What is Sin?

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul ~Proverbs 8:36

We don't hear much about sin today. We don't have a very good idea in our culture of what sin really even is. The thing in our common vernacular that is most often called sinful is chocolate. We have lost, as a common understanding, the very meaning of the word sin. 

I wonder how our culture today and its values and its morals would be viewed by someone from an earlier time. I also wonder how we today would respond to a message from say 100 years ago. As it turns out, we can find out at least on a small scale. I have been greatly blessed to come into a bit of a family inheritance: a Bible. As it turns out, my great, great, great grand father, H. C. Galbraith, was a preacher in the late 1800's. I have just received Reverend Galbraith's Bible and it is an amazing treasure. It comes complete with his handwritten sermon outlines and notes from the 1890's. 

In one of his sermon outlines based on the passage from Proverbs above, here is what Reverend Galbraith had to say about sin:   

Sin is any violation of God's Law or any neglect of duty or neglect to obey what God has commanded or led us to do. It separates man from God for God can have no fellowship with sin. Every impure word, act, association, or neglect of duty drives God further from us. He who commits sin wrongs his own soul by dwarfing its development and weakening its power for good thus defeating the design of God in its creation.

The greatest wrong is the loss of the soul. It is a terrible thing to barter the soul for a few days sensual pleasure. Thomas Payne recanted his infidelity when he was brought to face death. Hume, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and others left a testimony that it was not safe to trifle with your soul's eternal welfare. Each of us asks in his heart "whose religion would you have me accept now Father? I am dying."   

From the perspective of a culture that seems so intent on denying the very existence of sin, it is striking to me how Reverend Galbraith went so much farther in defining sin than even our churches tend to do today. Most of those that regularly attend a Bible believing church would probably be comfortable with the definition of sin as being any violation of God's Law, but he - rightly - didn't stop there. Reverend Galbraith went on to define sin as being any neglect of duty or neglect to obey what God has personally commanded or led us to do.

In our rush to omit and to erase what we consider to be the little sins from what our society defines as right and wrong -- in our haste to justify those small things in our lives that we know, deep down, violate the will of God -- in these things we must recall that all the world's death, all the world's pain, all the world's anguish and suffering throughout history are the result of deception and one man's willful disobedience. One bite of fruit caused man to be separated from God and introduced death into God's perfect creation (for more on this see our post The Crafty Beast).

"Every impure word, act, association, or neglect of duty drives God further from us. He who commits sin wrongs his own soul by dwarfing its development and weakening its power for good thus defeating the design of God in its creation."

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 6:23

 

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kightp/2517857662/)