What is sin?

Sin is falling short of God’s standard - going against His will in our thoughts, words, actions, or failure to do what is right. It is not a word for the worst things people do. It is a word for anything less than the holiness of God, and every sin is committed against Him.

Scripture defines it plainly:

Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

The standard is not other people. The standard is God Himself:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

What God’s law asks of you

When Jesus was asked which commandment was greatest, He summed up the whole law:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The first and greatest commandment is toward God. When David had committed adultery and arranged a man’s death, he said this to God:

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight

David had sinned against a woman, against her husband, against his own people - the second commandment was broken, and those sins were real. Yet he knew that every one of them was, first and deepest, a sin against God, whose law he had broken. Sin against people is real sin. And it is always, at the same time, sin against God.

It is not only the big things.

Many people think of sin as murder, or something on that scale - and a lie, a lustful look, a resentment, a boast, are just being human. Jesus did not see it that way. Listen to what He put in the same list:

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

Murder is there. So are deceit, covetousness, an evil eye, pride, and foolishness. He named them together, coming from the same heart.

He went further. Wrongful anger and a deliberate lustful look are not merely the seeds of murder and adultery. Before God, they are already guilt:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Not every sin is equally grave - Jesus Himself spoke of one sin being greater than another. But no one can stand before God innocent by pointing to worse things he has avoided:

For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

“All liars” stands in that sentence beside “murderers.” God does not compare you with other people. He compares you with His law, and one broken point makes you a transgressor of it.

It includes what we fail to do.

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Isaiah describes the shape of it - not one dramatic act, but a whole life turned the wrong way:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Notice how that verse ends. The same sentence that describes our straying describes what God did about it.

This concerns every one of us.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

God does not despise the person who sees this and is broken by it. David, in the same psalm in which he confessed his sin, said:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

God tells you the truth about your sickness because He is the physician:

And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

God calls you to acknowledge your sin and come to Him.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That forgiveness does not rest on admitting wrong by itself. Two verses earlier, John says what it rests on:

the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

The point of naming sin is not to leave you condemned. It is so that you will stop measuring yourself against other people, see yourself as God sees you, and come to the One on whom the LORD laid the iniquity of us all. What He did with it is the next page.