Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman told of a distinguished minister, Dr. Howard, from Australia who preached very strongly on the subject of sin. After the service, one of the church officers came to counsel with him in the study. “Dr. Howard,” he said, “we don’t want you to talk as openly as you do about man’s guilt and corruption, because if our boys and girls hear you discussing that subject they will more easily become sinners. Call it a mistake if you will, but do not speak so plainly about sin.”

The minister took down a small bottle and showing it to the visitor said, “You see that label? It says strychnine—and underneath in bold, red letters the word ‘Poison!’ Do you know, man, what you are asking me to do? You are suggesting that I change the label. Suppose I do, and paste over it the words, ‘Essence of Peppermint;’ don’t you see what might happen? Someone would use it, not knowing the danger involved, and would certainly die. So it is, too, with the matter of sin. The milder you make your label, the more dangerous you make your poison!”


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Vice is a fashionable subject. It’s a far more popular plotline for novels and screenplays than virtue will ever be. It’s exciting.

By comparison, virtue is tame and colourless. Christians typically consider this a lamentable state of affairs, but it’s reality. Christians call it “sin”, and usually, people don’t like talking about sin.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s awkward. It’s irritating. Today’s society, in particular, doesn’t have much time for the concept of ‘sin’ in the traditional sense of the word. For most people, sin has lost its sinfulness.

Hugh Thomson Kerr, senior editor of Theology Today, once said that people today ‘have substituted relativity for reality, psychology for prayer, an inferiority complex for sin, social control for family worship, autosuggestion for conversion, reflex action for revelation, the spirit of the wheels for the power of the Spirit.’Even healthy guilt has been replaced by mere embarrassment.

When you make mistakes, or fail to live up to your own expectations, do you ever feel guilt? A healthy sense of shame for doing something you know is wrong? Don’t get duped into thinking that all guilt is bad for you. Sometimes shame is healthy – it’s like a barometer that tells you when you’re out of line.

So vice is still sin. Wrong is still sin. Sin is still sin. In spite of how people have devalued the word, sin still exists.

Sin isn’t just your inadequacies, or your errors of judgment, or the mistakes you make as you learn more about life. Sin is more than that.

“Sin” stands for rebellion, disaster and death. It represents something that isn’t just superficial and circumstantial, but is lethal like a virus or a cancer – unless it’s stopped.

Getting Definitions
What is “sin”?

Look at the ancient holy bible. It says that “sin” is breaking God’s law, or transgressing the law. So where there is no law you can’t be a criminal, because there aren’t any rules to break, right?

But the opposite is also true: where a law exists, breaking it makes you a criminal, a sinner.*

What is the speed limit on the motorway where you live? Maybe 100 km? So if you drive 160 km/hour, you are breaking the law. But what if you go to Germany, near the autobahn where there is no speed limit? If you go 160 km/hour there, are you breaking the law? Of course not, because no such law exists.

Now, if you drive 160 km/hour on the motorway at home can you tell the officer, “I just returned from driving on the autobahn last week, so I’m not subject to the law here”? Probably not.

It’s like that with God. There is a law. God made a set of moral principles, usually called the Ten Commandments. This law tells us how to live happily with each other – don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t sleep with somebody else’s husband. . .

But is sin just breaking a commandments by some intentional or accidental act? Not entirely. Sin relates to what’s going on inside you. Although you can’t be held responsible for every fleeting thought that is less than altruistic, when we wilfully fantasize about things we know are wrong, God says it’s just as bad as actually doing it! Hoping that your neighbor’s noisy dog will be hit by a car is no less objectionable than actually killing it with a shotgun.

Jesus Christ expressed this very succinctly, saying: ‘Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matthew 5:28). The ‘cherishing’ of a sin ‘in your heart’ is fatal if you want to maintain a relationship with God (Psalm 66:18, 19).

The medieval church may be criticized for establishing a shortlist of seven ‘mortal’ sins:
Pride,
Lust,
Greed,
Covetousness,
Gluttony,
Envy and
Sloth.

But the ancient list shows a sharp awareness of sin in terms of wrong motivations and negative attitudes rather than simply as actual deeds such as lying, stealing, murdering and sleeping around. Look at what the apostle James says when he underlines how serious God takes all of this. ‘Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.’ Surely, it is no exaggeration to refer to sin as a problem. Sad reality? There is plenty of transgression of God’s law. In fact, every human being that ever lived has disobeyed this law sometime.* When God looks down from heaven, He sees that all people have been affected by sin. “There is no-one who does good. Not even one” (Psalm 14:3). Sin could be called a global problem.

Getting Illustrations
Sins aren’t just random isolated actions, interspersed between everything noble and good. Sin is more like a venom. It infects the entire person. Remember the apostle Paul? Even HE admitted that he had a relentless problem. He truly to do good, but often ended up making a bad choice anyway. ‘For what I want to do’, he says, ‘I do not do, but what I hate to do, I do’ (Romans 7:15).

Ever felt that way? Every time you promise yourself you’re not going to yell at your kids again – it JUST HAPPENS. Every time you swear you’re not going to sleep with that person again, you just can’t seem to help yourself. Every time….

The holy bible doesn’t joke around about sin. One of the ancient Hebrew words usually translated ‘sin’ really means ‘missing the mark’. You know screaming in anger hurts the people you love, so you decide to stop, and then you get angry and yell anyway.
You missed the mark.
You messed up.
You feel awful.
You wish you could be free of this bondage to whatever has got you chained.
You’ve experienced it yourself: sin is not just breaking a set of rules, by action or thought. Sin is that chain, binding you to your bad habits. Sin is what keeps you falling short of your potential and tragically missing the mark, every time you aim for something but fail to achieve it.

It’s rough to admit, but there’s sin in what we do, sin in our heart, our motives, our scheming and our fantasies. Knowing what you know about yourself and the people around you, who would dare to suggest that we have no sin problem?

Getting Solutions
Where did it all go wrong? Where did sin get started?

Even before the first humans got off to a bad start with sin, rebellion against God had started with Lucifer in heaven (see ABOUT:EVIL).

We may never totally understand how sin could get started in a perfect universe. It is a mystery. But we do know this: It had to do with God’s desire that every person should have a free will and would love Him. Not like robots, but because they wanted to.

Remember the first time you fell madly in love? Did you love that person because they twisted your arm behind your back and forced you to fall for them? Likely not. Did you daydream about them and do extra nice things because they programmed you to automatically love them, like a remote control?

Same with God. He wanted to be loved freely. To get that response, He had to risk being rejected. Kind of like with falling in love. You risk rejection, and you hope that person feels the same way you do. You want them to, but you can’t make them. Stalkers and control freaks aren’t really romantic! God didn’t want to be a stalker or a control freak.

Lucifer figured out God’s weak spot – His desire to be loved. So Lucifer went to Adam and Eve, the first human beings, and turned them against God, using the same lust for power and control that had flooded his own heart as an angel in heaven.

Adam and Eve had a free choice. They could have said ‘no’, but they said ‘yes’ when Lucifer shrewdly suggested that they rebel against God.

Ever since? Humanity has gone down-hill. Sin became hereditary, every human being born imperfect with tendency to pursue precisely the things that lead us away from God and good.

Mankind got infested with egotism and greed. Self-centred arrogance replaces love for others.

Sure, there have been gradations of sin. Some sinners are monsters. Others are great role models in spite of their imperfections. Hitler and Stalin were undoubtedly greater sinners than Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. But even Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II weren’t perfect. All people have sinned. Sin is a problem that’s bigger than just you or me. It is sort of superhuman. So the solution for the sin has got to be superhuman, if it is going to be effective.

This is what today’s culture prefers to reject. If I have a problem, I’ve got to fix it myself. Seeking a solution outside of myself is never as good as searching for the power I have within, people say.

But look at your life. Have you really been able to fix everything you want to change, all by yourself? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have some help achieving those goals?

You see, the concept of truth as a solution has pretty much evaporated in today’s culture of postmodernity. But the holy bible doesn’t allow for minimalizing sin just to make ourselves feel better. Instead, it maintains that sin is a superhuman problem. If ever there was a truth that has been experientially proven it is this: Sin has dimensions that are totally beyond human control.

Just as the sin problem is larger than life, there is a solution for that problem that is also larger than life: Jesus Christ. The holy bible tells His story, how He lived on this planet like you and me, but He wasn’t tainted by the hereditary sin disease. He became the Solution for the sin problem. ‘God made him who had no sin [meaning Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Of course, that doesn’t answer every question. Is it fair that all Adam’s descendants became infected with the sin-virus? Why must we suffer because of the mistakes of our first ancestor? Surely a loving God could have devised some other way of counteracting the sin problem? Why did sin develop to cause so much havoc and misery?

Lots of questions remain. People have been asking them for centuries.

Whispered questions.
Shouted questions.
Philosophical enquiries and as curses of desperation.

Indeed, sin remains a problem—in more than one way. But, when we consider God’s solution, all doubt and cynicism have to dissipate. Jesus Christ is the superhuman Solution. He ‘came to save [all] people from their sins’ (Matthew 1:21).

No more sin. No more heartbreak. No more arrogant self-centredness. No more failing to achieve the good things you long to do.

Could that be enough?


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Is it hard for you to talk about bad things or mistakes as “sin”? Why?
How do you feel about taking personal responsibility for your sins, but still looking to God for the answer and the ability to change?
Do you think God can really change you?
If everyone called hurtful actions “sin” do you think it would change the way society views wrongdoing?


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Will you ask God to forgive you for your past sins and give you a fresh start?

Dear God
I have often wondered why at times I act in ways that I am ashamed of. Thank you for what you have shown me. Please help me to live in such a way now, that sin will not dominate and control my life. Amen.

Romans 4:15 NLT
“The only way to avoid breaking the law is to have no law to break!”

Romans 3:23
”For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”

re:tell: Source Unknown. http://www.sermoncentral.com/illustration_topic_results.asp?TopicName=Sin&category_name=Stories&topic_id=87. April 7, 2006.