How Scripture Corrects the Views of Sin as “Absence” and “Sickness”

All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

It’s clear that we live in a culture that denies the evil, and often the existence, of sin. And as the body of Christ in the West has largely conformed to many of the ideas and beliefs of the secular culture, even most Christians have a deficient view of sin. This is the chief reason why so many western believers live such sloppy, undisciplined, and compromised lives.

Yet in many Christians’ efforts to promote a biblical view of sin, they’ve still come short of clearly representing the Bible’s full definition. And this is still because Christians are often afraid of offending, upsetting, and shaming people who underestimate the evil of sin. On the part of the world, they often describe sin as a “mistake,” “physical disorder,” “trauma,” or just a positive virtue. The sad reality is that many worldly and fleshly believers follow close behind these secular explanations by calling sins “mistakes,” “weaknesses,” or just “brokenness”.

But even Christians who are trying to point people to the evil of sin come short of the damning and grave descriptions the Bible gives us. One such weak attempt to define sin is as simply “the absence of good.” This was famously Augustine’s definition for evil, which could also be defined as the deprivation of good. That is, just as darkness is the absence of light, so also evil is any space in which good should be. An essay was recently published by John Piper’s ministry, Desiring God, in which sin was defined as “nothing” and “emptiness”. But somehow the author went on to quote various manifestations and descriptions of sin from Scripture, which were anything but “nothing”. Instead, they were positively something. More than this, you could rightly say that Scripture’s descriptions of sin read as active forces that inflict great destruction and devastation on people and the world. So we’re missing something in our understanding of sin if we confine our definition to something that is no thing, but just a blank space where goodness once was.

If we’re going to come to a clear and consistent view of God, the gospel, ourselves, and our duties as believers, it’s essential that we see sin as Scripture pictures it. Far from sin being emptiness or nothing, many Scriptures explain sin as a powerful force of destruction. One of the clearest of these is Paul’s various teachings on sin in Romans 6 and 7. Let’s start with Romans 6:12, 14 where he urges,

“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts . . . For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

Here, sin is pictured as a master who has the power to reign in believers, so that we can obey it. In other words, sin has a controlling power in our lives that can be yielded to, or resisted. He goes on to describe the condition of believers before conversion in terms of its destructive progression:

“For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness . . .” (v. 19)

Not only is sin a potential master, but it actually produces more sin the more that we obey it.

In the next chapter, Paul adds to sin’s description by writing about its work:

“For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.” – 7:5

So here we see that the sin of “sinful passions” caused unbelieving Jews to “bear fruit” that contributed to their spiritual (and maybe physical) death. After this, Paul goes on to refer to his personal experience with sin as a power:

“I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died . . . for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” – 7:9, 11

He clearly thinks that sin is something alive, since it acts on people. In Paul’s case, he experienced sin making him covet more than he had, which is what he means by it becoming alive. But it not only made him sin more – it lied to him by deceiving him, and then finally metaphorically killed him. In other words, it put to death his belief in his moral perfection and steadfastness by making him sin more than he’d known.

If this is the way that Paul saw sin, then how can we say that it’s mere emptiness or absence? The fact is, sin is positively evil, or destructive. And it is so because it possesses a power by which it kills, steals, and lies.

But let’s go further and point out the fact that sin is not something detached, or separate, from our wills, but also dependent on our decisions. That is, we decide to sin, as well as suffer from the influence of sin.

James makes this clear when he narrates the personal origins of sin:

“But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” – Jas. 1:14

Rather than viewing sin as something that happens to us, this implies that sin is an act of the will that’s rooted in our own sinful lusts, or desires. And the experience of being “carried away” and “enticed” is usually something that believers allow to happen.

We can also look at the apostle John’s classic definition of sin in 1 John 3:4:

“Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.”

What is lawlessness? It is acting without regard to the inner law that God has given to every rational person. It isn’t simply living without God’s law, but living against His law. For unbelievers, we see this clearly detailed in Paul’s narration of unbelieving society in Romans 1:

“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened . . . For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator . . .”

  • Rom. 1:21, 25

These actions are obviously conscious, willful, rejections of what God has revealed about Himself, and replacements of that revelation with man’s own proud and foolish “speculations”. Later in Romans, Paul explicitly characterizes people’s natural minds as hostile to God through sin:

“. . . the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able . . .” – Rom. 8:7

Notice that he says that the natural mind, set on the flesh, does not subject itself to the law of God, in distinction to cannot. This is a conscious act of the will – people sin by choosing to rebel against the standard from God’s law that they know. Paul speaks similarly when he writes to the Colossians about their former lives as non-Christians:

“. . . although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds . . .” – Col. 1:21

I hope the picture is clear now. Many Christians would say that the best definition of sin is something like a “heart-sickness,” but this doesn’t go far enough. A sickness is something that happens to you, not something that you do. While there’s clearly an aspect of sin which is out of people’s control, called “original sin,” they are still in control of how much they sin. Every thought, every sinful longing, and every sinful action is a decision to yield to an inner temptation. And people naturally do this knowingly and willfully. Sin isn’t merely the absence of good, or an ailment that plagues people, but is a heart disposition of rebellion, hostility, and hatred toward our eternally blessed Creator. Sin is positively destructive, deceptive, and enslaving toward unbelievers in a controlling way, and also toward believers in a limited and decreasing way. Let us beware of the sin in our minds, desires, and feelings, and rely on the only Savior who can defeat this greatest of man’s evil enemies. For Jesus “came to save His people from their sins”.