The Words for Sin & the Nature of Sin

We are turning a corner in our study, this particular series of doctrinal studies has been on what the Bible teaches about man and sin. We've looked for some weeks at the doctrine of man and what the Bible teaches about many aspects of man's make up in our creation and personality and so forth. But we're turning a corner tonight to the second half of our study and that is what the Bible teaches about sin. Let me give you a program of where we're headed in this study. Tonight we'll talk about the words for sin and we'll begin talking about the nature of sin, what sin really is. And then we will dive into Genesis chapter 3 where we'll look at the fall and spend some time in some in-depth study of the account in Genesis of the fall of man and sin to Adam and Eve. Then we'll look at the results of that, the results of sin and the results of the fall, both immediate and far reaching, both for Adam and for the whole human race, what the fall into sin means for us. And then we will look, we'll spend some time talking about the transmission of the sin nature. In other words, how do we get our sin nature? How does that come to us? And believe it or not, that's a fairly significant area of Bible teaching and affects several things that we'll talk about at that time. And then we'll talk about some implications of what the Bible teaches about sin as regards psychology, as regards sociology, those disciplines of the study of the psyche or the soul and the study of the communities of people, civilizations and societies. And then also the implications for evangelism. That's very critical to understand how to conduct evangelism, how to do evangelism should be informed by how we understand what the Bible teaches about man's sinfulness. And then to wrap up this particular series of studies, we will focus in on a couple of topics of interest when it comes to the subject of sin. We'll do a little bit of study on the unpardonable sin, talk about what that is, and then we'll also do a little bit of study on what the Bible calls the sin unto death or really more accurately translated a manner of sinning unto death. And so we'll talk about that as well. What are those? What is the unpardonable sin? What does it mean to sin unto death? And what's the Bible talking about there? So that's where we're headed. That's kind of the table of contents for this half of our study on what the Bible teaches about man and sin. Any questions about where we're going? Where we're headed? Okay. We're going to begin tonight with some basic introductory kind of topics on sin. And the best place to start, the best way to do that is just simply to talk about the words in the Bible for sin. That gives us a beginning point, a kind of a touchstone to move from there into other parts of the biblical teaching of sin. But really, to deal with the words first gives us kind of an overall bird's eye view, a grass of what the Bible means by sin and what sin really is. We're going to look at some Old Testament words and then some New Testament words. So let's begin with the Old Testament words. There are three main Old Testament words for sin. The first of those and I'm giving you the English transliteration of the Hebrew words and then the way they are most frequently translated in their English versions. The first one is kata which means which is usually translated sin. It's the general word for sin in the Old Testament. The most common word for sin. It's found 350 times in the Old Testament and normally it is translated simply by the word sin. But what does it mean? What does that word mean? And so what does sin really mean? This particular word kata means it has the idea of missing the mark. Now as we look at these specific words, what we're going to do is we're going to get some slants, some nuances of what sin really means, what sin looks like in the eyes of God. One of the aspects of sin is it means to miss the mark. In fact, this word is very interestingly used in a very literal way in judges chapter 20 in verse 16 in a military context. Among all these soldiers, there were 700 select troops who were left handed, each of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. You see this right here? Not miss. That's the word kata which means to miss the mark. Now obviously here it's not talking about sin but it is the word for sin. The word most often translated sin in the Old Testament and you can see the use here in a very literal context of being an expert marksman, not with a rifle but with a sling in that day. That was the weapon of choice for the army. Of course that's what David used in in felling galaea. So with a sling could could not miss the mark, not sin if you will. But with reference to moral behavior, this aspect of sin then is the failure to measure up to a standard. It means to miss the mark and the mark is set by God. The standard is set by God. So sin first of all is missing the mark. It is to fail to measure up to a standard that God sets. I had an interesting discussion just recently with someone about absolutes and so forth and whether or not sin has to do with with objective truth or more internal personal aspects. And I brought up this particular word which means to miss the mark to fail to measure up to a standard which implies by definition there is a standard that is set and objective standard. Sin is much more than just a personal failing. Sin is the failure to measure up to a standard and objective standard that is set by God. There are moral standards set by God and when we fail to reach those when we miss that mark that sin and that's part of what sin means. Any question about that comment? There is a second Old Testament word. It's the word Avon which is translated most often in the Old Testament iniquity. It's found 250 times in the Old Testament again typically translated with our English word iniquity but the basic idea of this word is crookedness or perversity. And when something is perverse it literally means it's twisted or bent out of shape. So that's a very real picturesque view of this word. Iniquity means that something is bent or twisted. So this idea goes a little bit beyond missing the mark and objective standard to missing the purpose for which God intended us. The purpose for which He made us. And so here is the purpose for which God made us out here like like the standard in the first word. This is the purpose for which God made us. He intended us to live this way and we have a tendency to bend that to twist it out of shape and thus to not fulfill the purpose for which God made us. So the idea of perversity being twisted bent out of shape, crookedness, that's another aspect of sin in the Old Testament. So sin means to miss the mark and objective standard that God sets that we don't measure up to, we don't reach. But it also means to twist, to bend out of shape the very purpose for which God made us. So whenever we do not measure up not only to an objective standard but to the purpose for which God made us, we sin. We sin. That's iniquity, crookedness, perversity. Third word is pesha which means transgression, the transgression. Normally this word, Hebrew word is translated transgression but the real idea behind it is rebellion. To transgress means to go beyond a boundary. And the idea is not to kind of stumble unknowingly but to know where the boundary is and go beyond it anyway. It's rebellion. That's the idea behind this word. Now I want you to open your Bible to Psalm 32 because interestingly enough in this chapter David uses all three of these words for sin. Does anybody remember the context of Psalm 32? What is the issue that David is dealing with here in his life? Do you remember? Pardon me? Bathsheba, yes. Yes. Psalm 32 is written about David's inward struggle with his sin and rebellion against God when he committed the sin with Bathsheba. And all the consequential sins of covering it up and having Euryah killed in battle and the deception, the lying and all of that. This is David's description of what he went through during that period of time when he was not ready to get right with God. For instance, verses three and four, when I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. This is the suffering of a man who knows he's guilty and he's done terrible wrong and yet he is not willing to come clean with God. Psalm 51 is the record of David's actual confession of that sin. This is the record of David's internal struggle and how he came to the resolution of that in confession. He's talking about a whole series of sins here that are pretty drastic, pretty bad. For that reason, he uses all three of the major Old Testament words for sin. Again, it's not just kind of poetic. I want to be nice and use different words. I think it shows his guilt. He just can't find enough words to describe the awfulness of what he's done. So look at verse one. He says, The third word, a vote whose iniquity the Lord does not count against them and whose spirit is no deceit. So David uses all three words in describing the awfulness of his sin. He says, My sin was a transgression. I rebelled against God. I knew where the line was. I knew what I was not supposed to do and I purposely went beyond it. I rebelled against God. So he said, He said, I rebelled against God. I knew where the line was. I knew what I was not supposed to do and I purposely went beyond it. I rebelled against God. So he said, He said, So David is not just waxing eloquent here. He's seeking to describe however he can the awfulness of his sin. So he uses all three words for his sin. It's really quite a dramatic passage when you realize that. When you recognize that David, it's almost as though he's grasping for enough words to describe how horrible his sin really is. So he's not just going to use one concept. He's basically saying, I've sinned in every way you possibly can. So those three major words in the Old Testament and three major concepts are found for sin. There are some other words for sin. It means wicked or evil. The word Ibar means to cross over. The word I'm all means trouble. All of those words and others like perversity, wickedness, unfaithfulness, guilt. All of those words are used in the Old Testament as well. But these three are the ones most often used. One of these three typically will be used for sin in the Old Testament. Questions, comments about the Old Testament concept of sin? Yes, Bill? There would be. All three of them mean sin. So if you just look at the word sin, the niquity and transgression would fit under that. But really, even the word sin, even the word kata, has a specific niche in the concept of sin. That is to miss the mark. So that has a specific meaning just like the other two do. A niquity meaning to be crooked or perverse and transgression meaning rebellion. So all three of them have different aspects of sin, but they all fall into that general category. And so the word which is most often translated sin, yes, is kata. And that includes the other two. Anything else? Exactly. Yeah, Karen saying it's important for us to recognize that even if we don't recognize any specific and niquity or transgression at any moment, we're still missing the mark. And we're going to see this in the New Testament concept in just a moment where it is said that all of us miss the mark. Regardless of whether or not you can point at any specific time to a rebellion against God or a perverseness twisting of his standard, we still all miss the mark. Because we're going to see in the New Testament what the mark is. The New Testament makes clear what the mark is. And when you realize what the mark is, what the standard is, wow, nobody reaches it. Nobody reaches that standard. So we all sin. That's a great point. And something we have to keep in mind. Okay, those are the Old Testament words. Let's look at the New Testament words. And again, very similar, there are three main words in the New Testament and the Greek language translated sin. All three of them are translated sin. But again, they have different shades of meaning which gives, if you can speak this way of sin, a richness to the understanding of sin. You see it kind of in all of its ugly hues, if you want to say it that way. The first Greek word is ha-martia, which means to miss the mark and very similar to the Old Testament word kata. It's the most common word for sin. It's the general vanilla word for sin in the New Testament. It's found 175 times in the New Testament. But it primarily has the shade of meaning of missing the mark, of missing God's purpose for us, God's desire for us, the standard that he set for us, the failure to measure up to the standard. And you probably know the most well known verse that uses this word, obviously it's found a lot, but the verse that really communicates this concept is Romans 3.23. For all have sinned, ha-martia, all have sinned, and here it is, fall short, miss the mark of the glory of God. Now this passage is so key to our understanding of sin because it makes sure that we understand all of us have missed the mark. But it defines what the mark is, what standard, what mark have we missed. Well what we fall short of, he explains in the rest of the verse, is the glory of God. So that, that clues us in what the standard is that God measures us against. Think about this now. The standard is not some man-made standard, some human standard of what I think is pretty decent behavior, or what I think is a pretty good way to live. Now we're not setting the standard. God sets the standard that he measures us against, and that standard is not human goodness. The standard is the absolute glory of God. Now the glory of God is a very general term which means all of the excellencies of his nature. That's what the glory of God means. So it has to do with his holiness, his justice, his righteousness, just all of the amazing attributes of God are kind of compressed in that word, glory. It's the demonstration of his amazing greatness. It's his character. So what is the standard that God's expecting us to meet? His righteousness, his holiness, his perfections. That's the standard. So when you realize that's the standard, then you say, oh yeah, I agree. We've all sinned. We all fall short of that standard. And this is why this is such a great verse to use in evangelism, in witnessing to lost people, to show people, to show us all that we've all sinned, and the standard is not how I measure up against someone else. Because a lot of lost people think, well, I'm not as bad as that, Deakin, it goes over there to that church. Why do I need to get right with God? I'm living pretty good compared to what I know about him. Or my neighbor claims to be a Christian, but look at the way they live. Well, that's not the standard. Okay, everybody can find someone else who they would measure up pretty well against. Even people who claim to know Christ or claim to be believers, there are a lot of unbelievers that can say, if that's what it means to be a Christian, forget it. I'm okay. I already measure up pretty good against that. Well, this is why this is such an important verse in evangelism, because it helps people who are lost to see that the standard is not how well you measure up against anybody else. The standard is how well do you measure up against God? Okay, now that's the standard. That's where the bars set to get into heaven. You don't get into heaven unless you can measure up to his righteousness. Okay, so whoa, all of us are in trouble, right? All of us are in trouble. And that is such a beautiful segue into the gospel because God provides not only the standard, but he provides the righteousness, the perfect righteousness that meets the standard. And it's not your righteousness, my righteousness, it's whose righteousness? Christ, it's Christ's righteousness. That's perfect. And so Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty to absorb all of God's wrath for our sin, but in doing so, trades our sin for his righteousness. So that when you trust Jesus as your savior, not only as your sin forgiven, but in God's record books in heaven, Christ's righteousness is perfect righteousness that meets the highest standard of God is stamped on your account in heaven. That's what the Bible calls justification. Okay, so that's why this is such a key verse to understand. Yeah, we all miss the mark. And the mark is God's perfect righteousness. So the only way you can get that is through someone who gives you his perfect righteousness and that's Christ. The beautiful entrance to the gospel is that understanding of sin. You cannot understand salvation and the gift of God unless you first of all understand the sin. What makes it necessary for God to grant us to give us his righteousness because none of us measure up to the standard. When I've used this verse to witness to people, I'll often use the illustration of pole vaulting and some of you've been through one-on-one class. Remember me using that illustration there when I explain the gospel because it beautifully illustrates it. I'm not a track and field fan until it comes to the Olympics and then when it comes to the Olympics, I love track and field because there's some national kind of excitement and spirit there. And one of the events that I will just watch when the Olympics come on, that I would never watch any other time as a pole vault. The pole vault is where the guy runs, the lady runs down kind of a straight track and there's a pit at the end of it and they have a pole in their hands and they plant the end of that pole into that pit and vault themselves over a suspended bar that's between two uprights. The best in the world can pole vault about 20 feet. That's highest anybody has ever gone. Has anybody in here ever done that? Anybody ever pole vaulted? I want to see how high you'd gotten. I haven't either. You mean now you didn't do that in all your phys ed classes. You didn't. 23. You mean you ran 23 feet down the runway. Okay. Okay. Now let's just say for purposes of the illustration, the bar is set at 100 feet. That's the standard. It's set at 100 feet. Nobody in the world has any hope of reaching that. Now there are going to be some people that look better than others. There are going to be some people that appear to get a little higher than others. But everybody comes woefully short of 100 feet. The best in the world only get about a fifth of the way there. That is Romans 323. For all have sinned without exception. Why? Because of where the bar set. The bar is set at the glory of God, not a dunkel Joe or Aunt Matilda. The bar is set by the glory of God and nobody's going to get that high. Nobody. Now some people may look a little better. They may live a little bit more moral lives. They may be more kind and gentle and so forth. But nobody's going to reach that standard. So that's why it's so important to grasp that concept of what sin is. Sin is missing the mark and the mark that we're missing is not some man made mark that if I just try a little harder, I might get there. Now the mark is God's glory and nobody's going to reach that 100 foot bar. So that's the concept here with Hommartia to miss the mark. Same as the word Katah in the Old Testament. Questions or comments there? No. The word sin is all have sinned. That's the word Hommartia. I'd have to have my Greek Testament out here to find out what what the Greek is for the fall short. But the word for sin is the one Hommartia. You might have your Greek Testament with you. Look it up. I have to be careful now because Dan and James are both taking Greek in their seminary programs and they can check up on me. Make sure I'm getting the thing right. But anyway, yeah, it would just be the word all have sinned. The second word is Pairas which means which is mostly translated evil. The idea here in this word is is a depravity, perversity, wickedness because we have an evil nature. Because we have a sinful nature, that's the idea here. And a good example of the use of this word is in John 3.19. It's on the screen for you. This is the verdict. The light has come into the world but people love darkness instead of light. Why? Because their deeds were Pairas. Anyway, last word, evil. These were evil. That's the word depraved, perverse because of an evil nature. Our deeds, our works, our evil perverse. Third word, parabina which means to transgress. Again, these really mirror the three same concepts as the Old Testament words. To transgress means to go beyond or to rebel against God's standards or commands really the idea is to go beyond or to rebel against God's commands. A good example of the use of this word is in Matthew 15 where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he says why are the Pharisees say why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat. Jesus replied, why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? That concept or break the command of God, the word break is the word parabina which means to transgress or to go beyond. Why do you go beyond God's commands? Why do you rebel against God's commands? And it's such an apt word, such a perfect word for what the Pharisees did. They went beyond God's standards, God's commands and set up their own rules to try to measure righteousness by. But they just flew right by God's clear commands and tried to do their own thing, self-righteousness. Good word for what Jesus is communicating there to transgress, to go beyond or to rebel against God's commands. There are other New Testament words as well for sin, lots of them. Lawlessness, trespass, fault, debt and at least eight other words in the New Testament for sin. So lots of different shades of meaning, but these are the three main ones carrying, if you noticed, the same three basic concepts of the New Testament. So if you want to know what the Bible means by sin, it is basically these three ideas to miss the mark, to twist God's intended purpose to be perverse or crooked. And to go beyond God's commands in the sense of rebelling against what He has laid down, those are the three major concepts involved in sin. So that's what sin really is. And there are lots of other shades we talked about, but those are the three main ideas. Any question? Comment about the scriptural words for sin. Yeah, that's a good question. It can go either way. In the Matthew 15 concept, there is the idea there of they went further than God's commands go to establish their own rights. Or their own expectations. So they went beyond what God said, but in doing so, they completely forgot what God said. So basically they transgressed in the sense that they violated it too. So rather than just sticking with what God said in his law, they decided to make their own laws that they felt were more stringent. What the Pharisees called them were fence laws. In other words, if here's where you go over the cliff, let's put a fence back here and then a fence back here and then a fence back here so that we don't even get close to that. And all of these fences became equivalent to God's law, God's word. And so they went beyond what God said. So it includes that. But it also includes the idea in certain context of just plain rebellion. Here's what God says to do. Here's the standard. And I'm just going to blow right by it and do what I want to do. So it can go either way. Go either way. Steve. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus said Moses allowed for divorce due to our only 24 one and two. Moses allowed because of the hardness of your heart. There were allowances made because of sin sin messes up relationships and God makes allowance for that. But Jesus said it was not so in the beginning. In other words, that was never God's intent. Never God's intent. Never God's purpose. And what the Pharisees did with that one is exactly what you said Steve. They went way beyond not only God's original standard, but even God's allowances for sinful behavior. And they basically said, okay, you can you can write a bill of divorcement for your wife for anything if she burns your toast and you don't like it. Get rid of her. You know, they were really that loose. And so they had gone way beyond God's standard. Yeah, that is a good example of what they were doing. Tommy? Yeah. Yeah, that's part of what they were doing. They were setting up standards. They felt they could meet. But if Jesus even called them on that, he said, you blind guys of the blind. You tell people not to do this and you yourself don't keep it. So they they were making it look like they could, but they didn't. They didn't. And so yeah, that was part of it. Okay. Good questions. All right, let's let's talk about the nature of sin. We're not going to have time to really get very far in this, but we'll get started by the nature of sin. We're going to first of all talk about four general forms of sin. And this is really basic stuff for different forms of sin or ways that we might send. What will at least introduce a little bit of that tonight. And then next week, we'll talk about some false definitions of sin, some incomplete definitions of sin. And then we'll pull all of it together. The words, the basic general states of sin and deal with those incomplete and false definition pull all together to come up with a biblical definition of sin. Kind of a simplified composed definition of sin. We'll finish that up next week. But let's talk first of all about four general forms of sin. Here's what I mean. The first one is this sin can sometimes be a state, not Ohio. I know that's what some of you are thinking, not that kind of state. What I'm talking about here is a disposition of the heart or an attribute that characterizes us. Sin can sometimes be a state, an element of our nature. In other words, we are sinners in our very being. That's a part of our human condition. It's a part of our state. It's who we are. We're sinners. So sin can sometimes be thought of as a state. Let me give you or a condition might be a better word, a condition that we all share. Let me give you a couple of verses that show this and then we'll stop with this. Psalm 51.5. Surely David says, I was sinful at birth. And then he says, no, no, let's go back even nine months further. I'm sinful from the time my mother conceived me. We're going to come back to that verse later when we talk about the transmission of the sin nature. Where how far back does our sinful condition go to the moment of conception, David says. So that's a part of our condition. It's a part of our state. It's not something we do necessarily not in in this thinking we'll get to that later, but it's a part of who we are. We're sinners. Jeremiah 17.9 is another good verse. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure who can understand it. We can't even really understand our own hearts. They're so deceitful and so wicked beyond cure. In other words, not beyond God's cure, but beyond our ability to straighten it out. Our hearts are in such a mess. We cannot straighten them out on our own. That's why we need God's salvation. Okay. So this is a part of our conditions, part of our nature. Sin is a state that we are in. And then the third verse is Roman 7, 17 and 18. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it. Paul's talking about the struggle between wanting to do what's right and finding can't don't have the power to do that. And he sends he says it's no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. Now he's not excusing himself. He's not saying I've been overtaken by some inner beast. I can't help myself. Now he's just saying he's saying there's something in me that pulls me towards sin constantly. It's a part of my human condition. It's a part of the state I live in and that's sin living in me. It's a sin nature. He says, I know that good itself does not dwell in me. That is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. You read Roman 7 and you find what it describes. If you read the whole passage, it describes the inner turmoil and warfare that we all face as believers. If you're a believer, you have the desire to do what's good. You have a desire to live for Christ. That's where your heart is. But you got something else, your sin nature continually pulling you the other way. I just can't seem to get my act together. I can't seem to get it all together. I seem to get one sin, I'm making progress in, and my temper is getting better. But then all of a sudden I find myself over here. Something else is popping up. I'm getting lazy. You know, or something else. You remember that old game you played when you were a kid? You remember that? Some of you are nodding, some of you are looking like you are crazy, John. You remember that little game where little moleheads or whatever they were, would pop up through different holes and you'd whack one up and down and another one would pop up over here. Well, that's the way the Christian life is. You whack away at one particular area of your life and you seem to be getting some progress and making some some headway and then you look over here. Boom. Here's something else is popped up. And that is the struggle that we all live with because sin is a state. It's a part of our sinful condition, our sinful nature. And we'll be fighting that until the day we die and go to heaven and we're with the Lord and we're delivered from all that. Thank God. When that day comes, but that's part that's part of what sin is. It is a state that will come back and do the other three next week. We've we've got to go. It's our times up. Let's pray. Father, we are sinners from the moment of conception. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. We can't even fully know them ourselves. Lord, we we are. Guilty of missing the standard that you've set for us. We are all sinners. But Lord, we thank you that you love us and we're just seeing part of the picture tonight. We thank you that you still love us. Love us so much that you didn't want us to suffer for our own sin and you sent Jesus to pay for our sin to die for us. To lay down the perfect sacrifice so that we could have His righteousness. Thank you for that amazing gift of your love in Jesus' name, amen.