What is sin? Scripture never really bothers to define sin, except where it says that “sin is lawlessness.”(1 John 3:4) Everyone in the Bible simply seemed to understand what it meant. The word first appears in Genesis 4:7 where Cain, angry over the unacceptability of his offering, is told by God, “sin is crouching at your door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

I have often heard sin defined as missing the mark, as if one were missing a target he is aiming at. The Greek dictionary defines sin as, “missing the true end and scope of our lives, which is God—an offence in relation to God with an emphasis on guilt.”

It’s pretty obvious what God considers to be sin. Time and again in his various letters Paul makes perfectly clear what the sins of the flesh are, listing each by name—often along with a warning that those corrupted by sin have no inheritance in God’s kingdom.(Galatians 5:18-21, Ephesians 5:3-5) And other biblical writers do the same. God’s purpose in so emphatically defining the sins of the flesh is to make it impossible for us to play dumb, saying we didn’t know.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself