Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
We are called to contend against sin (Heb. 12:4), but what is sin? The Bible provides us with a definition: “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). The Westminster Shorter Catechism describes it as “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God” (Q&A 14). Sin means breaking God’s commandment or any shortcomings with respect to it.
The Bible records many instances of sin. The fall in the garden of Eden is a prime example. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:17; 3:11, 17). Yet they ate from this one tree that was forbidden, broke God’s commandment, and thereby sinned.
The serpent craftily and manipulatively made use of material things and human emotions to influence Adam and Eve and to persuade them to sin. Today, the adversary also aims to tempt to sin or keep a soul in sin. Misconstruing what sin is would be convenient for that end. The Bible, however, is “the sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17) and helps us understand what sin is.
Applying the meaning of sin exposes personal ungodliness and self-righteousness, for sin is any shortcoming at all with respect to God’s commands. In view of this, we are brought to esteem God’s holiness and grace more highly than before, to repent of sin, and to settle in the great hope of the gospel that “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).
Christ was “numbered with the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12; Luke 22:37). He kept all of God’s commands without a single imperfection, including in His death (Phil. 2:8). Simultaneously, on the cross, He graciously and voluntarily assumed our sins. He bore our transgressions and lack of conformity to God’s law in order that His perfect obedience and conformity to God’s law may be counted to us. Consequently, “sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace,” and “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:14; 8:1).
Understanding what sin is promotes repentance and a greater reverence for God and His mercy to us in Christ. It also equips us to resist the schemes of the adversary. We understand that, as in the garden, Satan will seek to gain leverage through desires, feelings, and material things in order to tempt. In defense, we are to store God’s Word in our hearts (Ps. 119:11) and “keep watch” (Gal. 6:1; 1 Tim. 4:16), especially with respect to our desires (see Gal. 5:24; James 1:14–15), so that sinful desires are extinguished and not fueled. But when we fail or are conscious of our failings, Psalm 143:9 directs us to Christ. It is rendered in the old Scottish metrical version, “I flee to thee to cover me.” For “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).