--If the Gospel is God’s comprehensive plan for making everything that’s wrong with the world right again, then sin is the word we use to describe every facet of that wrongness. --And naturally we need to understand the nature of the problem before we can understand the solution properly.
--Sin is actually a word which has a pretty large range of related but not identical concepts.
--And the problem is that sometimes we talk about sin as a condition which beleaguers individuals or all of humanity, but sometimes we talk about sin as individual behavior.
--In general, sin is four things:
1. It begins as a failure or refusal to love God fully.
2. This creates a condition in us which ruins us compared to what we were meant to be.
3. This ruination manifests as evil behavior in violation of God’s commands.
4. These violations create suffering in a wide variety of forms, including fractured relationship with ourselves, others, the world, and God.
--Looking at the account of sin the Bible gives us in Genesis 3 is the best way to see all these aspects functioning as one.
--Adam and Eve were living perfectly. They were in right relationship with God, each other, themselves, and their environment, Eden. They found themselves tempted to disobey God and yielded to that temptation by putting God second in their hearts. This led them to violate His command about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Afterwards, they suffered guilt and shame and found themselves at odds with each other, the Earth, and cast out from the presence of God.
--In other words, everything that is supposed to be true of man is lost by the presence, nature, and effects of sin.
--Man is supposed to be in harmony with God, and sin forfeits this.
--Man is supposed to be in harmony with other people, and sin prevents this.
--Man is supposed to be in harmony with himself, and sin frustrates this.
--Man is supposed to be in harmony with creation, and sin pollutes this.
--That, in a nutshell, is sin.
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