Sin

The biblical vocabulary of sin is rich and multi-dimensional:

(1) Missing the mark (hamartia, ἁμαρτία, from ha, not + meros, share/part; failing to hit the target; the most common NT word for sin; also the Hebrew chata, to miss, to fail, to err). The image: an archer who misses the target. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, the most comprehensive use). The "glory of God" is the target of human existence: to image and reflect the glory of the Creator. Sin is the failure to do so. This image captures sin's negative character, falling short of what is intended.

(2) Rebellion (pesha, פֶּשַׁע, rebellion, transgression, breaking away from a sovereign; Greek parabasis, stepping over a boundary / anomia, lawlessness). The image: a subject revolting against the king. Isaiah 1:2, "Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me." This image captures sin's active, willful character, not merely failing but defying. "Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4).

(3) Debt (opheilema, ὀφείλημα, a debt, something owed; the Lord's Prayer uses this word: "forgive us our debts", Matthew 6:12; Luke uses paraptomata, trespasses). The image: a debtor who cannot pay. The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:23-35, the servant who owed 10,000 talents, an amount impossible to repay). This image captures sin's relational, economic character, something is owed and cannot be paid.

(4) Defilement/uncleanness (tame, טָמֵא, unclean, defiled; Greek miasmos, pollution, defilement). The image: something polluted, contaminated, unfit for the presence of holiness. Isaiah 6:5, "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" The encounter with divine holiness reveals defilement. This image captures sin's character as unfitness for the divine presence.

"Original sin" is the theological term for the teaching that Adam's one act of disobedience (Genesis 3) affected all his descendants, that all humanity is born in a state of sinfulness, not merely in a state of moral neutrality that then freely chooses to sin.

The primary text is Romans 5:12-19: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (eph' ho pantes hemarton, upon which all sinned, or in whom all sinned)... For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."

Paul's argument is that Adam's sin was not merely exemplary (we sin because we follow Adam's example) but constitutive (his disobedience legally constituted all who are "in Adam" as sinners). The parallel structure (Adam/Christ) requires this: just as Christ's obedience does not merely give us a good example to follow but actually constitutes us righteous, so Adam's disobedience actually constituted us sinners.

Psalm 51:5: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." This is not a statement about the sinfulness of sexuality but about the inherited condition into which David was born.

Total depravity (the Reformed doctrine, not a term Calvin himself used frequently): not that every human being is as bad as they could be, but that sin has affected every faculty, mind, will, affections, conscience, body. No faculty is untouched by the corruption of the fall. Romans 3:10-18, Paul's catena of OT quotations: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God... no fear of God before their eyes."

Hebrews 3:12-13 gives one of the most practically significant analyses of how sin works: "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

Sin's primary weapon is deception, it presents itself as more satisfying, more safe, more reasonable than obedience. The hardening is gradual: the deceitfulness of sin, if not met with daily mutual exhortation, progressively calcifies the heart against the truth.

The Old Testament's analysis: sin is consistently described as a distortion of vision. Proverbs 14:12, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Genesis 3:6, "the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise." The appearance of goodness is what makes the temptation effective. The serpent did not offer something obviously bad; he offered something that looked good.

Sin's social dimension: James 1:14-15, "But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death." The internal process (desire → conceived → sin → death) shows that sin is not primarily social influence but an internal movement of disordered desire. And yet the community is the primary site of protection: "exhort one another every day" (Hebrews 3:13), the antidote to sin's deceitfulness is the community's daily mutual truth-telling.

The Sanctum holds that the doctrine of sin is not pessimism about humanity but realism in the service of grace. The worse the diagnosis, the more astonishing the remedy. "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21), the depth of the exchange matches the depth of the problem. A merely morally improved gospel answers a merely moral problem; the cross answers the actual problem: rebellion against the Holy God, defilement before the pure God, debt beyond human repayment, the target of human existence missed.