Sin, Sin, or Sin?

 

Sin. What is sin anyway?

I am not asking for the typical definition of sin… I am speaking of sin in a different way.

When you see a verse like this, what do you think?

• James 4:17 - “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin”
• Matthew  1:21 - “And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins”
• 1 Peter 2:24 - “Christ carried our sins in his body on the cross so we would stop living for sin and start living for what is right”

Now these verses have much deeper meaning than what I am going to bring out, but that’s ok.

SIN, SIN or SIN?

There are 3 words that are so important to understand in our Christian walk:

• SIN- (hamartia in Greek) - this is a noun meaning THE SIN [NATURE] that we are born with because of Adam’s fall. When we get saved, the power of this sin nature is broken & no longer has control of us ONLY IF we have faith in Jesus & what He did on the cross - This is the only way the Holy Spirit can work in our lives… is through this faith.
  • Sin ‘Nature’ – We are born in sin. This is why we need to get saved or born again. Don’t believe me? Put two babies in a crib with only one bottle. See what happens.  This is the sin nature. 
    
• SIN - ( hamartanō) - this is a past tense verb. A past ACTION. This is one single act of sin that happened in the past. This is the kind of sin that a Christian does. Once. Past. “I sinnED yesterday.”  It should be a mistake that does not happen regularly & continously.
  
• “To Do Sin” - The last word is prassō - This is a PRESENTS TENSE VERB - meaning "To habitually practice sin" – that is continually happening.
  • A  sinner habitually sins. A Christian habitually lives for Christ.

Let’s take Galations 5:19-21:

• The wrong things the sinful self does are clear: being sexually unfaithful, not being pure, taking part in sexual sins,²⁰ worshiping gods, doing witchcraft, hating, making trouble, being jealous, being angry, being selfish, making people angry with each other, causing divisions among people,²¹ feeling envy, being drunk, having wild and wasteful parties, and doing other things like these. I warn you now as I warned you before: Those who do these things will not inherit God's kingdom.

"They which DO these things will not inherit the kingdom" – in other words, if we do these things we will not make it into heaven?

No.

This word “do” is prassō – this is the ‘continual, habitual practice’ of a sinner.  A Christian should not be ‘practicing’ any of these sins as a continual habit. Of course Christians are not perfect… so we will mess up & sin. But this should not be a habit. As I said above, a Christian should be habitually living for Jesus.

My point to all of this ‘sin talk’?

Before you go throwing scripture around… know what you are talking about because these words are very important.

If you want to do a study on the Greek or Hebrew scriptures I recommend the  free download called e-Sword. You can download free bibles (many, many translations), dictionaries, concordances, commentaries, and many other historical books like Josephus.