STRAYING FROM THE PATH

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard.” (Romans 3:23 NLT)

The word for sin in the Greek New Testament is hamartia. It means to miss the mark or to stray from a path. In English, the word sin carries a lot of baggage -- meanings that may or may not have been intended in the Bible. But in Greek the meaning is much simpler, and virtually all of us, religious or not, can see how it relates to our lives. Implied in the idea of straying from the path or missing the mark is that there is a path or mark -- an ideal that we are meant to live by. I haven’t met anyone who disagrees with this concept. All honest and thoughtful people will recognize that at times they stray from this path. In fact, the biblical story is largely about humanity’s straying from the path, beginning when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and God’s call for the human race to get back on the path -- to repent.

-- Adam Hamilton in The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus

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