Sin is often defined according to the English word, which was an archery term meaning “to miss the mark.” While I do think that’s a valid interpretation, I don’t think it fully embodies the meaning from Scripture. My personal definition is that which can be found in the Bible itself: sin is transgression of the law.
Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
- 1 John 3:4
What’s the difference?
I think the primary difference is that “missing the mark” implies an accident or just a straight up failure where transgression of the law can be purposeful or accidental. Further, transgression of the law gives us a standard (the “mark”) while messing up does not define clearly what the mark was, only that there was one. While this is splitting hairs quite a bit, I do think the distinction is useful.
Why does it Matter?
Primarily, I think it’s important to have an explicit goal that we can strive for. While I understand that sin is a reality of life, it should never be normalized and almost all sacrifices in the Old Testament are only used to cover accidental sin, where I think “missing the mark” downplays the serious nature of sin, making it feel more like a white lie than the brutal breach of trust between God and ourselves, severing our relationship with him. While God can heal, grace should never be used as a washing machine.
Perhaps more importantly, I think an explicit measure for sin matters because we, as sinners, need to know what sin is in order to stop sinning. If the definition of sin is left up to us, we can easily define evil as good and righteousness as transgression. Played all the way out, if there is no law at all we have no need for salvation. That is, if the salvation that Jesus offers us is salvation from the law of sin and death - as is laid out in Romans, and there is no sin, there is no punishment required and, therefore, no need for rescue from that punishment.
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