What Is Sin?
Sin disrupts everything. We don’t live the lives we were originally designed to live, and we don’t live in the world we were originally designed to live in. Sin mars the image of God in us; we no longer reflect the perfection God created us to reflect. Because of sin, things simply aren’t the way they were originally meant to be. The story of the human race, as presented in the Bible, is the story of God fixing broken people living in a broken world. It is the story of God’s victory over the many results of sin in the world.
What Sin Is
Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. God sets forth his moral law in many places throughout the Bible. One such place is the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20:1–17. If sin is any action contrary to God’s moral law, it makes sense that Exodus 20:13 says, “You shall not murder,” and Exodus 20:15 says, “You shall not steal.” But sin is also found in attitudes contrary to God’s moral law. This is why Exodus 20:17 says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Sin is also found in our nature—the internal character that is the essence of who we are. This is why Paul says that those who reject Jesus are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3).
God is eternally good in his character; all that he is conforms perfectly to his moral law. Therefore, anything contrary to his moral law is contrary to his character, that is, contrary to God himself. God hates sin because it directly contradicts everything he is.
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