01 Salvation - Sin

So a good place to begin in Start Here, is to talk about salvation. What is salvation? And this is a massive concept. To make it easier to understand, I would like to break it down into four smaller concepts. And as a memory device, we would like to use a watermelon as an illustration.

And if you think about a watermelon, it has four colors. It's got green, it's got white, it's got red, and it's got black. And these colors symbolize the four different concepts of salvation that we need to understand. Firstly, black symbolizes darkness or evil or sin.

Secondly, red symbolizes Jesus' blood. His redeeming blood that was shed for us on the cross. And why He came to die for us. And what it means that Jesus died for us. Thirdly, the white. Christ imputes or gives His righteousness to us. And with that He gives us authority as believers to take up the power that is available in the cross of Jesus Christ.

To work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And to grow in righteousness and to grow in our understanding. And to grow in our holiness and to grow in our usefulness in the gospel. And for the gospel and for the church. And then fourthly, the green.

What are the fruitful Christian practices that we need to do and need to understand so that we can grow in our faith? And so that we can be fruitful in God's kingdom and in this church. In this session, we're going to be looking at sin.

What Is Sin?

What is sin? What is the impact of sin in our lives? How God views our sins? How does sin affect our relationships? And how can I identify areas of sin in my life? Most of us here, and maybe most of the viewers are from a Western Judeo-Christian worldview.

When we try to define sin, we will often think it means breaking a rule. We have the Ten Commandments. We should not commit adultery. We should not steal. We should not covet. We must love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and might, and our neighbor as ourself.

And generally what we think of in Christianity is that we shouldn't break a rule. But the sin concept is really more broad than that. When you look at the Hebrew and the Greek, there are many different words that get translated to English as sin.

A Word Study on Sin

So I'm going to take some words, a view or a word study as a basis for us to understand the different concepts of sin. And what the effects of sin is in our lives. The words are: Hamartia, Paraptoma, Parabasis and Asebeia. And the first word, Hamartia, means to miss the mark.

And that's the word that is generally used. That word is mostly used, and translated for sin in the New Testament. Hamartia means that we miss the mark. For instance, Romans 3:23, it says, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

And so the picture that we have here is of a bullseye and an archer aiming for the bullseye. And he shoots and he misses the target. And so the first problem that we have is that when we are born, we ask the question, why am I here?

What am I doing here? What am I here for? We are not born with that knowledge. Where do I fit? What's the meaning of my life? And what we see in the Bible is that God created the world. Adam and Eve walk with God in the garden.

Sin entered in, and then there was a break in relationship. We see this in Jeremiah 1:5, and it says this: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you and appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

We all miss the mark, because none of us are born into a relationship with God the Father, who has the plan for our lives. God knew us before time, which also means that none of us sitting here is an accident. We all have a purpose and destiny on our lives.

And as Christians, we have to find what that purpose and destiny is. It's God that consecrates us, and consecration is a big word. It basically means to make you holy or to make you clean and usable for God and His purposes. You're not going to brush your teeth with a toilet brush, but you will brush it with a toothbrush.

And so that's that concept of holiness. God has appointed Jeremiah as a prophet to the nations. God's appointed you to be something, but He's appointed each and every one of us to be something. And so the first meaning of sin is that none of us can hit the target because none of us are born knowing what God wants from us.

We are not saved by our works, but we are saved for good works, Ephesians 2:10 says. And that's the first problem with us as humans. We are born without God and we are not connected to Him. And we can't find out why we are here.

Hamartia: Missing the Mark

And when I don't know why I'm here, I've got this God-shaped hole inside of me. And I might fill it with all kinds of things that is not godly. The second word is *Paraptoma*, and it means to trespass or to unintentionally slip or to stray from the path.

So Romans 3:23 says, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And not all sin, like transgression, is breaking of a rule. You see, breaking of a rule in transgression is, I break one of the Ten Commandments. I steal, and therefore I become a thief, and therefore there's a consequence.

When there's a rule, there's a consequence. So when I steal, and I get caught, what happens to me? Well, I get taken to jail and then I get taken to court depending on how much I stole. And then there's a consequence to that.

And so transgression is breaking a rule plus a consequence that follows. And so Romans says this, let me just get to that. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. And so where there's a law, there's wrath and there's fear.

And so all of us have sinned and all of us know that there's this fearfulness towards the Lord. We don't want to come into His presence because we know that we've done wrong. Just like Adam and Eve in the garden, when they sinned, what did they do?

They were naked and ashamed. They realized they were naked and ashamed. They took fig leaves and they covered their shamefulness, their nakedness. They hid from God when God came into the garden. And then they blameshifted and made excuses for their sin. But getting back to the second level of sin, the slipping away from the mark.

Paraptoma: Trespass and the Sin of Omission

Sin is also not just something that I do that is wrong, an act of commission, but sin can also be an act of omission. There are things that I should do, that I don't do, and that's as sinful as breaking the rule. So for instance, I'll give you an example.

I'm a dad of two. My boy is 14, my daughter is 12. And my responsibility within our family is to provide protection, identity, and provision for my children. If I don't provide those things for them then there is a negative impact into their lives.

And so they don't develop a godly identity, a godly concept of what authority is. If I don't help them and grow them and encourage them to become all that God has for them. And so if I don't do that, then I'm actually sinning.

And so the thing is that all of us have sinned. And there is this burden of sin, because not all of us have done the things that we should have done. Especially if your concept of sin is, that sin is breaking a rule.

Asebeia: Twistedness and the Image of God

You get that? And then the fourth level of sinfulness is *Asebeia*, which is twistedness. And we are made into the image of God. And what does it mean to be made into the image of God? Is it that we walk upright? Is it that we can think?

Is it that we can communicate? So in Genesis 1 we see where it says that we are made in the image of God. You know God created the world, there was chaos, the Spirit hovered over the chaos. God spoke, He created order out of the chaos.

He created this whole world that we live in with all the animals and plants. And then He set man over all of this. Making us stewards of His creation, making us in His image. God has made us as Christians to reflect who He is to His creation.

To bring order into chaos that is all around us. What has happened in sinfulness is that if we harden ourselves in sin, we get twisted out of the image of God. Then we're not reflecting God's goodness and God's graciousness and God's character to the world around us.

Whatever we behold, whatever we worship, we reflect. If we don't worship God primarily we replace God's image with an idol. We don't reflect properly what God wants us to, as stewards within His kingdom. In Numbers 14 it says that, the iniquity will be passed to the second and the third generation of those that practice iniquity.

We see that sin doesn't just impact us immediately in our relationships or in our soul and our spirit and our mind. But it also impacts us generationally. And sin can get passed on from one generation to the next. Maybe you can look over your shoulder.

You can look at your great grandfather and your great grandmother. Or your grandfather, grandmother, your mother and your father, and you can trace things through your family line. Maybe there's fearfulness and anxiety. Maybe there's depression. Maybe there's divorce or adultery. Maybe there's a line of sinful behavior that comes down your family.

Because of this concept of iniquity. Because we've practiced sinfulness. We've grown hard in our heart. And we've been twisted out of the image of God. And that gets transferred from one generation to the next. I just want to say that you are not predetermined to sin, but you are predisposed to sin.

So say if you've got in your family a history of addictions—maybe gambling addiction or alcohol addiction—that maybe for you, it's more difficult to stay away from that type of lifestyle than someone else who doesn't have that problem in their family line.

And that basically explains to us the different concepts of sin. We have missed the mark because we have not been connected to God. All of us have sinned because there's acts of commission and omission. We have broken God's law. And there's a wrath and a consequence to that, and that causes us to hide and pull away from God.

And then there's this concept of we've been twisted out of the image of God. And we can't portray God properly in the world that we live in. We've been twisted. And we battle with some of these long-term consequences. Like depression and anxiety, fearfulness, addictions, and so forth.

Samson and the Consequences of Sin

The question that we might be sitting with right now is: How do I know if I have an area in my life that's stuck in sin? I would like to use an example of Samson. Now Samson was a strong guy in the Old Testament.

And we read about him in the Old Testament. And he was a Nazirite. So there were four things that he wasn't allowed to do. He wasn't allowed to cut his hair. He wasn't allowed to drink alcohol. He wasn't allowed to get married to anyone outside of the tribes of Israel.

And then he wasn't allowed to touch dead things. And we see in his story that God speaks to his mom and his dad. He is born and he grows up as a strong young man in God. And these characteristics are really there to set him apart from the local culture of the day.

To show that he's special. To show that the strength of God comes to people that live set apart. That live consecrated and holy to God's purposes. That's what He was symbolic of. We see Samson grows up and he's now a young man. And one day he's walking in the field and he sees this beautiful Philistine lady called Delilah.

And in his heart he yearns and longs for her. He likes what he sees and so he goes to his parents and he asks if he can marry her. Can I pursue this girl? And his parents should have said no at that point, but they didn't.

And so he starts pursuing her and they organize this party. And so Samson on the way to the party to meet Delilah, he's walking down the field and there's a carcass of a lion. And in the carcass of the lion, bees have made a nest and there's honey in the nest.

So Samson sees this and Samson likes honey. Because who doesn't like honey? Honey is sweet. Honey is desirable. And so he takes the honey and eats it. And in that touches a dead thing and breaks one of the laws, or one of the principles that God has given him that he shouldn't break.

And so that's a good picture for us of what sin is. Sin is desirable. Sin is nice. Sin is not not nice. But sin will give birth to death, the Bible says. And so even though sin looks desirable in the short term, it'll draw you in and it will destroy you in the long run.

And so he carries on. And eventually he ends up in a relationship with Delilah and time goes on. And they can't find the secret of his strength. And the one night he tells her that his strength is in his hair. And they shave his head.

And the Philistines come and they take him captive. And they take him to their country, and they gouge out his eyes. And they tie him to two grinding stones, where they put the grain in the top, and they push the grinding stones and they make flour.

So that they can bake bread. And so it's two of these big stones. And they tie them to that and they make him do the work of a donkey. And so he's there and he's pushing this heavy weight around and around and around.

And this is a wonderful picture of what sin does in us. It makes us blind. It makes us spiritually blind. We are unable to find the will of God for our lives because our eyes get gouged out. And it makes us push a heavy weight around and around and around.

When Sin Blocks Breakthrough

Doing the work of a donkey. And so maybe there's areas in your life where you feel like you've got this heavy weight that you cannot break through. There's just the grace of God doesn't enter into it. Whether it be in your relationships. Whether it be in your finances.

Whether it be in your health. Whether it be in your mental health. There are these areas in our life, whether it be in your marriage or your relationship with your children, that we find ourselves sometimes in this place where we just don't seem to get breakthrough.

And we go around the mountain again and we go around in circles and circles and circles and we just don't get breakthrough. If that is the case in an area of your life, I think you should ask this question to yourself and with the Holy Spirit: "Is there sinful behavior in this area of my life, and something that's causing me to not have breakthrough?"

Small-Group Reflection and Prayer

So we've just covered in this session: what is sin? And I'm sure the Holy Spirit has been with us in this conversation. And if He's convicted you of something in your heart, we are going to create a space now with the facilitators and in your small groups to talk about what you felt, what you've understood, and just pray if there's any area that the Holy Spirit has highlighted in your heart.