What makes a sin a sin?
Matthew 13:53 – 16:12
Usually when I talk about sin I focus on the condition of sin—the state of being separated from God. When I speak of the act of sin, I usually mean anything that has the effect of separating us from God. Consequently I seldom talk about lists of sinful actions.
Today’s reading, though, contains one of the listings of sin that we need to look at. In 15:19 Jesus lists a number of “evil thoughts” that come from the heart and defile a person. Each of these, whether committed or simply savored in the heart are acts that are sins.
There are similar lists elsewhere that vary a little, but this one is pretty typical, listing six sinful acts: murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander.
In our minds we quickly start ranking these as more important and less important sins—and invariably the “less important” sins we define for ourself is that that we most want to commit, whether we go through with it or not. The human ability to justify and rationalize is pretty much unlimited.
If we even look at an apparently easy one, most of us would be quick to say we would never murder someone. And that’s probably true in the sense of not deliberately doing something to cause another person’s death.
But what about economic and political decisions we make in which we support practices that we know—or could know if we wanted to—cause death and murder. At what point does willful ignorance become complicity?
Or to take what might look like the other end of the spectrum: slander? How often do we “like” or even share statements on social media that make our enemies look bad either through outright lies or through deliberate distortions of the truth. How often do we share the truth selectively to lead to conclusions that are less than accurate?
What about adultery and sexual immorality? Do we buy into society’s teaching that there is no right or wrong, only consensual or nonconsensual?
The one thing all of these listed sins have in common is that they, in one way or another, reduce other human beings into tools to be used, abused or cast away for our own pleasure or convenience.
To take a person created in the image of God and treat that person as a tool or a plaything cannot avoid damaging our relationship with the creator—or even lead us to looking at God himself as a tool for our own use.

Monday meditation

Proverbs 26:1-2
Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, honor is not fitting for a fool.
Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest.

Prayer focus
Lord, let me search the consequences of my actions and flee from sin in every form I find it.

-Rev. Mark Fleming