A Brief Statement

I hold that sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God — and, at its root, rebellion against God Himself. It entered the human race through Adam, whose guilt is reckoned to all his descendants and whose corruption is inherited by them, so that every person comes into the world already guilty and already depraved, unable to save himself. Sin is therefore both an objective offense against a holy God, incurring real guilt and death, and a corruption of our very nature.

All sin deserves God’s judgment, though sins differ in their heinousness and their consequences. The doctrine of sin is not given to drive us to despair but to drive us to Christ: only when we measure sin rightly do we begin to measure rightly the grace that answers it. “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

❖ ❖ ❖

A Detailed Exposition

What Sin Is

Before we can speak of sin’s origin or its cure, we must say what it is. The old definition is hard to improve: sin is “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God,” and the apostle John puts it in a single word — “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Scripture’s own vocabulary fills out the picture. The Hebrew Scriptures use chiefly three words: chata, “to miss the mark”; pesha, “rebellion” or “transgression,” the willful breach of relationship; and avon, “iniquity” or “crookedness,” with the guilt it incurs — the three standing together in God’s own self-revelation as the One who forgives “iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:7).¹ The Greek of the New Testament answers with hamartia, “missing the mark”; parabasis and paraptoma, “transgression” and “trespass,” the overstepping of a line; and anomia, “lawlessness.”² Behind every term stands one truth: sin is measured against God. It is finally and chiefly against Him that we sin — “Against You, You only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4) — which is why it is so grave a thing, and why no merely human standard can define it.³

The Origin and Entrance of Sin

Sin did not begin on earth. It first appeared in heaven, in the pride of a great angel who would not keep his place — the fall of Satan, of which I have written in my paper on Angelology. It entered the human race in the garden, when our first parents, tempted, chose to disbelieve and to disobey their Maker (Genesis 3). From that hour sin has “crouched at the door” of every life, as God warned Cain, desiring to master us (Genesis 4:7). And by that one act of one man it gained entrance to the whole race: “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men” (Romans 5:12).⁴

Original Sin: Imputation and Corruption

That verse opens the hardest and most important question in the doctrine of sin: how does Adam’s sin become ours? Scripture’s answer is that Adam stood as the head and representative of the race, so that in his fall we fell. His guilt is imputed — reckoned to his descendants — for “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19); the long argument of Romans 5:12–21 sets Adam and Christ side by side as the two heads of two humanities.⁵ And his corruption is inherited: we are not sinners merely because we sin; we sin because we are, from the first, sinners by nature. David confessed it — “in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5) — and Paul declares us “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3).⁶ So original sin is twofold: a guilt we bear and a corruption we carry. The early church came to this by degrees — Irenaeus and Tertullian feeling after it, and Augustine setting it down with force against Pelagius, who taught that men are born innocent and may achieve righteousness by free will. The church judged rightly with Augustine, and against Pelagius, that we are fallen in Adam and helpless without grace.⁷

Total Depravity and the Bondage of the Will

How far does this corruption reach? Not, I should say at once, so far as to make every person as wicked as he could possibly be; experience and Scripture alike forbid that. The doctrine of total depravity concerns the extent of sin’s reach, not the degree of its expression: there is no faculty of human nature — mind, will, affections, conscience — left untouched by the Fall.⁸ The gravest effect falls upon the will. Fallen man still chooses freely, but he is enslaved to a nature set against God, so that he cannot of himself turn and trust his Maker (see my papers on Anthropology and Soteriology). Here, the great traditions divide. The Reformed hold, as I do, that because sin has bound the will, salvation must be wholly God’s work, His grace alone freeing the captive to believe. The Arminian agrees that man is fallen and corrupt, but holds that a prevenient grace, given to all, restores enough ability that each may take the decisive step of faith himself. I hold the former with conviction and the difference with charity.⁹

Sin as Offense and Estrangement

A modern debate asks whether sin is best understood as the breaking of God’s law or of a relationship with Him. Following Paul Tillich and others, some have recast sin as mere “estrangement” or “separation,” setting it against the older language of transgression and guilt. But this is a false choice, and the trade is a bad one. Scripture will not let us reduce sin to a damaged feeling of distance: “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), an objective breach of God’s holy law that incurs real guilt and just condemnation. And yet it is also deeply personal — a betrayal of the God who made and loves us, a rupture in a relationship. Sin is both crime and treachery; both the legal and the relational must be held, and to keep only the warmer half is to lose the very seriousness that makes grace amazing.¹⁰

The Categories of Sin

Scripture distinguishes sins in several ways. There are sins of commission, where we do what God forbids, and sins of omission, where we fail to do what He commands — “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). There is personal sin and corporate sin, for a people may share in guilt together, as Achan’s sin troubled all Israel and Ezra confessed that “our iniquities have risen higher than our heads” (Ezra 9:6).¹¹ And while every sin deserves the judgment of God, not all sins are equally heinous. Scripture knows of a “greater sin” (John 19:11), of degrees of knowledge and intent that aggravate guilt, and of sins with graver consequences for others; the Westminster divines rightly held that “some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.” This is a different thing from the medieval sorting of sins into “mortal” and “venial,” as though some were survivable and others not — a scheme the Reformation rightly rejected, since every sin merits death and only Christ’s blood removes any.¹²

❖ ❖ ❖

Practical Implications

Ministry Emphasis: Repentance and the Care of Souls

First, a true doctrine of sin is the beginning of honesty. It strips away our excuses and our comparisons — the endless work of measuring ourselves against worse men — and brings us low before a holy God. This is not morbid; it is the necessary dark background against which the diamond of grace is seen. No one runs to a Savior he does not believe he needs.

Second, sin’s nature does not change, though its forms multiply. The old picture of the sinner is the heart “curved in upon itself” — a phrase Luther sharpened from Augustine — and our age has handed that curved heart a hundred new mirrors: the anonymity that loosens the tongue, the screen that eases deception, the platform that feeds vanity. Against every claim that morality is merely cultural, the standard holds firm, for it rests on the character of God, not the consensus of the age; and it reaches into every corner of life, even the digital one, for “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Third, the doctrine guides the care of souls. To minister to the broken — and I am drawn especially to men who are hurting — is to deal honestly with two things at once: the sins they have committed and the evils they have suffered. A shallow view of sin can neither account for the wreckage nor offer a real cure. We must be honest about sin without crushing the sinner, holding out the only word that finally helps: there is forgiveness with God.

Finally, hamartiology is not a destination but a signpost; its whole tendency is to point beyond itself to Christ. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) — but the sentence does not end there; the very next words are “and are justified by His grace as a gift” (Romans 3:24). The doctrine of sin, rightly held, always ends on its knees, and always within sight of the cross.

We measure sin rightly only at the cross — and there we learn that grace is greater still.

❖ ❖ ❖

Biblical, Exegetical, Theological, and Historical Notes

The Old Testament’s principal words for sin are chata (חטא), “to miss the mark, to fail” (the most frequently used hundreds of times); pesha (פשע), “rebellion, transgression,” the willful breach of a relationship; and avon (עון), “iniquity, crookedness,” with the guilt it entails. The three appear together in God’s self-revelation as the One who forgives “iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:7; cf. Psalm 32:1–2; 51:1–2).
The New Testament’s chief term is hamartia (ἁμαρτία), “missing the mark.” Others include parabasis (παράβασις), “transgression,” and paraptōma (παράπτωμα), “trespass” — both picturing the overstepping of a boundary — and anomia (ἀνομία), “lawlessness,” the very term John uses to define sin (1 John 3:4).
The classic definition is that of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 14): sin is “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” It thus includes both what we fail to be and to do, and what we wrongly do. Above all, sin is defined coram Deo — before God: “Against You, You only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4). Because the standard is God’s own character and law, sin cannot be redefined by human consensus.
Sin originated not on earth but in the angelic realm, in the pride of Satan (see my paper on Angelology), and entered the human race at the Fall (Genesis 3). God’s warning to Cain pictures it vividly: “sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). By Adam’s one transgression, it gained entrance to all (Romans 5:12).
Romans 5:12–21 presents Adam as the federal head and representative of the race, his one transgression bringing condemnation to all — “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (5:19). The disputed phrase “because all sinned” (eph’ hō, Romans 5:12) is best taken to mean that all sinned in Adam, their representative. The connection has been explained by federal (representative) headship and by realist (seminal) headship; the federal view is, to my mind, the clearer. Adam and Christ stand as the two heads of two humanities (1 Corinthians 15:21–22).
Besides the imputed guilt of Adam’s sin, his fallen nature is propagated to all his offspring — “original sin” in the sense of inherited corruption. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5); we are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners by nature from birth.
The doctrine developed over time. Irenaeus and Tertullian felt after the inheritance of Adam’s sin; Augustine of Hippo (354–430) gave it definitive expression against Pelagius, who held that infants are born innocent and that man may attain righteousness by unaided free will. The church sided with Augustine at the Council of Carthage (418) and affirmed that all sinned in Adam and that none is saved apart from grace.
Total depravity describes the extent, not the intensity, of sin’s corruption: it does not mean that every person is as wicked as possible, but that no part of human nature — reason, will, affections, conscience — has escaped the Fall’s defilement. Hence, the natural man is unable to please God or to save himself (Romans 8:7–8; 1 Corinthians 2:14). See further my papers on Anthropology and Soteriology.
Reformed and Arminian theologies agree that man is fallen and corrupt, but differ over the will. The Reformed view (which I hold) is that the will is so bound by sin that salvation must be wholly of grace, God effectually freeing the sinner to believe. The Arminian view holds that a prevenient grace, granted to all, restores sufficient ability for each person to choose faith. I hold my position with conviction, not as a test of fellowship; see my paper on Soteriology.
A modern tendency, influenced by Paul Tillich, recasts sin as “estrangement” or “separation” rather than transgression and guilt. Scripture holds both dimensions together: sin is “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), an objective breach of God’s law incurring guilt, and it is also a personal betrayal that ruptures the relationship with God. To keep only the relational half — as though sin were merely a felt distance — empties the doctrine of the objective seriousness that makes the cross necessary and grace amazing.
Sins of commission break what God forbids; sins of omission neglect what He commands — “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). Sin is also both personal and corporate: a community may share in guilt, as Achan’s sin brought trouble on all Israel (Joshua 7) and Ezra confessed Israel’s collective iniquity (Ezra 9:6–7; cf. Daniel 9:5–8).
All sin deserves the wrath of God, yet sins are not equally heinous. Scripture speaks of a “greater sin” (John 19:11) and weighs guilt by knowledge, intent, and consequence (Luke 12:47–48). The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 83) affirms that “some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.” This differs sharply from the Roman distinction between “mortal” and “venial” sins, which the Reformation rejected: every sin merits death (Romans 6:23), and every sin is cleansed only by the blood of Christ. (On the “sin that leads to death,” 1 John 5:16, and the blasphemy against the Spirit, Matthew 12:31–32, views differ; both are best understood as a decisive, settled rejection of Christ rather than a single isolated act.)