Orland Evangelical Free Church | What Is Sin?

The noun "sin" occurs seventeen times in John, more than any of the other gospels. Hamartia, the Greek word in question, appears seven times in Matthew, six in Mark, and ten in Luke.

So the concept is a priority to John, relative to the other gospels. The interesting thing is, hamartia does not appear in John's prologue.

There John uses the metaphor of darkness instead (1.5). The light of Christ shines and the darkness cannot overcome it. John describes the darkness as relational, even a matter of kinship (1.9-11). "There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man." Christ created the world, but when he appeared his kin did not receive him.

Darkness is the world's rejection of its Creator.

So John's first use of hamartia (1.29) comes within a definite frame. John the Baptist calls out, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" He means Jesus will win back his estranged kin by dying to pay for their hamartia. By dying for them Jesus gives the right to become children of God through faith (1.12).

So it's possible to specify how John uses hamartia: sin is the behavior of darkness.

The word generally refers to actions that break God's law. For instance, Jesus asks the rulers (8.46), "Which of you convicts me of sin?" He tells the adulterous woman and the lame man not to "sin" anymore (5.14, 8.11). In each of these cases, the word refers to specific transgressions of God's behavior code.

So the law of God, by itemizing sinful behaviors, subjects the world's darkness to measurement.

Jesus teaches that hamartia is the master of human nature (8.34-38). He tells the rulers that "everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin" and that "the Son" can set them free. The darkness reigns with absolute tyranny over humanity. Its power exerts itself through the spiral of breaking God's law: one sins, rationalizes, hardens himself against God, and sins again. This master can only be overthrown by Jesus.

So all actions that break God's law spring from the world's broken relationship with its Creator. That hostility governs all human behavior.

John's doctrine of sin is best described as relational, not legal. The law of God exposes what is wrong with our relationship to him.

John expounds this dynamic when he says (3.19), "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and that men loved darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." Persistence in hamartia is a characteristic of hatred. Men hate the Light because it exposes their evil deeds (3.20).

John's doctrine of human depravity dramatizes the central message of his gospel. You can only be liberated from your master, sin, by being reborn into the Father's household.