How would you define "sin"? How would you explain to another person what the Christian view of sin? I know when I first think of this idea, I get all kinds of pictures in my head of actions that are wrong and all kinds of messages telling me in strong, condemning voices how bad they are. Whether or not we agree with the idea of sin, I know that any one of us could easily come up with some kind of list of things that are considered to be sin. I have a friend that though he is not Christian, challenges people he meets to be able to say all Ten Commandments.
I think that we have the idea of what sin is all backwards. We view sins merely as actions that displease God. We may even view these as His arbitrary rules designed to spoil all of our fun. We even have websites like http://www.areyouagoodperson.org/ which are designed to make us feel guilty for letting God down because we could not live up to His standards. Yet we fail to recognize that the Bible teaches us that even those of us who may be able to follow all the rules, can still live lives full of sins. You can "do the right thing" and STILL fail! Hold on a second, and I will clarify that last one in a bit. First of all I am not trying to say that when the Bible calls lust a sin, it really isn't. God clearly lays out in the Bible the things we can do to please Him, as well as which things we can do to displease Him. But it really isn't about what things we can do or not do.
What sin really is about, is our relationship with God. I can be a perfect person in following all the rules, and still be a "sinner" if following all the rules is about me being perfect. I can have struggle with following the rules and be without sin, if my life is about following Jesus. How else can Paul call himself the "chief of sinners" (1 Timothy 1:15-16) in the Bible when he also claims to have lived according to the strictest sense of following God (Acts 26:5)? There is no doubt that Paul lived his life according to the rules. But he missed the mark in the end, because following the rules became the end and not the means. His righteousness became more important to him than God. It wasn't until he met Jesus that this was corrected and all of his efforts to please God finally became worth anything.
Let me say this another way, what we do or don't do does not have any significance if our actions are aimed at the wrong thing. It is my relationship with Jesus that ultimately determines whether my actions are good or bad, sin or not. In turn, it is also my relationship with Jesus that leads me to pursue the things that please God or not. I obey what the Bible says God wants me to do simply out of my love for God. I can't make Him love me by doing good things, any more than I can lose His love for me by doing bad things. I can be a good person all my life, doing good things and making a difference in people's lives. But without a relationship with Jesus those things lose their significance for me when I die. But, when I do them out of my love for Jesus first, all of the good I do in my life carries its significance with me--because their significance is found in Jesus.
For example, I can "do a good thing" and donate above and beyond the Biblically mandated 10% (tithe) of my income. Say I even go to the point where I donate 30% of my income to the church, where it will do lots of good and change lives all over my neighborhood and on into the world. Yet say my motivation is the tax write off. While you might cite the good achieved by my action, can you really call it a good act? No, I am being motivated by how it benefits me. In fact, you could say that the amount really doesn't determine its worth. We could easily agree that a millionaire's $10,000 donation this week is no more or less valuable than an average person's $10--though $10k would do much more good than $10. I might even go as far as to say that the percentage itself does not really matter. But the heart does.
But I also said that the actions that we do still matter. And they do. It matters that God has told us through the Bible that we should remain faithful to our spouse. But more important is that I have a relationship with God. For me, it is much easier to follow God's commands when the goal is showing Him that I love Him, than it is to follow His commands out of a desire to be good, or righteous. Without a love for God it is much easier for me to agree with "Good girls rarely make history" (Marilyn Monroe). Without a love for God it is easy for me to view tithing (giving my 10% to the church) as a loss. But because of my love for God, and especially because of His love for me, everything changes!
In closing, I have to say that sin is not an issue of actions. Sin is an issue of whether or not we love Jesus. Our actions have little merit or bearing compared to the significance they have when we live in the love of God.
