What is Sin? Do We Have to Deal With it?

One of the biggest obstacles that all believers are bound to face in life is dealing with sin. There are two main causes of sin. The first one is the fact that we live in the flesh – our earthly identity, and the second one is that the devil is alive and well on planet earth. Sin is the coming short of the glory of God as seen in Roman 3: 23. It is the deviation from the perfect will and standard of God through our actions and our thoughts. Due to the sin of Adam, we are all born with the root of sin in our lives. However, Adam was not the originator of sin; Satan was. When he decided to rise higher than God, he became corrupt (Ezek 28:14). Today, him being the prince of this world, he seeks to corrupt every child of God, even the chosen ones. Sin is the transgression of the law of God. The Bible says that the soul that sins shall die (Ezek 18:20) and the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23) One may live for a long time in sin without any visible consequences. The Canaanites lived for years doing all manner of evil without any punishment. The Bible says that God waited until their cup of iniquity got filled up (Gen 15:16). It took God four hundred years to respond to the sinful life of the Amorites. In fact, he brought the punishment to the fourth generation. Sin is like leaven, and eventually it will spread through the whole dough and poison our lives. God has set this world in such a way that right living prolongs life while sinful living poisons and ruins life. When sin was absent, Adam and Eve lived in perfect harmony with God in Eden. Immediately after they sinned, God put a curse over their lives and that became the beginning of suffering for humanity. The cause of all the suffering and pain we see in the world today is sin. Now sin may not be necessarily doing something wrong, rather, it can also be failing to do something that you know you ought to do (Jas 4:17).

So, why is sin so enticing? We all know that sin is bad and unhealthy for our spiritual lives, but we never seem to get over it, however hard we try. Now sin is pleasurable and very enticing. When Satan suggested to Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, Eve looked at the fruit and saw it was pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. Moses knew this when he lived in Pharaohs palace and chose the hard way rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short while. It is for this reason that men love sin and get bound by it (Jn 3:19). We are all guilty of some aspect of sin and Christians are no exception. The reason is that sin in itself has an enslaving power that only a willing spirit can free itself from it. Jesus told his listeners one time that sinning enslaves the sinner and keeps him bound (Jn 8:34) Paul dedicated a whole chapter to showing just how enslaving sin had become to him in Romans 7:14-21.

We get freed from the power of sin by acceptance of the sin, repenting from it and receiving baptism. This takes away the guilt of being a sinner (Acts 2:38). The power of the Holy Spirit comes to us then, and frees us from the power of sin. The ‘gain’ in living a sinful life is short lived and ends in death. The gain in living sinless is a long prosperous life and the gift of eternal life after this one (Rom 6:23).