Free Educational Resources for the Public from Grace Communion Seminary

God made humanity good, but something is seriously wrong with humanity now – sin. Paul writes, “Sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death came through sin” (Romans 5:12). But what is sin? It leads to death, but what are its other results?

I. Howard Marshall says that the gospel “presupposes that there is some kind of lack in the human situation for which it provides a welcome remedy…. The presupposition of the good news is that people need what is being offered to them.”[1]

Some people think that humanity’s problem is the final judgment, that God will declare people guilty and worthy of punishment. But that is like saying that the problem of crime is that people are being sent to prison. No, the problem is not so much in the verdict, but in the behavior. Why do we call it wrong in the first place? Some people focus on the judgment, but the real problem is with humanity.[2] God’s condemnation is God saying that there is a problem; this announcement is not the real problem, just as a doctor’s diagnosis is not the cause of disease.

People get a negative verdict at God’s judgment because they don’t have something that they should have. God is looking for righteousness and holiness, but people fall short in those categories. The problem is “sin” – a term for anything that falls short of what God wants. It could be a sin of omission (failing to do something we should do) or a sin of commission (doing something that he says we should not). It could be in our thoughts, words, or deeds.

Although “sin” is a common word in Romans, it is far less common in other books.

Paul usually uses the word “sin” in the singular, especially in Romans. Paul is not talking about individual acts of disobedience, but about sin as a general concept. Sins are symptoms of a much larger problem, sinfulness. Sin (singular) is a power that leads people into sins (plural).

John Ziesler writes, “Paul nowhere delineates his doctrine of sin, but it is clear enough that he sees it under two aspects: it is both what we do by choice, voluntary action, and also a power whose grip we cannot escape simply by deciding to. It is thus our responsibility, and something we cannot help!”[3]

Romans 3:9 says that everyone is “under the power of sin.” Paul seems to use sin (singular) as equivalent to the Jewish concept of “evil influence” (yetzer hara). People don’t just sin — they are slaves to sin. Something overpowers them. Sin takes advantage of our weakness and leads people into acts of sin.

Some people might think that laws could solve the problem of sin, but law made the problem worse: “Sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died” (Romans 7:8–10).

The law increased the number of sins, because sin (as a stronger power) was able to hijack the law, and use it to increase sin. When people saw that something was forbidden, they began to want to do it even more than before. “The power of sin is the law” (1 Cor. 15:56).

The problem of sin is larger than we can handle on our own. The solution to the problem of sin is not that we try harder because we are threatened with punishment, but we need supernatural intervention to rescue us from the power of sin. The main purpose of a Savior is not to punish, but to liberate. We need strength in life right now, not just a ticket to help us escape the final judgment.

At “the judgment seat of Christ,” each of us will “receive due recompense for actions done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 that this judgment is to decide how we will be rewarded, not a judgment to see whether we will be saved.

Negative judgments come for bad things we have “done in the body” – presumably for things done in our thoughts as well. But we are also pronounced righteous in advance: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We will be judged but not condemned. Our sins are assigned to the old self, which will die; righteousness is assigned to the new self that we allow the Spirit to develop within us.

What are “sins”?

Sin (singular) is a power that deceives us and leads us to do bad things – sins (plural). What are sins? “Sin is transgression of the law,” says 1 John 3:4, KJV. Breaking the law is a sin. 1 John 3:4 uses the word anomia, meaning “without law.” The Greek words parabasis and paraptōma refer to transgressions – we fail to do what is required.[4] “You dishonor God by breaking the law” (Romans 2:23).

But we can sin even when there is no law. “Everything that does not come from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Whenever we act as if God did not exist, as if humans are under no authority but their own, we are putting ourselves in the place of God, and we are falling short of what he wants us to be and to do.

We are constantly falling short, and that could be depressing if we did not also know the good news that we live under grace. God is not making excuses for us – he is saying that such sins have been covered by the sacrifice of Christ. We didn’t know how much debt we were in, until we saw how much had to be paid. We didn’t know how bad sin was, until we saw that Christ had to die to rescue us from it. We didn’t know how bad we were until we found out that we were accepted despite how bad we were.

The origin and results of sin

Paul says that sin entered the world through one man,[5] but he does not say anything else about the origin of sin. Why would a creature rebel against its creator? Why would any living being reject the source of its own life? Why would any thinking being want to live in such a way as to bring pain and sorrow into life? It makes no sense.

Paul does not say much about the end of sin, either. Death is the last enemy to be conquered (1 Corinthians 15:26), but Paul does not directly say that sin will cease.[6]

Associated with sin are a number of evil “powers.” Paul does not always use the same words for these, but they suggest that the problem of evil goes beyond people breaking rules and laws:

·       “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

·       “Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24).

·       “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).[7]

·       “We were enslaved to the elemental principles of the world.…. You were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods” (Galatians 4:3, 8-9).

We do not know exactly what these powers are – but we know that we have spiritual enemies, and we cannot defeat them on our own.

Paul mentions one enemy in particular: “the Satan,” a Hebrew term meaning “accuser” or “adversary.” The Greek equivalent, diabolos (devil), is used in Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. Paul also refers to

·       “the adversary” (1 Timothy 5:14),

·       “Beliar” (2 Corinthians 6:15),

·       “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4),

·       “the serpent” (2 Corinthians 11:3),

·       “the tempter” (1 Thessalonians 3:5),

·       “the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3), and

·       “the ruler of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2).

Paul does not teach about these evil powers directly – he mentions them in passing, as part of the worldview held by many Jews. Jesus also referred to various evil spirits.

Paul talks about sin as an evil power more often than he mentions various groups of spirit beings. He did not need to describe those forces in any detail – it was enough to talk of “sin” as a term that included all evil influences on humanity.

The results of sin

Sinners are alienated from God (Colossians 1:21). There is a problem in our relationship. As explained in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve did not trust God, and because of that, they stole the fruit. As a result, their distrust of God became worse. They were then sent out of the garden. If they did not want God in their lives, they would experience life without him. Doubt was a sin, theft was a sin, and hiding from God was a sin. Being forced to leave the garden symbolized what was already true spiritually.

There is a downward spiral: people believed a lie instead of believing God. Then they disobeyed, felt ashamed or guilty and instead of asking for grace, wanted to stay away from God.

What are the results of sin? At the last judgment, God is not going to condemn people for breaking arbitrary rules – condemnation will come because they did things they knew they shouldn’t:

When gentiles, who do not possess the law, by nature do what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, as their own conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all. (Romans 2:14-16)

Gentiles could figure out that certain things are wrong by their results. What are the results? One result is death (Romans 6:23), but that result is too delayed for most people to figure out just which activities led to the result. In order for Gentiles to see something as wrong, it needs to have negative consequences fairly close in time to the wrong activity.

In Romans 1, Paul mentions several results of sin:

Misdirected religion

For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. (verses 21-23)

Self-indulgence

Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. (verses 24-25)

Sins

They were filled with every kind of injustice, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (verses 29-31) [8]

James Dunn comments that most of the sins listed here “are social. The effect of sin is seen at its most serious not so much in secret vices practiced in private, but in the breakdown of human relationships.”[9] Sin is a problem because it hurts other people. It works against the good things that God wants for his children.

Nevertheless, this is not Paul’s main emphasis — his emphasis is on the bad relationship between humanity and God. Sins are disobeying his commands. That’s the root of the problem. God is the key reference point. When we disobey, it shows that we do not trust him – our relationship with him is less than it should be.

The reason that God forbids certain actions is because they hurt other people, but the more basic problem is that humans are not accepting God’s word about which actions are hurtful.[10] 

God does not expect us to figure everything out for ourselves (that is what Adam and Eve wanted to do). Rather, we should accept what he says about it. Our relationship with God must come first, and it will be the basis for our relationships with everyone else. When people reject God, that leads to a breakdown in relationships with others.

God is the final judge on human sin, and he says that humanity is unable to solve this problem on our own.

We get the “bad” news of human sinfulness and inability only when we also get the news of how Jesus Christ has overcome the problems of sin, alienation, death, etc. We do not realize how bad sin is until we see that Jesus had to be crucified to solve the problem. The more we realize how bad our problem was, the more we can be thankful for what Jesus has done for us. To him be the glory, praise, thanks, and worship.

Endnotes