The Problem of Sin

The Bible reveals that sin is at the very center of the nature of human beings and is a terminal condition that  results in spiritual death and separation from God.  It is this revelation of the nature of sin that upsets the modern world that pursues relative truth and everchanging standards of morality.

In the Biblical history of the Hebrew people, the nature of man’s relationship to God is totally exposed.  Human beings are left without defense before the awesome, transcendent God who claims to be the author of life itself.  In the sin revelation, the message is clear that the best efforts of man are never enough to achieve righteousness or to be pleasing to a holy God.

Sin is probably the most hated word in the history of the human race, and one of the most misunderstood in our modern day.  Many believe there is no such thing, and if there is, it does not present any problem for them in their relationship with God.  The revelation of the serious nature of sin is an unexpected surprise, but lines up with the observable facts so evident in human history.

Nobody Wants This!

No human being in their right mind would have voluntarily created such a religious doctrine out of their own thinking, because they would have created an  impossible problem to overcome by their own effort.  In Hebrew theology, man always fails and no solution is provided that will produce a permanent, peaceful relationship with God.  Man is portrayed as dust and beyond hope.

Man on his own would never have written it that way.  Man would have created a theology by which he can triumph and appease God, thus fulfilling his dreams and desires.  We do not see this as it is revealed in the history of the Hebrew people.  We see sin, death and judgment.  Man’s desire is to embrace ideas and concepts that will produce the results he wants.  The things that man wants are found in naturalistic concepts of deity, and in bizarre idealistic theories.  That fact indicates  naturalistic religions are primarily functions of human thought, no matter how convincing the human explanations may sound.

How could man have created the Hebrew concept of God from his own thinking?  To believe that he did strains logic, based on what we know about human character.  The truth of it becomes clear when we can understand the concept of sin.  The concept of sin is a foundational difference between the revelation of the Hebrew God, and the god-concepts of other religions.  The uniqueness of the Hebrew revelation is in a personal God, and the revealed nature of sin which other theologies and secular ideas do not embrace.  Sin is a hated concept and man wants to reject it as truth.

The doctrine of Sin indicates that man is a dead duck.  The only way a person who thinks they are alive can come to understand that they are really dead, is by revelation.  Because we are talking about spiritual death, it is a hard concept to grasp in a biological brain that thinks it is alive.