Friday, February 1

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Genesis 3:6-7

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

We don’t use the word “sin” much anymore. We may refer to so called “sin-taxes” or to “Sin City,” but we don’t talk much about personal sin. “Sin” seems to be a quaint, old fashioned and hopelessly out-of-touch word. 

But it’s an important word; a word that God wants us to understand.

What is sin? 

We know that sin is “doing wrong things” but that’s a little like saying a toothache is “something that hurts.” That’s a description of the symptom and not the cause. To understand sin we must understand the symptom, the cause and the process.

Many years ago I had a conversation with a man who had become involved in an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. He knew he had done something wrong. He knew he had sinned against his wife, against the other woman and against God. But he was not aware of why he had sinned. When I asked him how it all came about, he said something like, “I don’t know, it just happened.”

Now he and I both knew that wasn’t true. The truth was that he made a thousand little decisions; told himself a thousand little lies; and made a thousand excuses to rationalize the decisions and lies.

Genesis teaches us that sin doesn’t just “happen.” Sin is a thousand little decisions that lead to one decision.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

Sin is a decision based on three things.

First, sin is a decision driven by our selfish desires. We are told that the fruit of the forbidden tree was “good for food and pleasing to the eye.” Simply put, the fruit looked good and Eve wanted to taste it. 

Here’s a truth to consider: Satan never makes sin look bad! He never says, “Hey, you, why don’t you get into an extra-marital affair and destroy your family!” He never says, “Hey, that dress would look good on you, why not steal it and wind up humiliated when your crime is splattered across the local newspaper!’

No, that’s not what Satan does. He doesn’t tell us the truth about sin; why would he? Rather, Satan makes sin look goooooood. 

Second, sin is a decision driven by our distrust of the goodness of God. Remember, God had given Adam and Eve freedom to eat from “any tree in the garden” except one. God had created a perfect environment for their happiness and have given them everything they needed to enjoy each other and to enjoy him. When he told them the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was off-limits, he was asking them to trust him; to trust that he was telling them the truth; to trust in his goodness. But the serpent convinced them that God was withholding goodness from them, so they disobeyed him. 

All sin is the result of distrusting the goodness of God. When we sin we are saying to God, “You have withheld goodness from me, so I need to take the goodness I think I deserve and I am willing to disobey you to get it.”

Finally, sin is a decision driven by our rejection of the love of God. As we have already seen, God’s limits are an expression of his love; just as parents express their love by establishing limits for their children. Therefore, when we disregard those limits we disregard the love of the one who established them. 

So sin isn’t just “doing bad things”; sin is rejecting the limit of God; sin is rejecting the goodness of God; sin is rejecting the love of God; and sin is rejecting the gospel of God.

Brian Coffey