SIN - Personal and Systemic Sin

Sin - Personal and Systemic  Dr. Thornhill Liberty University

What is sin? It's a word we hear a lot in church and read a lot in the Bible. And we've probably heard it defined in ways similar to it's missing the mark. It's breaking God's commands. It's transgressing God's laws. And there are two dimensions that we see this concept of sin used throughout scripture. One is what we might think of as personal sin, right? These are the things we do in violation of God's commands. So taking something like the Ten Commandments, right? When we lie or when we steal, when we break a clear command of God were sinning against God. And this is probably the way we're most accustomed to thinking of sin, a violation of something god has told us to do, that we haven't done, or a violation of something. God tells us not to do that we have. But there's another way that the biblical authors talk about sin that perhaps we're, we're less familiar with, but gives a powerful context to the need of reconciliation that we see demonstrated not just in Scripture, but in the world around us. And this is what we might call the systemic dimension of sin. Sin is actually a force that's at work within the world. So we see even in the Old Testament in Genesis that Sin is crouching, waiting, pursuing, seeking whom it might devour. Or Paul using similar language, personifying Sin, talking about sin as something that does things to us, not just something that we do, tells us in Romans 5 and 6 that sin has entered the world and sin brought death with it, and sin has then spread to all humanity. It's a corrupting force that is seeking to break down God's good intentions and purposes in the world. And so sin is much deeper than simply us not having lived how we ought to know that is one dimension of it. It's something that's inescapable. Paul tells us in our flesh. In the life that we live apart from Jesus, we are powerless to do anything about it. That sin actually is corrupting the entire world. So when Paul says in Romans 8 that creation itself is groaning to be restored, sin has fundamentally broken down the right ordering and functioning, functioning of the whole universe. So we see in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, this breaking of the power of sin, as Paul proclaims at the end of Romans 7, thanks be to God. In Christ, Jesus, that God has not left us alone in this plight, which is inescapable that we are powerless in and of ourselves to break free of. But through the death and resurrection of Jesus, he himself has broken the power of sin and death so that all who belong to Christ share in his victory. And it's important as we are developing our theology of sin, that we have this big picture in mind that we understand yes, in is fundamentally about our personal failures. But it also is a force that's corrupting the world itself. And something that we, apart from God's power, are unable to do anything about.