Sin

Sin is "lawlessness" — "any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God" (Westminster Shorter Catechism; cf. 1 John 3:4). It is fundamentally against God: "Against you, you only, have I sinned" (Psalms 51:4). The biblical vocabulary is rich — Hebrew ḥaṭṭāʼ ("to miss the mark"), peshaʻ ("rebellion"), and ʻāwōn ("iniquity, crookedness"), and Greek hamartia — describing both the inward disposition of a heart turned from God and its outward expression, whether by doing what is forbidden or failing to do what is required.

Sin entered the human race through the fall of Adam: "sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). Its root is the heart — "out of the heart of man come evil thoughts" (Mark 7:21–23; Jeremiah 17:9) — leaving humanity "dead in… trespasses and sins" and by nature unable to submit to God (Ephesians 2:1–3). It is universal: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

Its consequences are grave: sin separates from God (Isaiah 59:2), enslaves ("everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin," John 8:34), and earns death — "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). God’s law exposes its full extent rather than removing it (Romans 3:20), while the sacrificial system pointed beyond itself to a true atonement.

That atonement is Christ. The sinless one "who knew no sin" was "made… to be sin" for us so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21); he "bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53:6) as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). In him there is forgiveness and cleansing for all who confess (1 John 1:9), and release from sin’s dominion (Romans 6:14). The doctrine of sin is thus the diagnosis the gospel answers.