A More Useful Definition of "Sin"

Christians often make me feel like Inigo Montoya. We keep using Bible words in ways that make me want to say, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

In my mind, this will be the first in a series, but we’ll see. It has been rolling around in my head long enough that I think I need to put it in print. But one step at a time. In a response to a response to my last post, I asked for a definition of “sin.” Since I haven’t gotten it, I figured it is time to get it out there.

I see this as perhaps the biggest problem for believers. How you combat it (or if you even should) depends entirely on what IT is.  I believe a more useful definition of “sin” will revolutionize your world and free you to become what you were intended to be.

I’ll be blunt: Sin IS selfishness.

What I see around me seems to be the least useful definition of sin: “Doing wrong,” “doing bad stuff,” “being naughty.” I would argue that the problem with this definition is that you don’t REALLY know what “bad” is. You think you do, but you are relying on a culturally determined, vaguely defined, normalized sense of right and wrong that is probably a long way away from a truly good.

There is a lot to be said about this, but let me leave it at this: Things are not sinful. Neither is sinfulness is not located in actions. If that’s what you were thinking, that is where your problem begins.

I propose three ways of defining/looking at “sin” that I think are more useful:

1. Sin is selfishness, when YOU are your goal, that’s sin.
2. Sin IS turning away from God; anything you do on your own and not THROUGH him is by definition sin.
3. Sin is anything good done in the wrong context, or for the wrong reason. For instance, consider that sex in itself is good, but it all depends on when, where, why and with whom.

Ultimately, I’d like to argue that these and any other good definition of sin comes back to the same thing: the Self in control.

First, consider this: Is there any “sin” you can think of that isn’t ultimately putting yourself ahead of God and others?

I think this revelation for me started with considering Jesus’s own words that there was only one commandment: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength (and love your neighbor as yourself - more on that later). Even more important is that Jesus goes on to say, “on these hang all the law and the prophets.” This began a thinking on this topic that changed everything for me. What I realized is that he was saying that rather than try to know all of the “law and the prophets,” he was giving us a simple straight forward approach to the question of behavior.

We tend to see behavior as a list of dos and don’ts, and probably an exhaustive list. I remember fearing that I had missed one, or didn’t know, and God would be mad. It always makes me think of the performer with the spinning plates. How many plates can you keep in the spinning air before it all comes crashing down? If this is your approach, it will come crashing down.

Or maybe for you it is Whack-a-Mole. You stand there with your sin mallet, waiting for temptations to pop up so you can knock them back down.

Can you see that Jesus is giving you a completely different approach? A principle. If you take everything you do, how you spend you time, how you treat others, and ask yourself, “Am I doing this out of love for God? Am I treating the needs of those around me as being at least equal to my own? (Paul actually says to put others ahead of you.) Do I care for them the same as myself?” How can anything sinful come from anything that passes that test?

Anything that doesn’t pass that test is sin.

I feel compelled to point out that any other approach is an attempt to maintain control over your own life. The person who wants a list to follow, the person who wants to try to live up to a standard is really trying to negotiate. You are really saying, “If I do this much, then the rest of my life is my own.” You are trying to avoid truly making him God. You are doing what you must do to get the benefit you want (heaven), and no more. In other words, you are acting in your own self-interest. But no matter how much you do for God, if the goal is your own benefit, you are being selfish, and THAT IS SIN.

Understand, then, that the principle is that everything is done out of a love for God. That is the one rule. To me, “love your neighbor as yourself,” is really just the expression of loving God. If you love him, you will love whom he loves. So if he loves your neighbor, you should too. Also, since God doesn’t need anything from you, how can you return his love? By paying it forward: loving others. So it all comes down to the one rule: love God.

Can you see how simple and elegant this is? What sin can you commit out of a love for God?

But wait, there’s more!

This is why the Bible says: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” Matthew 16:25.

“...but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” Philippians 2:3.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).

“Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” 1 Corinthians 10:24.

“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” James 3:16.

And the list goes on. A search on Google shows sites like “100 verses about selfishness,” or “41 Bible verse about selfishness,” and more.

What else can one understand from the first one? Death to self. Eternal life is found in losing one’s self. Not only that but a better life now is found in letting go of self.

Rather than trying to deal with your “sins” - those actions that you think are wrong. The better question is to ask what your goal is. Is it selfish? Is it out of love for God? What are your motives?

Think about who really benefits from your actions. A lot of people do a lot of “good” things for selfish reasons. It is ultimately meant to benefit them in some way. That’s the problem with the people who will say, “Lord, Lord,” but to whom Jesus will say, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21-23). That’s the problem with the way the Pharisees prayed (Matthew 6:5). It was really about getting acknowledgement, not about God.

I have found this approach to be life changing.

If you can truly grasp that putting God and others first is the life that he wants for you, then you must believe that in the long run that will be a better life. You will be happier. It is what you were meant to be. It is - believe it or not - a lot less work. No more defending yourself, no more fighting for yourself, no more holding on to hurt, no more offense or revenge.

You don’t have to worry about things not going your way, because you have no “way” for them to go. Your way is his way, and things always ultimately go his way.

Why do you do what you do? Who are you doing it for?

“If you were to die today, where would you go?”

For some reason, that question has always bothered me, and I think I have finally figured out why.

The first time I heard that question, I was not a Christian and I thought it was absurd. I think I thought it was a huge assumption that I would “go” anywhere. I was only a teen, but it seemed necessary to first establish the metaphysical assumptions behind the question. Even now, I find the concept that we “go” somewhere to be a bit problematic.

But now I realize that the problem with it is that it lies at the entrance to the self-centered gospel. It’s all about you. It suggests that the goal is to secure your ultimate destination, as though that is why someone might become a Christian. This plants a little evil seed in your head. “Just say this little prayer and God will have to accept you.” The ultimate goal is to get to heaven. Never mind who’s there; it’s better than the other place.

What I’m suggesting is that these things matter. How you preach the gospel creates a context for the life of the new believer.

I’m arguing that this little question carries with it certain assumptions, like a virus that infects your computer without you even noticing. Do you see that if your only goal is to get somewhere, you will only do what is necessary to get there? That, in and of itself, carries another huge assumption: that you must DO something.

You see, It only stands to reason that if some people go to the good place, and some people go to the bad place, there must be a difference. This gospel has already established the difference is that you said a prayer. YOU did something. Therefore, the logic goes, you probably have to do something to maintain it. This leads us to the assumption of many that your behavior matters in your eternal destination. After all, isn’t it about good people and bad people?

The result is a “believer” who adheres to a new law, a list of things that one must do to prove they are actually a believer. The “Law” of the Old Testament may be gone, but we have a new one, which likely includes Church attendance, saying prayers, maybe some Bible reading, and probably something else that the individual believer decided God would probably like.

You see, this new “believer” thinks that it’s not about a relationship, or a new orientation; it’s about avoiding the bad place. But at the end of the day, his duties to God fulfilled, his life is still his own. He isn’t a new creation; he’s just the same person with a golden ticket.

Along the way of course, he will have to ignore those pesky verse like, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:33).  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

Or even more important: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3)

These verses, especially the last one, create a completely other understanding of Christianity than worrying about what happens at the end of your life. This IS eternal life. It’s a NOW thing. It’s not something you get at the end of your life, then you just get more of it. The new life starts now.

Not to hold myself up as an example, but I can tell you that when I came forward at a Calvary Chapel 150 years ago, the last things on my mind were heaven and hell. In fact, what would happen to me was not even a concern at that moment. What I finally knew at the moment was truth. He is real, and I could know him, and that changed everything.

From that moment on, there has never been a destination that I felt I needed to get to. In what I call the “Eternal Now,” I am here and He is here, and there is no need for anything else.

But the implications of this are staggering. If you actually believe that you are somehow connected to the ultimate power in the Universe, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, all-loving, you can never ask, “What must I do to be saved?” There is nothing you can do. But you know that, because you know it has already been done. You don’t ask what is required to stay there, because you know that it is out of your hands, and in much better hands.

You wouldn’t dare insult him by doing the bare minimum: “How many times must a I forgive my brother?” It reminds of the old line from the military, “When I say, ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high?’” except, in this case, you don’t even ask, you just jump as high as you can.

If the immediate response to a meeting with God isn’t to give your life to him, something is wrong. I don’t mean to oversimplify; it’s a lifelong process. But you can’t come to him for what you can get out of it. That’s not really coming to him at all. That’s making a deal. There are no deals to be made; there is only unconditional surrender.

Finally, how you say things matter. I suppose there is a temptation to get people in the door anyway you can, but if they enter under false pretences, there are very real dangers of misunderstanding what this is really all about. Let’s not bait and switch. Let the truth stand.

Also, if the original question still seems to make perfect sense to you, is it possible that you are laboring under the same false assumptions?