AN INTERESTING WORD

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,… For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our LORD.”  (Romans  3:23, 6:23 NIV)

An interesting word, sin. A century ago, our vocabulary was rich in synonyms for sin. Words like iniquity. Transgression. Turpitude. Depravity. Reprobation. And my personal favorite: peccancy. New Testament Greek had thirty-three different words for sin. Apparently we once knew our way around the concept.

You can learn a lot about a society by digging through their heap of discarded words. These days you don’t hear people worrying about their turpitude at the water cooler or sharing about their depravity during prayer request time…

We can wipe sin out of our dictionaries. If only we could wipe it out of our souls. As a culture, we can try to rub out the definition of sin, but the condition isn’t going anywhere. It cracks the whip on just as many slaves -- the entire population of the world -- as it ever did. If we fail to acknowledge its reality, there can be no mourning. And without mourning there can be no confession. And without confession we miss the richest blessing of God’s forgiveness and grace. 

-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me”


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