Sin

“Sin” is a word most people rarely say or hear any more.  If they admit they’ve done anything wrong, they’ve made mistakes and committed errors.  Rightly so, because they’re not thinking so much about whether they offended God in what they’ve done.

A very biblical word, “sin” left common usage as people eliminated it from the general public. Sin describes a crime against God, breaking His law.  The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 1:28:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge.

Even if people don’t deny the existence of God, they increasingly don’t consider Him related to their lives.  It isn’t that they can’t retain Him in their knowledge.  They don’t like to do it.  People would rather not.  They’ve got their reasons.  Bad ones, but they’ve got them.

The truth of sin connects people to God.  He is the Creator, Sustainer, Lawgiver, Judge, and Redeemer.  All of these attributes of God relate to sin in some way.

Denying, Excusing, or Redefining Sin

Part of the rebellion against God means rebellion against the confession of sin.  Rather than recognize who God is, acknowledge Him, and admit to the offenses against Him and His nature, people change the way they regard sin.  Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”  Instead of conceding on sin, people deny it, excuse it, or redefine it in many various ways.

In the Garden of Eden, after he sinned, Adam said to God (Genesis 3:12), “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”  He said, It wasn’t my fault.  First, it was your fault, God.  You gave her to me.  And second, it was the woman’s fault.

Adam did not take responsibility for His sin.  Unlike David in Psalm 51:4 after his sins, Adam blamed it on someone or something else.  Instead of saying, “All have sinned,” it could be, “All have synd.”  Adam had a group of features that existed together.  All of those came from God.  He had the woman, the garden, the serpent, and his own vulnerability.

Syndrome

A mixture of features coming together and effecting someone like they did Adam, instead of a sin, someone might call a syndrome.  Syndrome comes from a Greek word (sundrome) that appears once in the New Testament in Acts 21:30.  It is a verb translated there, “running together.”  A mob formed and came all at once and together against the Apostle Paul.

Merriam Webster online defines syndrome:

1: a group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a particular abnormality or condition
2: a set of concurrent things (such as emotions or actions) that usually form an identifiable pattern

Hundreds, if not thousands, of syndromes exist.  I’m not saying that actual syndromes don’t exist.  Surely they do.  Of all those listed, I couldn’t say which were legitimate and which were not.  However, many use a syndrome as a means of denying, excusing, or redefining sin.  Instead of saying, “I sinned,” someone might say, “I synd.”  It’s not the only way to deflect from sin or salve a conscience, but it is a very common one today.

Sin Is Sin

Someone named Matthew Stanford wrote the following:

One question I am commonly asked by people of faith is, “Can sin be considered a disorder?” Typically what the person who asks this question wants to know is, “Can behavior associated with psychiatric disorders (for which there may or may not be a treatment) be considered sinful or wrong?”

Many negative behaviors considered “sinful” (e.g., rage, lying/stealing, addiction) are associated with specific psychiatric disorders. But does calling a behavior the Bible considers sinful, a disorder, somehow make that behavior no longer sin? Absolutely not!

Something called the Kairos Journal recorded this:

When English Puritan Richard Baxter penned his magnum opus of pastoral counseling, A Christian Directory, he appended a noteworthy subtitle: A Sum of Practical Theology, and Cases of Conscience. Directing Christians How to … Overcome Temptations, and to Escape or Mortify Every Sin. Though lengthy by modern conventions, it reflected his opinion that deviations from God’s standards of behavior are moral transgressions meriting judgment and correction.

In contrast, today’s most popular reference work on behavioral deviance operates from a worldview that is decidedly less spiritual. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, text revision (DSM-IV-TR) never speaks of sin and hardly ever references moral categories of any sort. Instead, it often reclassifies as “disease” what humans have known simply as “immorality” for millennia, ignoring the moral aspect of human behavior.

Sin and the Gospel

I hear among many to whom I talk, much more than ever, a naturalness in psychology or psychiatry speak.  This occurs very often now.  I heard nothing like this from the average person thirty years ago.  Much less today people mention sin and this parallels with greater ignorance of the gospel.  Ninety-five percent or more to whom I speak call themselves “good people.”  This starts with a misunderstanding or deceit about their own nature and the actuality of their sin.

Without someone understanding his own sinfulness, his propensity to sin, and sin’s ruination of him, he will not believe the gospel.  For someone to receive the good news, first he must understand and comprehend the bad news.  All have sinned, death because of sin, so that death passed upon all men (Romans 5:12).  1 Corinthians 15:3 says, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.”  “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).  “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).