The essence of sin

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The essence of sin

Posted by Pam "Seeker" on 2000-04-02
"Patrick Herring"  wrote in message
news:20000401.221258@anweald.exnet.co.uk...
> Annabel Smyth wrote:
> > In a message on Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Patrick Herring wrote:
> >
> > >Seeker wrote:
> > >>
> > >> The essence of sin is not breaking a code of law handed down by
a
> > >> ruler.
> > >
> > >Not for me. To me this is Phariseeism.
> > >
> > What Pam was saying - did you realise you were agreeing with her?
>
> I though I might have been but wasn't sure.
>
> > >> The essence of sin is deeply hurting someone who loves us
> > >> unconditionally.
> > >
> > >So, what's love then?
> >
> > (And the man's getting married in a month!).
>
> Oh, /I/ know what I mean by 'love', I was just interested to know
what Pam
> thought, since one generally gets n*n definitions from n people for
that one.
> I guess I was also pointing out that one needs a definition of love
to make
> any sense of Pam's definition of sin. Since my definition of love is
about
> wanting the other to be completely themselves my definition of sin
follows
> from it.

Patrick:

That's rather more philosophical than I had actually intended!   The
point of my original post was that I don't think being a Christian is
primarily about obeying the laws of an anonymous, rule-giver God.  So,
I don't think sin is primarily about breaking the rules.  I think
being a Christian is primarily about being in relationship with God,
so sin is doing things that strain or break that relationship.

There seem to be a few people here recently proclaiming that
Christianity is about legalism and they seem to think that those of us
who are in relationship with a "loving" God (agape love in His case
although I couldn't claim to love in that way) think we can go around
sinning willy-nilly or don't have "standards".  I actually think that
the sin standard of the relationship model is tougher than the sin
standard of the ruler model.  Not only are we lovey-doveys obliged to
keep the law of the ruler God, we must also convict ourselves of sin
when we are the least little bit selfish, unkind or thoughtless.  And
we must bear the pain of knowing that we have hurt our beloved Lord.
We know we fail every day, and because of that failure, we praise the
Lord for forgiving us through grace and for loving us unconditionally.

Rather more of an answer than you were expecting, I think!