to lay down whatever sin you are struggling with? Whether or not the answer is yes, when we are God is ready and willing. And maybe we ought to aim for the goal of being a good example for Christ, to change the minds of those who hate Christians and see no reason for us to believe what we believe. Maybe we are the ones who are being called right here and right now to change and then be that example to all of those around us…start changing the world, one step at a time.