Excerpted from “Kansas and Nepal: A Response to Flat Earth Sexuality.”
When it comes to the main course of a Monday night family dinner, one might have trouble identifying the type of food. It has noodles. Is it pasta? It has beef. Is it a steak? It has sauce. Is it a soup? It has vegetables. Is it a salad? Thankfully, we have a word to capture it all, “Casserole.” When it comes to defining the essence of sin, it can be challenging. God uses many different words to describe sin. R. Stanton Norman identifies many of these, “Depravity, corruption, inattention, error, guilt, godlessness, ignorance, iniquity, lack of integrity, lawless, lust, missing the mark, perversion, rebellion, transgression, treachery, wickedness, badness and unrighteousness.”(1) Thankfully we have a term to capture all these, “lawlessness.”
The Apostle John writes, “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). How can “lawlessness” truly wrangle that many terms of sin into one corral? Sin is not to be defined by the multifarious human experience, but by the immutable character of God. Herman Bavinck writes, “Though sin is appallingly many-sided, with untold moral dimensions, at its heart is a religious revolt against God and thus appropriately summarized as lawlessness.”(2) Reflecting on 1 John 3:4 Joel Beeke speaks of the breadth and depth at which sin operates, “Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in our actions, attitudes or nature.”(3)
Why would this prove the best understanding of the essence of sin? Many others have been proposed. Norman lists several modern and ancient Christian notions, “Disruption of shalom, idolatry, selfishness, pride, sensuality, rebellion and unbelief.”(4) Norman believes idolatry best describes the essence of sin. Augustine and Calvin considered pride to be the heart of sin. Whatever sin is, it is sin because it is against God. Bavinck makes this point in several places:
[Sin] denotes a violation not of a human but of a divine law. It situates humans, not in relation to their fellow humans, society, and the state, but in relation to God, the heavenly Judge. . . . The sin may be great or small; it is sin only because it is contrary to God and his law (Gen. 13:13; 20:6; 39:9; Exod. 10:16; 32:33; 1 Sam. 7:6; 14:33; 2 Sam. 12:13; Ps. 51:4; Isa. 42:14; Jer. 14:7, 20; etc.) . . . For the standard of sin is God’s law alone.(5)
Perhaps deceit is the inner essence of sin. God spoke humanity into existence through truth. Sin killed the human race through a lie (Genesis 3:1-7; John 8:44-47). In the rebel palace of every sin, a lie reigns. Those made in the image of God must somehow deny the word of God in order to oppose the will of God. Bavinck describes sin as “an incomprehensible mystery,” noting, “It exists, but has no right to existence. . . . Sin is not: it wants to be; it neither has nor ever achieves true reality. It is falsehood in its origin and falsehood in its ending.”(6) What an ironic travesty would occur if a lie sat enthroned in the midst of a person’s definition of sin!
(1) R. Stanton Norman, “Human Sinfulness,” in A Theology for the Church. Ed. Daniel Akin. (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2007), 412-22.
(2) Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ. Vol. 3. Ed. John Bolt, Tr. John Vriend, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 126.
(3) Joel Beeke, “Human Depravity” in Free Grace Broadcaster: Radical Depravity. Is. 247 (Pensacola, FL Chapel Library, 2019), 11.
(4) Norman, 423-28. 23
(5) Bavinck, 130, 135, 140.
(6) Bavinck, 145, 148.
