Original Sin and Personal Sin

Sin, Original and Personal

What is the meaning of 'sin'? 

To miss the goal? 

Then, what is this 'goal'? 

What do we find in the Bible about that?

To sin means "to miss the goal" (in the languages the Bible was originally written in - Hebrew and Greek). 

Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying the voice of God, by listening to a voice contradicting God, the voice of the serpent, and eating a fruit of the tree God told them not to - so that they would not die (see Genesis 2:17 and 3:1-6). 

Since then, this original sin has propagated to all humanity, with its consequence that is death. We sin when we disobey a known teaching of God, when we don’t listen to God’s voice. 

If to sin means ‘to miss the goal’, what is this ‘goal’ that is missed?

To answer this question, we need first to observe the life of Adam before he sinned. Then, we can observe the life of the only person in the Bible who is described as ‘without sin,’ Jesus of Nazareth, who has therefore 'reached the goal' (see 1Peter 2:22 “He committed no sin”, to compare to Romans 3:23 “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”). 

Before sin, Adam would walk with God in the Garden of Eden, hear the voice of God and speak with Him. He did participate in the creation of God, when he named the animals (2:19). He also was happy in the relationship with his wife, a helper fit for him, a bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh (2:23). After sin, Adam and Eve blamed God and each other, and went away from the garden of Eden, they could not anymore communicate easily between them or with God. 

This quality of communication with God is something we find again in Jesus, the new Adam. It can be described as both hearing and obeying. (in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, the same verb - shamah - is translated: to hear, to listen or to obey). We read in John 12:49-50 that Jesus did not say anything that the Father did not tell him to say, which implies two things: 1. Jesus could clearly hear the Father speak to him (hearing, listening), 2. He then said what the Father told him to say (obedience). In the same way, in John 5:19-20, we read that Jesus did not do anything without seeing God show him first, and then doing it. 

To summarize, we 'miss the goal' or 'sin' when we don’t do what God tells us to do, or when we don't say what God tells us to say. To sin means to miss the goal, and the ‘goal’ is a quality of relationship with God in which we clearly hear and see God, and say and do what He tells us to. 

The stories of the Bible after Genesis 3 show us God’s answer to heal this broken relationship with Him, culminating in the perfect solution offered in Jesus. Jesus was in perfect communion with God - saying and doing what the Father showed him and told him. This victory, this solution to the problem of sin, this perfect relationship is then available to us through the teachings of Jesus, through the welcoming of the Holy Spirit in our lives, so that each of us also can clearly hear God and do what He tells us to do (see Matthew 28:18-20). We can then learn from God - the Creator - how to love God, how to love our fellow humans and how to love the creation of the Father in its beauty and fullness. 

As Jesus said: My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me (John 10:28). 

This victory can be described as holiness or as pure love.