What Is Sin?

Understanding guilt and its remedy demands that we understand the cause of our guilt—namely, sin. As we consider the biblical understanding of sin, we find that the concept of sin encompasses several different ideas.

First, sin is conceived of as something that misses the mark. Hamartia, the Greek word that we translate as “sin,” was originally used in archery to refer to arrows’ missing their target. The idea here is that sin is something that does not quite measure up to God’s requirements. It might get close, but it does not actually meet the standards of God’s law. Sin, therefore, can occur when we know what to do and yet fail to do it (James 4:17). If sin involves missing the mark, then sin also occurs whenever we fail to obey God perfectly, since the standard that the Lord gives us is perfection. We must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48), and since we are imperfect as long as sin abides, we continually fall short of God’s law. This is why we trust in Christ and His perfect obedience to take the place of our imperfection so that we can be declared righteous in God’s sight (2 Cor. 5:21).

Another prominent description of sin in God’s Word is that of a debt that we cannot pay. Today’s passage depicts sin as an unpayable debt. When Peter asked Jesus how often he should forgive those who sinned against him, our Lord told a parable in which a master forgives a servant who owed him a debt of ten thousand talents (Matt. 18:21–27). Since a talent represented about twenty years’ worth of wages for an ordinary worker in those days, it would have taken the servant hundreds of thousands of years to pay it off. In effect, the servant had no hope of ever paying it off, so the master’s pardon of it is an illustration of the depth of God’s mercy. He forgives the debt of sin that we could not possibly ever hope to repay. The servant then reveals his failure to appreciate such lavish grace when he refuses to forgive a much smaller debt owed to him (Matt. 18:28–35). The point is clear: because the Lord has forgiven us so freely, we must likewise forgive.

Romans 11:33 tells us that our Creator possesses the attribute of infinity (Isa. 6:3). This means, among other things, that He has an infinitely holy character, for He is likewise holy. Every sin—every affront to His holiness—therefore is a sin against His infinite holiness and incurs an infinite debt. Only if He forgives us freely can that debt be erased (Ps. 103:12).