Jeremy L. Berg

The book of Romans doesn’t mess around. Paul is shooting straight and going to the heart of things.  Our senior youth group is plowing through portions of Romans this fall and winter.  We’re still bogged down in the swamp of chapter 1 and Paul’s description of the fallen human condition is growing darker verse by verse.In the weeks ahead we will be trying to understand the nature and power of that awful three letter word: SIN. So, here’s the big question:

WHAT IS SIN?  HOW DO YOU DEFINE IT?

Now I realize that this question isn’t necessarily a simple one.  But I’m searching for a simple, straight-forward, easy to grasp concept of sin that will give our students something to grab hold of in their own life.  Here’s what sin is NOT: Breaking arbitrary rules set by a killjoy God (though, as we’ll soon see, sin does involve ignoring the Creator’s “rules” in a different sense).  Let’s try to understanding the worldview of the apostle Paul that leads to his understanding of the fallen, sin-infected human condition.  

Paul presumes that there is a sovereign Creator God who has made the world and human beings with a set purpose and this creator has designed the world to operate according to an established moral order.  Perhaps an illustration or two will help us grasp this foundational truth.

Remember the first time you played a new board game — say “Monopoly”?  You open the box and find an assortment of game pieces and a board with curious markings and names on it.  Now, imagine for a moment that you are with a group of friends who have also never played the game.  What do you need to get started? You better hope that the game creator/manufacturer included some instructions to explain the game’s purpose and rules that govern the proper way of playing (e.g., Who goes first? How do you win?  How do you play fair? What behavior qualifies cheating? etc.).  We all know that the game was designed with a set objective, rules and so on. The game is most enjoyable and fun when everybody knows how to play by the rules and nobody tries to cheat and ruin the game.

A biblical worldview believes God, much like Parker Bros, has created the world and human beings with a set purpose and has established certain moral guidelines and proper behavior to govern human existence and maximize enjoyment and bring glory to the Creator.  Sin is tantamount to human beings refusing to play the game of life according to the divine rules and established purposes of God. Put simplistically, Romans 1 describes sin-infected human beings like a room full of children digging carelessly in the Monopoly box, tossing the pieces around thoughtlessly, making up our own rules and playing our own game.  We’re rolling dice, moving pieces around the board, exchanging money at will but no one seems interested in learning how to play the actual game as it was designed to be played according to the divine instructions in the box. To paraphrase Romans 1:18-20: “Although they know the instructions are in the box, they ignore them and instead make up their own rules to play by.”

Sin = living (or playing the game of life) in a way that disregards God’s established “instructions” and “set purposes” human life. Literally, the Greek word for sin is hamartia which is an old archery term meaning “to miss the target.”  While the Monopoly illustration is helpful to a point, it falls way short of capturing the gravity and destructive power of sin in real life.  A wild, restless card table full of kids “missing the mark” by messing up a game of Monopoly is not too big a threat to the moral order of the universe.  We might actually applaud these children for their imagination and creativity in making up their own version of Monopoly.  In real life such tampering with the divine order proves much more costly!  For life really isn’t a game — is it?

You can supply your own superior illustration: whether we compare life to performing heart surgery where if we don’t follow the proper procedures of our med school textbook we endanger one’s life; or the game of golf where if we ignore the OB posts, hazard markers, and avoid playing the fairways our ball ends up in deep trouble.  But the point is clear: God has established a moral order to the universe and human beings thrive when they willingly play by God’s rules.  These “rules” are not meant to inhibit life but to protect us from danger, pain, destruction, conflict and all manner of disordered living.

One last thing.  When we play the “game of life” according to God’s established rules, we will discover that the goal isn’t to win at the expense of others losing.  The very definition of winning in God’s game is that we have a fun, enjoyable time together playing fairly and cooperatively like good kids on grandma’s living room floor.

Now go and play nice!