Sin

Originally posted on February 01, 2006 – by Andre Piet

On a Christian forum today, I read the following comment:

“An excellent example of how we nowadays want to define sin: ‘missing the mark.’ Because sin must, above all, no longer be called sin…”

The writer suggests that the definition ‘missing the mark’ is merely a modern invention. A mistake of the highest order! ‘Missing the mark’ is, in fact, the most original meaning of the term sin—both in the Hebrew and in the Greek of the New Testament. In my view, the finest example of this is found in Judges 20:16. There we read about a selection of 700 left-handed men from the tribe of Benjamin (= son of my right hand…) and

“…each one could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.”

In Hebrew, the word used here for ‘miss’ is the same word that is consistently translated elsewhere as ‘to sin’ (a clear miss by the translators not to do so here). If the Benjaminites failed to sling a stone accurately, they sinned – that is, they missed the mark. This corresponds exactly with the familiar secular meaning of the word sin. When a striker in football takes a shot at the goal and the ball narrowly flies over the crossbar, people shout: “what a miss!” (sin!). And that is precisely right. That is a miss.

The religious use of the word sin has taken on the connotation of being evil or immoral. Of course, sin can be immoral and depraved, but that is not the meaning of the word itself. Sin means that it does not meet the goal (as set by God). Man was made for Life, and as mortals, we are therefore by definition sinners—we do not (yet) meet the intended goal.

Thankfully, God is “the happy God” (1 Tim. 1:11). What He intends and undertakes, He brings to success.
Without missing!

Delen: