The Message and the Old Covenant: Difference between revisions

These four rules were simply meant to create peace and harmony between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish believers, many of whom still kept the Mosaic law.

There are a number of Greek words that are translated as "sin":

The most common term in scripture for sin is the Greek term, harmatia. It was a word from archery, meaning to miss the target.  The original suggestion of “missing” an aim or a way, contained both in the Hebrew and the Greek may be detected in such a phrase as Romans 3:23 (“all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”) This Greek word describes an archer who missed a target. This meaning is illustrated where the term describes left-handed select men who could sling a stone at a hair and not miss (Jud. 20:16, NASB). The same word is found in Prov. 19:2, “Also it is not good for a person to be without knowledge, And he who makes haste with his feet errs (or misses a mark).” <ref>Bob Buchanon, “What Is Sin,” in The Bible Doctrine of Sin, ed. Ferrell Jenkins, Florida College Annual Lectures (Temple Terrace, FL: Florida College Bookstore, 1997), 5.</ref>

Harmatia is used in two ways. (1) It describes the state of all who sin. In this sense it is used as a spiritual holding place, thus sin is regarded as imprisonment. Paul wrote, “But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe” (Gal. 3:22). Paul asked, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom. 6:1). (2) It describes the actions and thoughts of man to do or think wrong rather than right. One who is perverted in mind is said to sin, “being condemned of himself” (Tit. 3:11). One who commits sexual immorality sins “against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). Sin is the active transgression of law, says John (1 Jn. 3:4).

These words are, for all intents and purposes, synonyms in the truest sense. Transgression is the stepping over the boundary line. Trespass signifies blundering into forbidden territory. Transgression and trespass presuppose a law. John said, “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law” (1 Jn. 3:4). Luke tells us that Judas, “by transgression fell” (Acts 1:25). James adds, “If thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law” (Jas. 2:11). Jesus asked the hypercritical Pharisees, “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?” (Mt. 15:3). Paroptoma is translated by “blunder,” and “fall” (Rom. 11:11, 12).

Lawlessness is the violation of law. W. E. Vine said,

Ungodliness (asebeia). Thayer defines this word as “want of reverence towards God, impiety, ungodliness,” and cites Rom. 1:18; 2 Tim. 2:16 and Titus 2:12 as examples. Paul refers to the “ungodliness of Jacob” (Rom. 11:26), as Jacob’s sin from which Israel must turn away. “Works of ungodliness” are sinful deeds and Jude uses the term exhaustively. “To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (Jude 15).

This word is primarily dealing with personal relations between people. It focuses on how one treats a neighbor or a brother. To do our fellow man wrong is to act unrighteously toward him. John says “All unrighteousness is sin” (1 Jn. 5:17).

Jesus taught the disciple to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Mt. 6:12). It is used only once in the sense of sin. That Jesus meant sin in this instance is seen in that Luke’s account uses the word harmartia (Lk. 11:4). The only other occurrence of the word in the New Testament is where Paul said, “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt” (Rom. 4:4).<ref>Bob Buchanon, “What Is Sin,” in The Bible Doctrine of Sin, ed. Ferrell Jenkins, Florida College Annual Lectures (Temple Terrace, FL: Florida College Bookstore, 1997), 7–8.</ref>

Paul, however, writes in Romans 14:23, “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.”   

===Is it a sin for a woman to wear pants?===