What is sin?

I've pulled together some quotes on sin to share with you today.

Sin is nothing more than putting myself first, serving myself as best I can. Sin is not first and foremost committing adultery, stealing, or even becoming involved in a crime. The first commandment is that we love the Lord our God with all our mind, soul, and strength (Matthew 22:37, Deuteronomy 6:5). It follows that when we love ourselves more than God, we are committing what might be the greatest sin. Sin is choosing to do what I want without doing it in submission to God's will and plan. (Erwin Lutzer, How You Can Be Sure You Will Spend Eternity with God, 35)

Sin always takes you further than you intended to go, keeps you longer than you intended to stay, and costs you more than you intended to pay. (Erwin Lutzer, How You Can Be Sure You Will Spend Eternity with God, 38)

Although the need to believe is urgent, we cannot put pressure on people to be converted until they are ready. We must present the gospel and let God do what we cannot. Luther, with perhaps a bit of exaggeration, said that we must descend into hell before we can ascend into heaven. That was his way of saying that we should not get people saved until we get them lost. (Erwin Lutzer, How You Can Be Sure You Will Spend Eternity with God, 83)

Go to God's Word and you will find that sin is the most pressing, the most compelling, the most imperative problem in human life and society. The most pressing problem is not sickness. It is not war. It is not poverty. Sin is the basic problem because sin has to do with a person's soul. Sin does not relate merely to a person's short years on this earth. It involves that person's eternal future and the world to come. ~ A.W. Tozer, Jesus, Our Man in Glory, 74

Sin is strengthened by the illusion of secrecy. (Sam Storms, To The One Who Conquers, 32)

The plain truth is, that a right understanding of SIN lies at the root of all saving Christianity. Without it, such doctrines as justification, conversion, sanctification, are "words and names" which convey no meaning to the mind. The first thing, therefore, that God does when He makes anyone a new creature in Christ, is to send light into his heart and show him that he is a guilty sinner! ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul's disease — you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfectremedies. I believe that one of the chief needs of the contemporary church has been, and is — clearer, fuller teaching about sin. ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

We will do well to remember that, when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness, the measure of our sinfulness — we are on very dangerous ground. ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

For my part, I know no stronger proof of the inspiration of Genesis and the Mosaic account of the origin of man — than the power, extent and universality of sin. ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

No proof of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, after all, is so overwhelming and unanswerable — as the sufferings and cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the whole doctrine of His substitution and atonement. Terribly black must that guilt be, for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction. Heavy must that weight of human sin be, which made Jesus groan and sweat drops of blood in agony at Gethsemane and cry at Golgotha, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!" (Matthew 27:46). Nothing, I am convinced, will astonish us so much, when we awake in the resurrection day, as the view we will have of sin, and the retrospect we will take of our own countless shortcomings and defects. Never until the hour when Christ comes the second time, will we fully realize the "sinfulness of sin." Well might George Whitefield say, "The anthem in Heaven will be: What has God wrought!" ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

Our sins are often as dear to us as our children! We love them, hug them, cleave to them and delight in them! To part with them, is as hard as cutting off a right hand or plucking out a right eye! But it must be done. The parting must come. "Though wickedness is sweet in the sinner's mouth, though he hides it under his tongue; though he spares it, and forsakes it not," yet it must be given up, if he wishes to be saved (Job 20:12, 13). He and sin must quarrel — if he and God are to be friends. Christ is willing to receive any sinners. But He will not receive them if they will stick to their sins. ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

Men will never come to Jesus, and stay with Jesus, and live for Jesus — unless they really know why they are to come, and what is their need. Those whom the Spirit draws to Jesus — are those whom the Spirit has convinced of sin. Without thorough conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Jesus and follow Him for a season; but they will soon fall away and return to the world. ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

There is a remedy revealed for man's need — as wide and broad and deep as man's disease! We need not be afraid to look at sin and study its nature, origin, power, extent and vileness — if we only look at the same time at the almighty medicineprovided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Thoughsin has abounded — grace has much more abounded . . .in the everlasting covenant of redemption, to which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are parties; in the Mediator of that covenant, Jesus Christ the righteous, perfect God and perfect Man in one Person;in the work that He did by dying for our sins and rising again for our justification;in the offices that He fills as our Priest, Substitute, Physician, Shepherd and Advocate;in the precious blood He shed which can cleanse from all sin;in the everlasting righteousness that He brought in;in the perpetual intercession that He carries on as our Representative at God's right hand; in His power to save to the uttermost the chief of sinners, His willingness to receive and pardon the vilest, His readiness to bear with the weakest;in the grace of the Holy Spirit which He plants in the hearts of all His people, renewing, sanctifying and causing old things to pass away and all things to become new —in all this (and oh, what a brief sketch it is!) — in all this, I say, there is a full, perfect and complete medicine for the hideous disease of sin!  ~ J.C. Ryle, Holiness

Sin is disturbing to manhood: sin unmans a man. Sin is sadly destructive to man; it takes the crown from his head, the light from his mind, and the joy from his heart. We may name many grievous diseases that are destroyers of our race, but the greatest of these is sin. (Charles Spurgeon, Power in the Blood, 10-11)

The Bible is the story of God's counteroffensive against sin. It is the grand narrative of how God made it right, of how he is making it right, and how he will one day make it right finally and forever. (Greg Gilbert, What is the Gospel?, 61)

Sin consists in nothing but this, that man determined to be something and would not allow God to be everything; and the redemption of Jesus has no other aim than that He should again become everything in our heart and life. ~ Andrew Murray, The Fullness of the Spirit

Unless we see ourselves as deserving of the verdict that Pilate gave to Jesus, unless we see ourselves a worthy of hell, we will never understand the Cross. Someone has said that it is difficult for us to embrace the cross in a day when personal enjoyment is king. ~ Erwin Lutzer, Cries from the Cross

Certainly all sin makes us ignorant. We have no idea of the greatness of our sin because we do not understand the greatness of our God. (Erwin Lutzer, Cries from the Cross, 42)

There is no unpardonable sin for those who come to Christ for forgiveness. For those who refuse Him, all sins are unpardonable. (Erwin Lutzer, Cries from the Cross, 46)

Either Jesus bears our sin, or we do. If the Father turned His face away from His beloved Son when He was regarded as a sinner, we can be sure that the Father will turn away from every sinner who stands before the Judgment Bar on his own merits. We are either saved by His rejection, or we must bear our own rejection for all of eternity. (Erwin Lutzer, Cries from the Cross, 103) 

No, the hardest truth to get across to this generation is what the Bible says about sin.
Sin is generally a snicker word: you say it, and everybody snickers. There is no shame attached to it. It is so hard to get across how ugly sin is to God. (D.A. Carson, Scandalous, 41)

Martin Luther noted that "the sin underneath all our sins is the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and that we must take matters into our own hands." (Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything, 118)

It is the bad news that makes the good news of the gospel so relevant. (Sam Storms, Introduction, Note To Self, 27)

If facing the facts is to be called a pessimist, I am willing to be called a pessimist. If in order to be an optimist, one must shut his eyes and call black white, and error truth, and sin righteousness, and death life, I don't want to be called an optimist. But I am an optimist all the same. Pointing out the real condition will lead to a better condition. (R.A. Torrey, How to Pray, 69)

When we see God as holy, our instant and only reaction is to see ourselves as unholy. Between God's holiness and humanity's unholiness is a gulf. And until a person understands the holiness of God, that person can never know the depth of his or her own sin. We ought to be shaken to our roots when we see ourselves against the backdrop of God's holiness. If we are not deeply pained about our sin, we do not understand God's holiness at all. Without such a vision of God's holiness, true worship is not possible. Real worship is not giddy. It does not rush into God's presence unprepared and insensitive to His majesty. It is not shallow, superficial, or flippant. Worship is life lived in the presence of an infinitely righteous and omnipresent God by one utterly aware of His holiness and consequently overwhelmed with a sense of his or her own unholiness. (John MacArthur, Worship, 114)

We don't often think of the confession of sin as worship, but it is. When we confess our sins, we are humbling ourselves before God, acknowledging His holiness, experiencing His faithfulness and righteousness in forgiving us, accepting any chastisement He may give, and thereby glorifying Him. In fact, confession serves the dual purpose of being an act of worship itself and of preparing the repentant sinner to worship. (John MacArthur, Worship, 178)

Original sin, as G.K. Chesterton observes, is 'the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved'. (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, 63)

I'm convinced that part of the reason many evangelicals have begun to lose their grasp on the cross is that we have lost sight of why we need to be saved. We've forgotten, and even in some cases deliberately disregarded, what sin is and how profound is its offense to God. (Kevin DeYoung, ed., Don't Call It A Comeback, 74)

There is only one kind of man--the man trapped in the total depravity of his sinful nature, inherited from his father Adam (Rom. 5:18). And since there is only one kind of man, there is only one kind of salvation--faith through the second Adam, Jesus Christ. (Kevin DeYoung, ed., Don't Call It A Comeback, 135)

There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Only four of them don't involve a fallen world: the first two and the last two--before the fall and after the creation of the new heaven and new earth. The rest is a chronicle of the tragedy of sin. (John MacArthur, How To Get the Most From God's Word, 148)

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible