What is sin? Maybe you’ve heard it said that sin is “missing the mark.” That makes it sounds like I was practicing archery and just missed the bullseye. Because it’s hard to hit the bullseye, right? Who could blame you for not being perfect? And if it’s so hard, why does sin bother God so much? Death seems like a pretty drastic consequence for not hitting perfection, so maybe there’s more to it than that. As it turns out, the Biblical description of sin is much darker than “missing the mark.”
If we’re going to talk about sin and why the world is so messed up, Genesis 3 is a good place to start. You’re probably familiar with Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden. What most modern Western Christians downplay in this story is the serpent (because it’s weird, right?). Just a surface reading of the text shows that the serpent is the clear instigator of mankind’s act of disobedience.
This is not to let Adam and Eve off the hook, but we can’t overlook the importance of the serpent in this story, who is later revealed to be Satan (Rev. 12:9). The story is analogous to an 18-year old big brother coming along to tell his little 5-year old sister that it’s ok to disobey mom and dad. (Adam and Eve did not have the “knowledge of good and evil.” Knowing the difference between good and evil is used to describe small children elsewhere in the Old Testament—Deut. 1:39, 1 Kings 3:7-9, Is. 7:15-16. The idea is that Adam and Eve were morally innocent like children. The heavenly beings, like Satan, were made as higher beings than humans—Psalm 8:5—and already possessed the knowledge of good and evil—Gen. 3:5, 22 NET or LEB.) The 5-year old is still responsible, but a child’s understanding in this case is vastly different than that of an 18-year old. Perhaps this explains why God curses the serpent itself but does not curse the man and the woman.
And so begins a long story of two races that collectively take credit for the corruption of the world: mankind and heavenly beings (BibleProject: Spiritual Beings). The role of men and supernatural beings in corrupting the world are tandem intersecting storylines that run all the way through the Biblical narrative (see The Unseen Realm or The Epic Gospel book for a deep dive). Sin is a collective, multi-dimensional, cosmic problem. When people sin, the forces of darkness are often portrayed as lurking in the background (e.g. Genesis 4:6-7, Ex. 12:12, Ezek. 28, Luke 22:3, 2 Cor. 4:4, Eph. 2:2, Jas. 3:15, and others).
And that brings us to Genesis 4, the first place in Scripture where the word “sin” appears. After Yahweh favored Abel’s offering and did not favor Cain’s, Cain gets angry. Then, Yahweh speaks to him.
“Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Gen. 4:6b-7 ESV
Cain is locked in a struggle with a crouching attacker called “sin.” Cain’s struggle with sin is described with the same language that Yahweh used regarding the contentious power struggle that would often take place in marriage (Gen. 3:16). You know the rest of the story. Abel is murdered. Read between the lines. Sin won. Instead of Cain ruling over sin, sin ruled over him.
Is sin an act or an actor? It is both. It’s not just an action that comes out of me; it is also a darkness that acts upon me.
So, who do we blame for the Holocaust? Hitler, of course (among many others), but also the spiritual forces of darkness. It was a collective effort. And who do we blame for the corruption in the world today? Humans, of course, but also the spiritual forces of darkness. It’s a collective effort.
Epic Gospel 