Church Teaching

The Bible presents to us several concepts of sin. These concepts according to Ian
Knox must be seen from the point of view of our covenant relationship with God in
Jesus.

The three concepts of sin in the Bible are:

1. “Missing the mark,” or “hardness of heart” which focuses on the offense inflicted
on another by failing to meet the obligations stated in the Ten Commandments
and the great commandment of love. To miss the mark means primarily to fail to
conform to the covenant relationship God has established between himself and
his people. God’s loving-kindness to his people is always there for his children to
respond to; sin is a failure to respond to that love. Love is often associated with
the image of the heart. This is why a failure to love was often depicted as a cold
or hard heart on the part of the sinner. Jesus himself disclosed sin in the depths of
a person’s heart when he said:

What emerges from within, that and nothing else, is what makes him impure.

Wicked designs come from the deep recesses of the heart: acts of
fornication, theft, murder, adulterous conduct, greed,
maliciousness, deceit, sensuality, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, an
obtuse spirit. All these evils come from within and render a man
impure (Mk. 7: 20-23).

Under this concept are the sins of omission and commission. Did we fail to feed
the hungry; to clothe the naked, visit the sick and the like (Mt. 25: 41-46). Did we
fail to aid the helpless, to speak out the truth, to befriend the lonely, to uplift the
lowly? If we failed in these, we have committed sins of omission. The sinners in the
parable of the Good Samaritan were those who failed to come to the aid of the
bleeding victim. He also condemned the Pharisees for not keeping the higher
demands of love, namely, justice, mercy, and good faith despite their doing all
the “right things” according to their law.

The sins of commission take place when we treat the other not as a subject like
ourselves but as an object. Sins of commission take place when we show that
worship of pleasure or money takes priority over the worship of God when we steal
and spread lies about others (Pennock, 1979).

2. Depravity and perversity, which refers to the defect of character or disorder that
weighs the sinner down. St Paul expresses this perversity of human nature when he
says:
 I cannot even understand my own actions. I do not do what I want to do but
what I hate… What happens is that I do, not the good I will do, but the evil I do
not intend (Rom. 7: 15, 19).

Have you promised to avoid an occasion that leads you to sexual sin, yet
weakness sets in and you fall again into sin? Have you made a firm resolve not to
take things that do not belong to you, yet temptation comes and you give in?
These are perversities of human nature.

3. Rebellion and transgression, which picture sin as a conscious choice that

Sin in the Bible is always understood as an offense against God caused by a false
love of self. When we commit sin, we turn away from God, we alienate ourselves from
other people and our own selves. We are not true to our nature as an image of God.
What we learn from the scripture, as Franz Bockle reminds us, is that sin is not simply a
transgression of some law. Sin or sinfulness lives more deeply within us. “All deeds of sin
are preceded by a state of sin that affects man at the core of his existence” (as cited by
Genovesi, 2003).

For Ian Knox, the Bible refers to a state or condition of sinfulness in which we find
ourselves in the world. We experience that evil from the moment of birth. We come into
this world with a strong “inclination to evil,” a tendency to self-centeredness. We are
influenced by the evil in the world in such a way that, in the course of our human
development, personal sin becomes inevitable (Knox, 2011).

Bockle adds that entering into the state of sin means that we deny ourselves to
God by simply refusing to acknowledge and return God’s love for us. We become
unwilling to surrender to God in faith, and we reject God as the center and foundation
of our lives. Sinfulness, then, is understood negatively as our rejection of God and God’s
desire that we live as lovers. We break our relationship of love with God. Usually, our failure
or refusal to love God is expressed in our failure or refusal to love our neighbors (as cited
by Genovesi, 2003).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes sin as a “failure in genuine love
for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (CCC 1849).

Pius XII once remarked that the greatest sin of our times is that we have lost the
very sense of sin. We must honestly face the possibility that this is indeed the case, but we
must also investigate other possibilities concerning the modern predicament. One such
possibility is that today we have a new sense of sin that receives its meaning from the
basic appreciation of Christian existence as a way of life lived in continual conversion. In
other words, our lives as Christians should be expressed in a daily, growing love
relationship in which we show concern for God and for our fellow human beings.

Vincent Genovesi, S.J adds that the tragedy of sin is never that God decides to
reject or deny the sinner but that the sinner decides to reject God. God’s love does not
cease; ours does. The covenantal relationship of love is broken by us, not by God, whose
jealousy in love is exceeded only by God’s fidelity. It is our duty and privilege, then, to
acknowledge that only through our love of God and others do we embody God’s will for
us, because it is love alone that sums up all the commandments. Moral life also requires
that we recognize in ourselves the tendency to sin and acknowledge ourselves as sinners
when we have done evil (Genovesi, 2003).

Indeed, sin is a reality. We cannot escape it, we must not ignore it; we must name
it, and we must confront it. Sin is alienation from oneself, and from God. It is this alienation
that needs forgiveness and healing so that we may be restored to wholeness. The central
part of Jesus’ public ministry was the reconciling of sinners with God. The sacrament of
reconciliation presents Jesus, not as a stern judge condemning our actions but one who
takes us to His forgiving Father for conversion and healing. It presents Jesus as a friend
who helps us change our hearts, attitudes, actions, and habits. We know, also, that Jesus
can help us to overcome our tendency to choose the wrong things. Through His power
and Spirit, He can give us the grace to choose what we ought to do even if we are
inclined to take the opposite direction. By confronting ourselves honestly and attempting
to lead a life of response to God and others, we develop and strengthen our loving
relationship with others and with God.