About Sin and Temptation

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, sin is an offense against a religious or moral law. This is a decent definition, but it's almost too broad to be practical - in order to know if something is a sin, you must first know what God has said on the subject, and very few people have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Scripture. Worse, according to that page, there's another definition that defines "sin" as something that people believe to be immoral. If someone grew up around people who use both definitions regularly, it wouldn't surprise me if they ended up as adults who think God has strong opinions about whether or not you eat your carrots.

Fortunately, sin really isn't a difficult concept, nor are God's Laws that hard to understand; people just have a knack for complicating things. So let's clear things up and explain everything as neatly as possible.

To begin with, just pretend that the second definition given for "sin" doesn't exist. If something is a sin, then it's a violation of the laws God has given us, no more, no less.

In turn, God's Laws all revolve around two points. We are instructed to love God, just as He has loved us from the beginning, and we are to treat ourselves and everyone else with love. This does not mean we need to like everyone, nor is there anything wrong with separating yourself from people you can't get along with. You are only being asked to treat people with kindness, and that sometimes does mean setting boundaries and limits.

In summary, any action that does not reflect the love we are meant to have for God or for another is a sin.

When you look around, you can see how love changes the world. Love creates bonds between people, and encourages everyone to make the world a better place. Wherever people are showing their love, its power will become self-evident. But, actions that are not loving - ie, sins - result in a wedge being driven between people, even if they do not cause physical harm. In fact, many sins explicitly cause harm. Murder, for example, is clearly a sin as it means someone made the deliberate choice to end another person's life.

But, that just highlights the temporal damage sins do. A far more serious consequence of sin is that they also cause spiritual harm by separating us from God. To put it very simplistically, God is the not only the Creator of all living things, He is also the ultimate source of all life. Being separated from Him means being removed from this "power source", and our eventual spiritual death. If you've ever heard someone say that "the wages of sin is death", this is what they were talking about.

Another way to describe this is to say that sin causes people to go to Hell. While not wrong, the concept of Hell has become confused with the idea of a "spiritual jail for bad people" that its real meaning can be lost. Or to put it another way, people have a tendency to talk about Christianity like it's a court room drama with God as the judge and sin as the list of laws that were broken. A simpler and more easily understood way to look at it would be to say that sin tugs on our power cable - our spiritual lifeline - and if left unchecked, we'll end up pulling it out of the socket.

Or we would, if it wasn't for God taking action to protect us. You see, as bad as sins are, Jesus' death and resurrection paid the spiritual penalty for everyone's sins. If we return to Him, and repent of our wrongs, He's promised to forgive our sins and restore us. Those who are forgiven will never "run out of power", and live eternally in Heaven with God.

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. While Jesus is generally known for the way He comforted people and continually offered to forgive sins, He also pointed out that there is one specific sin that would not be forgiven. He referred to this sin as "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit". Since that isn't very clear and He didn't elaborate, Scholars have debated over what this sin might be for ages.

A popular theory is that Jesus was referring to a steadfast rejection of God and His promises. In other words, the only way that someone's sins won't be forgiven is if they refuse to be forgiven. Judas Iscariot is sometimes given as an example of this attitude, as he chose to hang himself rather than look for forgiveness.

Another theory is that this sin is committed when people claim the actions of the Holy Spirit were done by Satan or using some form of witchcraft. After all, the Pharisees believed this was how Jesus was able to perform miracles. This theory has some extra weight to it, as Jesus mentions the unpardonable sin immediately after He rebukes the Pharisees for saying His power comes from the Devil.

If you're worried about having committed this sin yourself, it may help you to know that nearly all Biblical scholars agree that it's impossible for a Christian to commit this particular sin. Basically, if you're the sort of person who cares about being forgiven, then you're capable of being forgiven.

Think about it: Peter denied Christ - possibly the gravest sin of all - not once, but three times, and was still forgiven. Whatever Jesus was talking about when He gave that warning, He had to be referring to something exceptional.

No.

Jesus lived a sinless life, never overstepping the bounds of God's Will or His own authority. Because of this, He provided us with a clear example of what a sinless life would look like, and more importantly, He was able to open the door to our Salvation by being the perfect sacrifice that the Law required.

Temptation refers to the moment that we become aware of an opportunity to sin. In other words, temptations are ideas that suggest a moral choice: either you act on the temptation (and sin) or ignore the temptation (and avoid sinning). A temptation always comes before a sin; they are not the same thing.

This distinction is very important for at least two reasons. The first reason, and perhaps the simplest, is that nobody can control when they will be tempted or what they will be tempted by. Since God's sense of Justice is inherently perfect, it doesn't make sense for Him to hold people responsible for things they have no control over.

The second reason is that we know Jesus was tempted on at least three occasions. If we are saying that temptations are the same thing as sins, then we are saying that Jesus was not sinless. If Jesus was not sinless, then His death on the cross was meaningless, and so is our Faith.