Earning Your Way

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23 NASB

Sin – In the end, everyone gets paid. Since reimbursement is inevitable, it makes sense to know the rules of the game, especially if Paul is correct and the real wages of sin is death.

We are all familiar with Paul’s pronouncement. But we probably haven’t taken much time to think about the meaning of the crucial term. No, it’s not “death.” We have that one figured out, whether it’s physical or spiritual. The critical term is “sin.” Most of us think we know what this word means, so we skip over it to get to the important stuff, that is, how to avoid dying. But unless we know what “sin” means, we may end up being paid in the wrong currency.

The Greek, of course, is hamartia. On the surface, it simply means, “not to hit,” that is, “to miss the mark.” This begs the question, “What is the mark?” We’ll have to look at that, but first we need to notice the subtleties of this word.

The LXX with its summary use of hamartía, adikía, anomía, etc. hardly does justice to the rich and flexible Hebrew original and often misses the point, e.g., when “guilt” is in view. The Hebrew terms translated by hamartía and the like (for a full list see TDNT, I, 268–69) do not have an exclusive religious use, so that it is easy in translation either to import this or to weaken it. No uniform or self-contained concept of sin is present in the OT authors, and detailed questions of linguistic history further complicate the matter.^[1]

Did you get that? The concept of sin varies according to the time and the author of the Tanakh. What Moses says may not be the same as what Isaiah says. It depends on the audience, the historical period and the culture. We must stop thinking of the Tanakh as if it were all written at the same time by the same person. TDNT offers this brief summary: “The four main roots which carry the idea of sin have the varied senses of ‘sin or negligence,’ ‘rebelling,’ ‘guilt,’ and ‘error,’ enough to show the variety of thinking about sin quite apart from the many other roots.”^[2] But linguistic investigation into the Greek, or even the Hebrew background of the Greek, isn’t quite enough. Rabbi Schneerson, of late memory, notes that “sin is completely alien to our being. Even when we stumble, God forbid, it does not undermine who we are; rather it is something outside of our nature that has latched on to us.”[3] This sounds incredibly like Paul’s assessment in Romans 7. It is, by the way, a completely Jewish idea, not an Augustinian exegesis of Paul’s conversion nor an assertion of Platonic dualism in fallen Man.

Schneerson’s comment should draw us up short. “What? I thought sin was disobeying the commandments. How is it possible that this is an alien force clinging to me? I am the one who chooses to disobey.” Perhaps sin is much bigger than not aiming straight, not hitting the target. Perhaps it is much more than just breaking the rules.

There is a battle going on within me. Yes, I know it isn’t a fight with some demon sitting on my shoulder. It’s really me—but it isn’t me. The genius of the Jewish concept of yetzer ha’ra and yetzer ha’tov is simply this: in some sense we are at war with ourselves. We feel the presence of this alien within us, a “person” who wants his own selfish desires regardless of the outcome. We feel the pull to give in to this force, knowing all the while that it is really a part of who we are or who we have become. But there is also the innate desire to do what is right, to be faithful to the original design, to have fellowship with the Creator. That is also me. It’s not me fallen. It is me choosing. And this is the dilemma. Choice lies behind all human actions. Choice makes me who I am. But choice always involves the appeal of this opposing force, this “alien” inside my skin. This is the real essence of sin. It is not about the rules. Rule behavior is merely a symptom of something much deeper—the decision to take the path toward the Creator’s design for me or the path of my design for me. Sin is deciding to put God aside.

But because this decision still involves God, not just His “rules,” it is still open to reversal. God is in the mix even in sin. In fact, sin makes no sense at all without God in the background.

In the end, sin is the insanity of deciding that God doesn’t matter.

Topical Index: sin, Romans 6:23, death, hamartía

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (44). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

^[2] Ibid.

[3] Rabbi Mordechain Dinerman, Rabbi Yanki Tauber, David Pelcovitz, How Happiness Thinks (Jewish Learning Institute, 2014), pp. 26-27.