By Emily LaFave — part one of her ten-part series on sin, originally posted on her Facebook page. A new part goes up here twice a week.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” – Psalm 139:23-24
Part 1 – Sin: what happens when creation moves out of God’s intended order.
Most conversations about sin begin in the wrong place. They begin with a list. Do this. Don’t do that. Follow these rules. Avoid these behaviors. That approach makes sin sound like a legal problem, a matter of breaking rules and facing punishment. But Scripture paints a different picture, one that is both more serious and more hopeful than a list.
Scripture paints a different picture. The biblical understanding of sin isn’t simply breaking rules. It is a disordering, a misplacement, a taking of something good and putting it in a place it was never meant to occupy. It is creation moving out of God’s intended order, good things becoming ultimate things, gifts becoming gods, means becoming ends.
The Hebrew word most often translated as sin is chata (khah-TAH), which literally means “to miss the mark.” It is an archery term, a picture of aiming at a target and missing it. Not necessarily by rebellion, not necessarily by malice, but by missing, by falling short, by aiming at the wrong target, or by aiming at the right target with the wrong understanding of what it requires.
That definition is humbling because it leaves very little room for comparison. The person who misses by a little and the person who misses by a lot have both missed. The person who misses intentionally and the person who misses accidentally have both missed. Comparison becomes irrelevant when the standard is perfection, when the target is God’s holiness, and when every one of us falls short in ways both obvious and subtle.
As Scripture unfolds, the picture becomes even richer. Sin is not only missing the mark. It is choosing a different mark. It is deciding that our own target is better than God’s, that our own definition of good is more reliable, that our own wisdom is sufficient. It is not just failure. It is replacement: replacing God’s order with our own, God’s wisdom with our own, God’s goodness with our own preferences.
This is why sin is never merely about behavior. Behavior is visible. Sin begins much deeper, in the heart, in what we trust, in what we worship, in what we believe will satisfy us, secure us, define us. Behavior is the fruit. The root is disordered worship, disordered trust, disordered love. Change the root, and the fruit changes. Address only the fruit, and the root remains.
The Christian life is not primarily a project of becoming better behaved. It is the lifelong work of reordering what we love, what we trust, what we worship, and what we believe will save us. It is learning, over time, to put God back in the center, and to let everything else find its proper place around Him, not as a god, but as a gift, not as a master, but as a stewardship, not as an identity, but as a part of a life that belongs to Him.
— Emily LaFave · Follow her writing on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/feral.fave
Part 1 of 10.
