What is Sin According to the Bible?
Good morning! Hope you had a blessed day in Him yesterday. Let’s get straight to the two very hard scriptures in 1 John to illustrate to us what “sin” is. Here are resources to study if you like: go to any good study tool that will dig into the original manuscript translations. I like bluetterbible.com. Type in sin and search. Go straight to first John and look at the different words used in every scripture that in our Eng. translations just render “sin”. We will look at two but there are 10 or more. Use that tool in conjunction with a good complete, expository dictionary like Vines, or any other good one. Click on your verse, go to the right and click C for concordance, use that to get a foundation and then look up sin in Vine’s. For instance, love is really 4 different words in Hebrew and Greek but the English translation uses 1. This allows for confusion because according to God, love comes in 4 different kinds and it alters meaning if we use them right.
For example: agape is one love that is of God and only possessed by the indwelt, saved, and is used when we are told to love our enemy, our brother , etc. phileo is another kind that is a brotherly human love dependent upon my feelings and likes and how someone treats me. It is present in all people. Everyone phileos those whom they like and those who please them. But only the born again have the ability to agape (love) my enemy. Agape is not a feeling but an action based on the love of God flowing through me, even to my enemy. This is how a believer CAN love his neighbor as himself. It is agape from the throne of Grace now in my heart. Agape is described in 1 Corinthians 13. It is patient, kind, it is not proud or rude, it doesn’t envy or boast. It always believes the best, not the worst. It always protects, helps, trusts. And so on. Agape never fails. It is perfected love that John and every other writer in the Bible speaks of.
When Jesus sums up the mature, fully given over and obedient believer, He says this: They agape the Lord with all their heart soul mind and strength AND agape their neighbors as themselves. Period. This is ALL the law and the prophets and it is what happens in our hearts when we walk in His fullness through surrender to Him (Obedience, which is faith and righteousness). It is perfected love, perfected faith.
1 John 3:9 says this: “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin (hamartia); for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin (hamartano) because he is born of God.” actual rendering: “Whosoever is born of God does not (act from a heart driven by the root of sin); for His seed remains in him: and he cannot (wander from the righteous path in an ongoing, continual way that is a way of life for him), because he is born of God.”
can we see? John is saying that a truly saved person cannot decidedly sin continually as a way of his character and lifestyle if he really has been born again (saved, or having the seed of Christ in his heart). If we move down to 5:18 we see the qualifying of this verse. How is this so in verse 3:9? because if he has been born of God, he keeps himself.
These are the two main verses but if you really want to dig deep, study each one in this single book. You will get more and more light as you study. But use a complete tool. That is critical. If you don’t it is like trying to make spaghetti sauce without garlic!!! Our English translations provide a good overview but that is all. Dig and you’ll find. This is the pearl of great price by the way, the treasure hidden in a field. Sell all you have to buy it. The knowledge of God leads to righteousness. The pearl is the Mind of Christ found once we enter the Kingdom of God. Search that too and see if it is so.
Here are a couple more, and this is really looked into a lot in Crucified for anyone who is interested. I am skimming what I examine there. 1 John 3:6 says that anyone who abides in Him, sins (hamartano) not. This refers to the mature, sanctified. It ties into Psalm 91 where we see that the one who dwells in the secret place of the Most High ABIDES under the shadow of the Almighty. Abiding as mentioned in John 15 refers to the same thing. So John is telling us that the mature believer does not continually wander from the righteous path, only rendered sin in the English. Are you feeling freer yet???
Here is another, maybe even more critical verse that I have yet to hear a single teacher, preacher get right. 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin (hamartia), we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
correct rendering: “If we say we have no ( inborn source in the heart to rebel against God, as our natural inclination without Christ, that needs a Savior), then we lie and do not practice the truth.”
Aha! In other words, If a man says he is not in need of a Savior because he is pretty good afterall, that he was not born wicked with a natural tendency to rebel against God, but was born good, that he is not wicked, maybe a blank slate as pop psychology would have it…HE LIES! How is he lying? Romans 1 and 2 tell us clearly! EVERY human created knows there is a God (and if he searches he will find Christ, who is very God of very God) and also has the law of God on his heart because God put it upon every single solitary heart created, so man is without excuse, by seeing the things that are made, knowing that a holy God made them. AND…he knows that he breaks that law. Period. If he says he doesn’t and is basically pretty good..he is a liar.
Now all teachers teach this verse as follows and it is so wrong!!! Most if not all teach it as if it said, no one can say they are done with sin or that it is not in their lives because they are liars if they do!
NO! That is not what John said. He said the former. If a man says he has no sin in his heart that needs a Savior, he is a liar. A mature sold-out believer walking in agape can say, I am done with sin…dead to it. He is not a liar.
Paul exhorts us that we had better kill sin in our hearts. “How can you who are dead to sin (hamartia) live any longer in it?” How can you, who have died to operating from a corrupt character in a continual and inherently rooted way, continue in it?
The answer is that it is impossible and the subsequent verses in 1 John drive that home. God says if that is present in a man, then he has not been saved.
Now hamartano is different. It is an ignorant type of provoked sin that does not happen as a pattern but is isolated. There is no quilt here, thereby no “sin” as we understand it.
Jesus said, “If you had been blind, there would be no sin, but since you say ‘I see’, your sin remains”.
A person who “sins” hamartano, occasionally in a way that is foreign, isolated, and unknowing, is without guilt, blameless. He has done it as an isolated, provoked, ignorant, knee jerk reaction to a temptation. It has nothing to do with his faith, that is in tact. “Anything that is not if faith is sin.”
Wow. I want to go into OT teaching of sin shown to us as leprosy. It solidifies just what we learned but will make it even clearer.
Now an immature believer will continually hamartano when provoked. “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on ME”. They have not the agape to stop it yet. Their love has not been perfected in Christ Jesus (1 John 9, 10, 11 & 4:12). That is why they may re-visit weak areas again and again with no victory or overcoming. AND it is all because of resistance to obey God and for no other reason. There are no excuses but willful refusal to obey. They remain this way if they choose and arrive in Heaven having never produced fruit as we see in 1 Corinthians.
I wanted to get to James and Abraham and righteousness but that will wait til next time. But know this and search it til then: righteousness (actual and not the imputed or positional) isalways sought, labored over, earned!!! and only the indwelt can find it or DO it.
Agape in Christ and till next time, have a great day!C
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