HAMARTIOLOGY: THE DOCTRINE OF SIN

Hamartiology is the branch of Christian systematic theology that seeks to define, describe and explain the truth about sin from the perspective of God's inspired Word the Bible. Hamartiology seeks to answer the following questions:

What is sin?
What are the different types of sin?
Where did sin come from?
What is God's view of sin?
How does sin affect us?
What the consequences of sin?
What is the solution to sin?

The theme verse for Hamartiology is Romans 3:23, which say "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." This divinely inspired declaration about sinfulness applies on both the individual level and on the universal level. Sin was such a serious issue to the apostle Paul that he spent the first three chapters of his epistle to the Romans explaining the severity of sin, the consequences of sin, and the universality of sin. The doctrine of sin has a long history of being highly offensive to people both within and outside the Church, thus not many churches elaborate on the biblical truth about sin nowadays. The doctrine of sin is very important because a person must fully understand the grimness of their situation that is caused by sin, and why they must depend totally upon God in order to be saved from their sin.

WHAT IS SIN?

Sin is translated from the Greek word hamartano (ἁμαρτάνω), which means "to err" or "to miss the mark," sort of like an archer aiming an arrow and shooting at the bull's eye of a target only to miss the bull's eye. The Hebrew equivalent in the Old Testament is chata (חָטָא), which also means "to err" or "to miss the mark." Sin is the act of erring or missing the mark of God's standard of perfection. This is a very broad meaning for sin, because a person can err or miss the mark of God's perfection in a number of ways. One way of missing the mark of God's perfection is by transgressing or disobeying the law of God (1 John 3:4). Another way of missing the mark is through the sin of omission; that is, knowing what is right but refusing to do it (James 4:17). Still another way of missing the mark is through faithlessness or doubt, since it is impossible to please God without faith (Romans 14:23; Hebrews 11:6). Various other ways of missing the mark of God's perfection include unintentional sins (Numbers 15:27), presumptuous sins (Numbers 15:30, 31; Psalm 19:13); sins committed out of ignorance (Leviticus 4:2), and original sin that is responsible for the sin nature (Psalm 51:5). Sin is a hamartia (Greek ἁμαρτία for "tragic flaw" or "fatal flaw"); and sin is a tragic flaw because sin ruins God's glorious holy image in the human race and separates each person from the holy God. Human beings were originally created perfect and holy by God, existing perfectly in God's image, plus humans were in perfect fellowship with God, until sin tragically ruined all of this. Sin is also a fatal flaw because it is so profound that it eventually leads to a tragic end, a fatality, a certain death (Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 5:12; 6:23; James 1:14, 15), to any person infiltrated by sin, unless the loving and merciful God intervenes in a repentant sinner's life to correct the tragic flaw of sin through the person and saving work of Jesus Christ (John 3:16; John 8:24). Death is not only caused by sin, death is God's ultimate punishment for sin. The perfect justice of God's law strictly demands the penalty of death as the wages of the sin committed. The Bible shows that Almighty God hates sin and regards sinners as being at enmity with Him (Psalm 5:4-6; Proverbs 6:16-19). God hates sin because it is the very antithesis of His holy nature, sin detracts from the perfection and holiness of His creation. The Bible presents God’s attitude toward sin with strong feelings of hostility, disgust, and utter dislike. For example, God's inspired Word describes sin as abomination (Proverbs 6:16-19), putrefying sores (Isaiah 1:6), a heavy burden (Psalm 38:4), defiling filth (Titus 1:15; 2 Corinthians 7:1), a binding debt (Matthew 6:12-15), darkness (1 John 1:6) and a scarlet stain (Isaiah 1:18). God hates to look upon sin with His pure eyes (Habakkuk 1:13). God is angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11). Sinners are under the wrath of God and they are under God's curse (Isaiah 13:11; Matthew 25:41; Galatians 3:10; Ephesians 5:5, 6). God enforces the eternal punishment of Hell upon all unrepentant sinners (Mark 9:43-48; Revelation 21:8).

SIN'S POWER OVER UNREGENERATE HUMANITY

The secular society and some false Christian churches have a humanistic view of humanity in which humans are inherently good instead of inherently evil. Most world religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism also deny original sin and the inherently evil nature of human beings. However, the Bible provides vivid descriptions showing that humans are inherently evil, not inherently good. Jesus describes humans as inherently evil when He said "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!" (Matthew 7:11). Although people in their unregenerate state are capable of doing certain kinds of goodness or benevolence; Jesus describes humans as inherently evil. From God standpoint of absolute perfection, humans are inherently evil. However, humans were not originally created as inherently evil. In the beginning, God created humanity, in the person of Adam and Eve, perfect in all aspects of human nature. They were without defect, without blemish, and without defilement. In the beginning, humans functioned and behaved exactly as God created them to function and behave in thoughts, words, and deeds. They were also perfect in body, mind, and spirit with absolutely no weaknesses whatsoever, and because of this humans were able to maintain perfect fellowship with God their Creator through perfect love, and cooperate with God their Creator in ways that were perfect. However, everything changed when Adam and Eve began listening to Satan the Devil and disobeyed God's command in the Garden of Eden. As a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience, humanity fell from perfection and became imperfect and sinful in their nature. Ever since that time, humanity has been sinful and corrupt by nature, and cannot repair the damage sin has done to him. This is because sin has infiltrated every aspect of man's being; that is, every conceivable part of man's being is adversely touched and influenced by sin. After Adam's fall, humanity did degenerate in all aspects of their nature, but humanity DID NOT degenerate into "100% corruption" or "pure evil." The image of God within humans was profoundly shattered and severely polluted by sin, but it was not eradicated by sin. There are still remnants of God's image and goodness remaining within each human being, but that goodness, in a spiritual sense, is no more profitable than filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Therefore, such goodness CANNOT merit salvation from one's own sinful condition before the God of perfect righteousness and holiness. Humans are in bondage to sin and are therefore unable to set themselves free to obtain the highest spiritual good from God. Humanity exists in a situation in which "That which is crooked cannot be made straight, that which is lacking cannot be numbered" (Ecclesiastes 1:15). People are unable to convert themselves and their life's circumstances from crooked to straight, nor are they able to number and provide everything their bodies, souls and spirits are sorely lacking. Only God the Creator is able to convert a person's heart, and their life's circumstances, from crooked to straight, and accurately number and adequately provide everything they sorely lack spiritually and materially.

Jesus Christ the Son of God, together with the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, is man's only hope in being set free from sin's powerful clutches (1 Corinthians 6:11; Titus 3:4-6). Apart from one's faith in the saving grace and atoning work of Jesus Christ, their problems with sin cannot be solved (Ephesians 2:8, 9; 1 John 1:7-9). The Scriptures describe the human being in the fallen, unregenerate state as unable to use spiritual discernment (1 Corinthians 2:14), at enmity with God (Romans 8:7), a lover of dark rather than light (John 3:19), full of evil (Ecclesiastes 9:3), one who is conceived in sin and born in sin (Psalm 51:5; 58:3; Isaiah 48:8), one whose inclinations and thoughts are only evil continually (Genesis 6:5), one whose inclinations are evil from youth onward (Genesis 8:21), a child of wrath and disobedience (Ephesians 2:3; 5:6; Colossians 3:6), one who walks after their own devices (Jeremiah 18:12), one who drinks iniquity like water (Job 15:16), a servant of his father the Devil (John 8:44), one with a defiled mind and conscience (Titus 1:15), one with a heart that is deceitful, desperately wicked or incurable (Jeremiah 17:9), one who lives by the flesh and cannot please God (Romans 8:8), one who cannot approach Jesus Christ unless God the Father draws him (John 6:44, 65); one whose deeds are evil (John 3:19), one who walks after the imaginations of their evil heart (Jeremiah 7:24; 13:10; 16:12), one who is defiled by the evil that comes out of them (Mark 7:20-23), blind and deaf to the things of God (Ezekiel 12:2; Luke 8:10; 2 Corinthians 4:4), and finally, dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). Other Bible passages that vividly describe the depth of human depravity include Isaiah 59:1-21 and Romans 3:10-19. Not only does sin severely affect the individual person, sin is also universal. Every human being that has ever lived has sinned, rebelled against God, and fallen short of the glory of God (1 Kings 8:46; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Romans 3:23; 5:12). We humans CANNOT purify ourselves of sin (Proverbs 20:9), nor can we reconcile ourselves with God without first seeking God through His perfect and sinless Son, Jesus Christ, who gave His life as a ransom to pay for the sins of all people (John 14:6; Romans 10:9-13; 1 Timothy 2:5, 6). Biblical statements like "Whoever believes" are fine and true (John 3:16; 1 John 5:1); each person does have the ability through free will to choose between good and evil, life and death, blessing and cursing, God and sin (Deuteronomy 30:19). Once a sinner repents and makes the choice to cast our overwhelming burden of sin upon Jesus Christ the Savior, a change will begin taking place within the repentant sinner's nature; that is, they have been "born again" through God's Holy Spirit (John 3:5-7), and have been regenerated as "a new creation" in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIN NATURE AND GOD'S RESTRAINT ON SIN

The reality that humans are depraved by nature and not by nurture alone is illustrated by children. Do you have to teach a child to lie? Do you have to teach a child to be self-centered? Do you have to teach a child how to be selfish? Do you have to teach a child how to be threatening or mean to other children? They learn that on their own because its already in their nature. If a parent sets their child free without ever disciplining them for fifteen years, the child will grow up to become a monster. So many people consider Adolf Hitler as one of the most evil people who ever lived in world history. It is easy to leave a child to run wild and undisciplined, but it take many years of extremely hard work to discipline and train a child to do all the right things in life. Even in everyday life, well trained adults discover that it is so much easier to do evil than it is to do good. It always takes a tremendous amount of effort to resist all natural tendencies that compel a person to do selfish, immoral, antisocial or disorderly things. Atheist Sigmund Freud explained the subconscious "id" as an intrinsically selfish, antisocial and violent aspect of the human being that must be resisted throughout one's life. A negative person can pull a positive person down quicker and easier than a positive person can pull a negative person up. One thing everyone needs to understand is that Adolf Hitler was not an anomaly. Hitler was not an unusual phenomenon. Hitler was what everyone in this world has the potential of being, and not only that, people must understand that even in the wickedness of Hitler, Hitler was still restrained by the common grace of God. If it were not for the common grace of God restraining a person in their unregenerate state, they would make Hitler look like a saint. Hitler would seem so good compared to them. Everything else in nature, including plants, animals, the chemical substances and the weather conditions, are far more obedient to the will of God than human are. Humans are the only creatures that mistreat or even kill their own species for their own pleasure or gain. When Judgment Day arrives, God will remove His restraints from all the unsaved people and they will be revealed as the wicked monsters they truly are. One famous theologian, Jeremiah Burroughs, said that if if if God, a million years after Judgment Day, were to open the gates of Hell to set its prisoners free on the condition that they bow to worship Him, Hell's prisoners would hate God so much that they would slam Hell's gates in God's face and refuse to leave Hell. Of course no one knows for sure whether or not Hell's prisoners would react to God's kindness in such a way. However, everyone should thank God for His restraint on sin in the human heart and in society as a whole, because the world would be an extremely dangerous place without such divine restraints.

VARYING VIEWS ABOUT THE SIN NATURE AMONG THEOLOGIANS

The 2nd century theologian Irenaeus made references to the concept of the hereditary sin nature as he debated with certain proponents of dualistic Gnosticism. Other early theologians, such as Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster acknowledged that humanity shares in Adam's sin, as the sin nature is transmitted by human generation. Tertullian introduced in Latin the first terminology of what we now call original sin (vitium originis = "vice of origin") and the birthmark of sin (naevus peccati). Tertullian, along with Irenaeus, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster taught that, although man has a sin nature, man still possesses the free will to accept or reject God. Later in history, Saint Augustine of Hippo amended the doctrine of the sin nature by elevating it to "total depravity" or "total inability" in which humans lack free will due to total enslavement to the sin nature. Saint Augustine proposed the idea of total depravity in an effort to refute a British monk named Pelagius who was spreading a heretical idea (now called pelagianism) that denied the existence of a sin nature. Pelagianism was radically humanistic and autosoteric, as it taught that humans are inherently good and are capable of earning salvation and sinless perfection through their own efforts, without necessarily needing God's grace. Another heresy called semipelagianism was a works-grace salvation that stressed that God and humans have a 50/50 contribution to salvation. Both pelagianism and semipelagianism were refuted as heretical by the Protestant Reformation and most Protestant churches held to the doctrines supporting the hereditary sin nature for centuries afterwards. Calvinism and Arminianism dominated the churches. Calvinism believes in total depravity and the lack of free will; while Arminianism believes in both the sin nature and free will. However, many of today's liberal and postmodern churches are now beginning to deny the sinful nature of human beings in exchange for humanism and autosoterism.

It should be noted that, without Almighty God's divine intervention, none of us can justify ourselves by converting ourselves from sinful to sinless, from imperfect to perfect, from impure to pure. "Who can say, 'I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin'?" (Proverbs 20:9). In light of this, we were definitely affected by the fall of Adam, contrary to what Pelagius taught (1 Corinthians 15:22). When God first created Adam and Eve, they were perfect in in every aspect of their being and were not subject to sin, suffering, and death. Adam and Eve fell from perfection and became spiritually dead after sinning against God; they were condemned by God, and the whole creation was cursed. The once perfect minds, souls, and bodies of Adam and Eve began to deteriorate and break down as they were cut off from the Tree of Life. Imperfect, sinful, and unclean parents subject to death CANNOT produce perfect, sinless, and pure children that are immortal because that is impossible, since every living thing (clean or unclean) procreates after its own kind. The book of Job puts it rightly when it says "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one!" (Job 14:4), and the Psalms state that human beings are made imperfect by sin from the moment of their conception and birth (Psalm 51:5; 58:3; Isaiah 48:8).

THE BIBLE MENTIONS SIN FREQUENTLY

The word SIN, in all of its variations, appears more than 800 times in the 66 books of the King James Version (KJV) Bible. This consistent presentation of sin in the King James Bible reveals just how important an issue sin is to the Lord God Almighty who inspired the Bible, and just how gravely deadly serious an issue sin is to each and every human being, especially to those who do not repent. This consistent presentation of sin in the King James Bible also totally discredits the ideas of heretical preachers that deny the original sin nature of humanity and/or deny the existence of sin, the wrath of God, and Hell altogether.

the word - "sin" - appears 447 times
the word - "sins" - appears 173 times
the word - "sinned" - appears 119 times
the word - "sinners" - appears 48 times
the word - "sinneth" - appears 22 times
the word - "sinner" - appears 21 times
the word - "sinful" - appears 8 times
the word - "sinning" - appears 2 times
the word - "sinnest" - appears 1 time
A GRAND TOTAL OF 841 TIMES

This list does not include the many synonyms for sin, such as iniquities, transgressions, trespasses, wickedness, evil, dead works, faults, errors, ungodliness, guiltiness, offenses, stumbling, unlawfulness, concupiscence, abomination, etc. that appear everywhere in God's Word the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.