Romans 14:23b
"For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."
James 4:17
"So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."
What lesson can we learn from these two verse about sin? I think that most people, when asked about their views on sin, would give a long list of things that they have heard the church say are wrong: stealing, murder, adultery, ect... I have asked many people what they would call sin, and these are usually the answers I get; however, they are wrong. When we do these things, we in fact sin, but they in and of themselves are not sin. We have a misunderstanding about sin. We see sin as the bad things we do. However, sin, at the core, is simple: disobedience to God. God has told us not to steal, when we steal, we disobey God. God tells us not to murder, we murder, and disobey God. He says do not commit adultery, and we do--we have disobeyed His commands. The sin is not that we stole, or murdered, or committed adultery, it is that we disobeyed. The reason I exhaustively make this point is because when we limit sin to a list of "bad things," we hinder the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives. I have not stolen anything, or murdered, or committed adultery, so I must be all right for now. When we have the correct view of sin (a direct disobedience to God's command) than we find that we are really in utter depravity and need desperately God's grace to continue. For now, sin can be all sorts of things. For example, if the Holy Spirit was leading me to sit down next to my co-worker and ask how the basketball game went last night, and I decided that I would rather sit by myself and read my Bible, then I have sinned by reading my Bible. One might say, "How could reading your Bible be a sin!" And I would say that sin is whenever we disobey what God is telling us to do. Romans fourteen tells us all about how sin can be sin to one person and not to another. How is that possible? God made us each uniquely and with a specific purpose. Therefore, one thing might be perfectly all right for one person to do, and something that God has specifically told another person not to do. This is why we are told not to judge one another for the choices we make in our liberty in Christ, because sin is not a list of rules, but rather a disobedience to God's commandment. Some commandments are found in His word, and are solid: such as stealing, murder, adultery. However, sin is not limited to the disobedience of these commandments, but also includes those moments when God speaks directly to specific people about specific things and leads them with conviction to either abstain or undertake some task.
