When God first created mankind in the Garden of Eden, they enjoyed a perfect relationship with God, dwelling together with Him without any barriers. Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). But something happened. Man did something (called “sin”) that changed that intimate relationship. And ever since that day, man’s greatest need has been to get back into that perfect union with God. What is sin? Why is it so important for us to know about it?
First, sin is the result of violating the will of God. In the Garden, God told man not to eat of “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:17). But, with his free will to make his own decisions, man chose to violate the will of God and “ate” of the fruit (Gen. 3:6). The Bible calls this very first act of violating God’s will, “sin” (1 Tim. 2:14). Sin is breaking the “law” of God and acting in an “unrighteous” manner (1 John 3:4; 5:17). That’s serious!
Second, sin is a personal choice. As free moral agents, Adam and Eve made a choice and they sinned against God. Sin occurs when a person “is drawn away by his own desires” (Jas. 1:14-15) and “commits lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Sin is personally choosing to disobey God’s law (Ezek. 18:20). No one, including the devil, can make another person sin.
Third, sin is not inherited. As sin is a choice to “transgress” God’s law (1 John 3:4) or to refuse to “do” God’s law (Jas. 4:17), it is obvious that this is not something that is or can be inherited. Scripture teaches that the “son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son” (Ezek. 18:20). Each person is responsible to God for his own sin.
Fourth, sin results in separation from God. Each of the previous points may seem academic until one considers the devastating consequences of sin. God warned of sin’s consequences in the beginning—“you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). This was not physical death, but spiritual death. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were driven from the presence of God (Gen. 3:24), thus teaching us that spiritual death is a separation of man from God. Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Scripture teaches, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isa. 59:1-2). But these consequences of sin are not limited only to life on this earth. If man does nothing to address and correct this separation from God caused by his sins, he “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:8-9). There is nothing more serious than that!
It is essential that we understand the true nature and gravity of sin, so that we can understand the desperate need that we have to be saved from our sins. Only the Bible can tell us how to be saved and to be right with God!