Romans 3:23 - “for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
We sometimes wonder why people sin. People sin because sin is in their nature. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” When we experience salvation, we receive a new nature. II Peter 1:4 says, “by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
We are born into sin. That’s the reason we must be born again. Psalms 51:5 says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” Sin entered the world when Adam sinned. In Genesis 3:6 we learned his actions brought mankind under the curse of sin. Romans 5:12 reveals, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
To understand why people sin we need to understand the definition of sin. What is sin? James 4:17 says, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” John Wesley says, “Sin is a voluntary transgression [violation] of the known law of God.” Sin is defined from two Greek words translated “as missing the mark,” and “to overstep a forbidden line.” I John 3:4 says, “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.” Charles Hodge writes, “Sin is a transgression of or want of conformity to the divine law.”
The Bible defines sin as transgression, lawlessness, and disobedience. Donald Stamps defines sin as “a moral corruption in humans that opposes all better human intentions.1 It causes us both to commit unrighteousness with delight and to take pleasure in the evil actions of others.” Sin always has consequences. It is costly.
There is a remedy for sin. The remedy is Jesus. Revelation 1:5 says, “And from Jesus Christ, Who is the Faithful Witness, and the First Begotten of the Dead, and the Prince of the Kings of the earth. Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood.” The blood of Jesus cleanses the believer from all sin.
1 Stamps, Donald, The Full Life Study Bible, Life Publishers International, Grand Rapids, MI, 1992, page 1736-1737.
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