What Counts as a Sin? Here's How to Know

Prayer is a gift, not a chore.

But it's often thought of as a tool or a life hack. So, when we get busy and distract ourselves with things online, we feel guilty and simply give up on prayer. That's why Pastor and White Horseman co-host Bob Hiller wrote this short booklet, The Gift of Prayer. This booklet guides you through why Christians pray, how to pray, and how to deepen your prayer life to experience and enjoy God through this means of grace.

Get a copy for you or a friend while supporting the work of Sola with a donation of any amount by visiting solamedia.org slash offers. Beating yourself up over a lack of prayer will not make you love praying. But understanding prayer as the gift that it is just might.

Get your copy today with the gift of any amount at solamedia.org slash offers. So, I became a follower of Jesus when I was in high school, had kind of an intense conversion experience. And maybe if you were converted when you were a teenager or later in life, you had this same thing happen to you. I remember going about my life as usual after I came to faith in Christ, except for the fact that I would do certain things, things that I'd always done before, say things that I'd always said before, and I couldn't help but feel this sense of conviction. It was almost as if all of a sudden, you know, I had this new spiritual sixth sense and things that I once did in my life or once said in my life that, you know, I didn't think twice about all of a sudden, it's like, oh, man, should I be talking like that or thinking like that?

And I've talked to others who, you know, came to Christ later in life, and they've mentioned the same thing. You know, you have this sense of sin. Sometimes it's very black and white. You know you shouldn't be doing this thing or that thing, but other times you're not so sure. You wonder, is that the Holy Spirit convicting me? Is this thing a sin or am I just being overly sensitive? So, the question is, how do I know whether or not something is a sin according to the Bible? Alright, so I think the first thing we probably want to do is define that word sin. Some have called it any want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.

That's how it's described in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a popular tool for teaching the faith. But the word sin in the Bible, there are all sorts of different words in Hebrew and in Greek that I think unpack this idea of sin. The two most common words are the Hebrew word hata in the Hebrew Bible that often refers to this idea of missing the mark, and in the New Testament, the Greek word hamartia, a violation of God's law. And this gets us directly to the heart of what sin is.

It is a violation of a standard, not a man-made standard, not a standard that you make for yourself, or even that the government gives to you per se. It's the standard of God, God's law. And so when we're thinking about sin, we're thinking first and foremost about our relationship to God, the lawgiver. Certainly we can sin against other people, but it's like David says in Psalm 51, against you and you only have I sinned. This is first and foremost a violation of what God has called us to as his people. One of the passages in scripture that really emphasizes this is 1 John chapter three, verse four, where John says, sin is lawlessness.

So right there, it's very clear that there is a violation of this divine and holy standard. Now, one of the things that's encouraging about this is the fact that sin is not the violation of man-made standards, as I've already said. There really is a safeguard here against tyranny, especially ecclesiastical tyranny or tyranny that comes within the church because a pastor or a priest does not have the authority from God to define new sins based on their own standard that aren't in line with the teaching of the Bible. In fact, this was a really big deal during the time of the reformation. The Protestant reformers, one of the things that they were protesting against was this idea of binding the consciences of the faithful to do certain things or to behave in certain ways that weren't prescribed in scripture. This isn't God's law.

This is just man-made tradition. And so there is here an understanding sin in this way, a real safety net against this tyranny that can happen within the life of the church. We need to know God's word and in particular, his law. The challenge here is, and you might be feeling this, well, aren't there so many laws in the Bible? Some have said as many as 613 during the time of Jesus.

Do I need to memorize all of them? This is why I love what Jesus did. He summarized the law in the gospels. Here's what he said in the gospel of Matthew. Matthew chapter 22 verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

In other words, here's what Jesus said. True love for God and love for our neighbor is the essence of what God's law calls us to. This is why Saint Paul wrote, oh, no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13, 8 through 10.

Or for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Galatians 5, 14.

Saint Augustine in his sermon on 1 John chapter 4, verses 4 through 12, put it like this. Once for all then, a short precept is given you. Love and do what you will. Whether you hold your peace through love, hold your peace. Whether you cry out through love, cry out. Whether you correct through love, correct. Whether you spare through love, do you spare. Let the root of love be within.

Of this root can nothing spring, but what is good. And so at the heart of fulfilling God's law is love, that love that's wrought in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, a love for God and a love for one another, a love for our neighbors. Now let me just say this because I feel like it's very important. Oftentimes people will take this truth, the reality that love is the fulfillment of God's law and they'll twist it in order to justify their own sins. How often have you heard people say today, love is love, right?

Don't judge anyone, you just got to love. The idea there, the assumption there is that love looks like merely affirming an individual in whatever it is that they've chosen to do for themselves. But the reality is love according to the Bible doesn't allow us to continue to live in our sins.

Love looks like God sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that our sins might be forgiven so that we might no longer walk in darkness. And so we have to be careful that in recognizing that love is the fulfillment of the law, we don't take that teaching and twist it in order to justify breaking God's law. One of the things that you realize is you think about all of these commands in scripture and really the heart of the law, loving God with all of my heart, mind, and strength, loving my neighbor, including my enemies as myself, we're quickly confronted by the fact that each of us does not hit that bullseye, that daily we sin against God in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds. And so none of us, even as followers of Jesus, can be sinless. We still, even with our best efforts, our best works, have to say, God have mercy upon me, a sinner. And yet we're called to fight against our sins every single day to put to death, Saint Paul said, the sinful deeds and desires of the body by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

We'll never be sinless, but our sins can be forgiven. And that's one of the reasons why Jesus Christ came into the world. The eternal son of God assumed humanity was born under the law so that he might fulfill the law's righteous requirements, so that Jesus, the son of God, might hit the bullseye of God's law.

And then what happened? He suffered the condemnation of the law as a law breaker. He did that in our place for us. We who had broken the law, Christ came to fulfill its righteous requirements in our place so that we might receive that righteousness that he earned as a gift by faith, so that our sins might be forgiven and so that, as I said, we might no longer walk in darkness, but in newness of life, guided by his word and the grace of the Holy Spirit to follow God's good law in our lives today. Prayer is a gift, not a chore, but it's often thought of as a tool or a life hack. So when we get busy and distract ourselves with things online, we feel guilty and simply give up on prayer. That's why pastor and White Horseman co-host Bob Hiller wrote this short booklet, The Gift of Prayer. This booklet guides you through why Christians pray, how to pray, and how to deepen your prayer life to experience and enjoy God through this means of grace. Get a copy for your friend while supporting the work of Sola with a donation of any amount by visiting solamedia.org slash offers.

Beating yourself up over a lack of prayer will not make you love praying, but understanding prayer as the gift that it is just might. Get your copy today with the gift of any amount at solamedia.org slash offers.