Unsurprisingly, sin is a slippery concept. It easy to recognise it, but not so easy to pin it down by description or, still less, definition.
In the Old Testament, there are three distinct Hebrew words which are translated as “sin”. The first really means missing or failing, as in missing or failing to hit a target. It is not achieving what you want or feel you should, achieve. Another word is more actively negative; it means rebellion and can be used for rebellion against a human authority like a king or against God, or divine law. The third is the word used of Cain’s crime and it coalesces crime and punishment; the sin and its consequence.
All these words, are translated into the Greek of the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible which was standard in Jesus’ and Paul’s time, as hamartia which in classical Greek means a failing or fault often of character as in the great tragedies, or a slip or fall.
Behind both the Hebrew and the Greek words is the idea that there is a target, a path, a system or a norm that is correct or ideal. In Old testament thought this is often expressed in terms of Creation and nature and in imagery which is derives from God as Creator of a world that is good, perfectly worked out on physical principles that express or embody wisdom and justice. There is no divide between the moral and physical worlds and failure to respect or active rebellion against those principles is sin and will entail, necessarily, the suffering of punishment.
There is, however, another word used for evil, which although not quite sin, leads from sin. The forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden is called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but the words (in Greek) for Good and Evil are not ones with an obvious, or at least superficial, moral force. They are Beautiful
and Wretched; the words that describe the world as, on the one hand, it should be (and but for Man’s disobedience, would be) and the pain, ugliness and misery that mar the actual world and our life in it. Both beautiful and wretched become invested with moral force, to mean morally right and good and corrupt and foul, but as with hamartia underlying the morality is the idea that the Creation is good and what we do to harm it and make it less than beautiful is bad.
The ethics of the Gospel are less closely linked to the order of Creation, but hamartia remains the principal word for sin. It’s the word used of the man born blind, or his parents; for how many times, even7 times 70 times a brother should be forgiven; it’s what the prodigal son acknowledges; and what John the Baptist forgives.
There is, however, another word used, most significantly in the Lord’s Prayer. We translate it as “trespasses” but the Latin word is debt and debtor. It’s the word for a duty or a thing owed to another, whether through a moral or a strictly legal obligation (Jewish law would not, of course, draw much of distinction, if any, between law and morality) The important thing, however, about a debt or an obligation is that it can be paid or discharged or may also be forgiven or redeemed. If we treat sin as a such an obligation, then we also acknowledge that action can be taken either by ourselves, or God, to whom we owe the debt/duty. For some, good works may make up the debt; more plausibly, I think, it can, by grace, be cancelled and we can be forgiven. This distinguishes the notion of sin as debt from sin as failure. If we slip and fall or if our arrow misses the target, consequences will inevitably follow, and we will simply not have achieved what we wanted. Pain and hurt have happened. We can be sorry and through the grace and love of God may be re-united with him,
but what is broken cannot be mended. It may be seen, in time, as ephemeral and without ultimate significance.
Jesus’ mission and the Gospel itself, is all about healing, forgiveness and redemption, but also holds out the possibility of a perfect world in the attainable vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. Our daily petition is that Gods’ will be done on earth as in heaven. The Gospels need to play on this ambivalence in the word for sin, and Paul brings this to a logical conclusion. Jesus’ death was somehow a redemption and redress graciously given, so mankind’s debt was forgiven and the obligation deemed to be fulfilled. This redemption cannot, however, change the immutable consequences of failure and error. We live with our sins. However, the sequel to that payment by Jesus’ death was his resurrection, and our possibility of returning to Eden, not, I suggest, in some other world, beyond this in time and space, but here and now and with the blemishes that are the consequence of our failures, but despite all that, a world that we see full of potential, and understood as truly real and permanent, or as we say, eternal. Amen.s