Doctrine of Sin
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
Sin is the underlying reality of all human life in relation to God. Human sin began with Adam and Eve when they chose to disobey God’s command concerning forbidden fruit. Sin had become a reality even earlier when angels sinned and God “cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment” (2 Pet. 2:4). Clearly, whether angels or humans, sin is serious in God’s eyes.
Many of us who are older came along when it was customary in many places for the public school day to begin with a reciting of The Lord’s Prayer. The version most of us learned used the wording, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In that oft-repeated prayer, we were introduced to the idea that sin has the character of transgressing or trespassing some divine expectation. God’s law revealed in the Bible is His way of saying to us, “No Trespassing.”
In ordinary terms we think of a trespasser as a person who climbs over a fence into a fruit orchard when the fence is clearly posted “No Trespassing” or drives 65 mph in a zone clearly posted as a 45 mph zone. Such offenses are termed transgressions when we know they are forbidden but choose to disobey anyway.
Sinning when knowing better lies at the heart of sin as transgression.
If we knowingly run a sign that tells us to stop, intentionally tell a lie or blatantly disregard those in authority, we are transgressing. If God says “Don’t” and we do it anyway or if He says “Do” and we don’t, we have transgressed.
In order for sinful people to see themselves as sinful, God gave commandments. Galatians 3:19 puts it this way: “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions.” God’s commandments set a standard to which people could compare themselves.
The Old Testament term for transgression was one that carried the idea of “crossing over” or “passing by.” When God set His expectations by declaring what people should or should not do, He was giving them a standard by which to understand sin as acts of bypassing or ignoring His commandments.
Sin as transgression means that we act in such ways that ignore or bypass what God has decreed. Sin as transgression means that God has set forth standards by which He measures our behavior.
In fact, 1 John 3:4 puts it simply: “Sin is lawlessness.” So integral are God’s commandments and our sins that Romans 4:15 declares, “Where there is no law there is no transgression.” The revelation of God’s standards set forth in commandments form the basis for our understanding that among the ways sin must be viewed is that of sin as transgression in which a standard has been set that we have not met.
God’s expectations
While sin is sin, it takes on the added character of transgression when people ignore or discount what God has expressed as His expectations. The Bible’s way of putting this is to say that transgression means that “sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful” (Rom. 7:13).
God’s revealed will as expressed in His commandments furnishes the backdrop against which sinners may come to see more clearly and feel more deeply the seriousness of sin.
Upon having a clear understanding of sin as transgression, we appreciate all the more the feeling of David when he wrote, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Ps. 32:1).
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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