--So, after all this discussion, is there a simple definition of sin? Yes, but you can’t take it on its own or you’ll forget everything that’s gone before.
--Sin is a defect of the heart, a failure to love God fully. God is the ultimate good, and so He should be loved completely, if we were functioning properly. Thus, sin at its root is a catch-all term for anything other than such complete captivation with and devotion to the only true object of worth in the universe. Obviously, if we don’t love God fully, we won’t obey Him fully, so the behavioral implications flow quite naturally from this definition.
--Also, you see how even one failure to love God right (as Adam and Eve’s disobedience) can lead to a snowballing effect of contamination and ruin.
--If we humans are the centerpiece of creation, then our power to destroy the entire work by defacing the centerpiece or pulverizing the cornerstone starts to look much more plausible.
--If the Gospel is God’s total solution for every aspect of sin, then pondering the Gospel and everything it entails should draw us into a kind of aesthetic captivation with God and His glorious character that would inspire us with the ability to emulate Him. And so one way to talk about the process of working out the Gospel is as a sort of art appreciation project.
--And there are many ways to learn to love God more: studying the Bible, studying nature, imitating God’s pattern of behavior through self-sacrificial service to others, cultivating a relationship with Him through prayer.
--All of these are ways of making the Gospel and God more lovely to us, which will shift us through love to a more healthy human condition. And if we begin to see how beautiful God and His Gospel are, we become almost intoxicated with their beauty and majesty, noticing, obeying, and proclaiming it everywhere.
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