PRP 58 | What Actually is Sin? Big Words, Good God Series

Often we use a lot of “Bible words,” but if we’re honest, we don’t always know what they actually mean. Join us on a journey toward confidently understanding the words we read in Scripture.

In this first episode of our Big Words, Good News series, Pastor Lindsey, Pastor Connor, and special guest Chris begin unpacking one of the most misunderstood — and often avoided — words in the Christian faith. Starting in Romans 3:23, the conversation explores why Scripture says all have sinned, what sin really is, and why understanding it honestly is essential to understanding the good news of Jesus.

Together, they discuss:

• Why “sin” is more than just bad behavior
• How sin is connected to trust, autonomy, and relationship with God
• The tension between being made in God’s image and living in a broken world
• Why the doctrine of sin actually brings clarity — and hope — to our lives

If you’ve ever heard church language like sin, grace, or salvation and quietly wondered what those words really mean, this series is for you.

Because before the good news makes sense… we have to understand the problem problem it answers.

Subscribe and join us as we walk through the big words of faith — and discover why they truly are good news.

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:10  
You're listening to the pursue reality podcast from reality church. Each episode is a conversation about what it means to be real people pursuing a better reality in Jesus.

Unknown Speaker  0:22  
You

Unknown Speaker  0:27  
I welcome everybody to the pursue reality podcast. So good to have you here. And I am super excited because we are in a series on this podcast called Big words good news, and I have got some big guns in the room with me that I'm excited to have. I have got pastor Connor, Hey everyone. And I have got the Right Reverend, Chris,

Unknown Speaker  0:52  
I guess that's me.

Unknown Speaker  0:56  
Chris is actually my husband, so just full disclosure, that's how I made it on the show.

Unknown Speaker  1:03  
He married himself into the pot. And my name is Lindsey, and I'm one of the pastors here at reality church. But yeah, Chris is a member of our church, and I asked him to come on for this series with Connor and I because we're doing this great series on big words, good news. Really wanting to look at these big words of Scripture that we often run across, and we find that a lot of times as Christians, I don't know how it is for you guys, but especially for me, growing up as a Christian, pastor's kid, in church all the time, there was a lot of big words that we used in church. And when I got older, I came to a point of honesty that I actually have no idea what these words mean. I would sing them, and I would hear people use them, and I would quote scriptures. Well, I didn't quote many scriptures, but I would, you know, I would use them, you know, I'm saved by grace, and we are justified, and all these things that we would say. And if anyone actually asked me, what does that actually mean?

Unknown Speaker  2:12  
Blank stares, was that how it was for you guys? Definitely. I mean, you, maybe you're even reading your Bible, and you come across some of these words, and you're like, I think that's good news. I hope that's good news, but I'm not really sure what that word means. Yeah, I think that's something positive. Yeah. I so I got saved in high school and not in a Christian home, and then I went to a Christian college, and then decided to go into ministry, like, like, study ministry, and I'm sitting in class. It might as well have been Chinese. I have no idea what justification or sanctification and propitiation, yeah, like Grace, the law, like, I had no idea when they would say that these things, like I would, I mean, this is probably why I didn't do well in school. But like, I had to, I was, like, I didn't know these things until, like, I would got deep into Scripture and so, and scripture has a different language because it was written at a different time. It wasn't written in America in 2019, or some recent year. And so if you have ever, if you're listening and you're like, Oh yeah, there's lots of words, if anyone asked me

Unknown Speaker  3:17  
what that meant, then that wouldn't go well, then welcome to the club, and this podcast is for you. So what we're going to do is we are actually going to open our Bibles here on the podcast. Just imagine, and I got my Bible open here, and go to Romans chapter three, and in the next few series, I want to invite you to hit subscribe. However you're listening, subscribe to this podcast, not just because of our wonderful personalities, but I think you're going to want to listen to the series because it's going to be super helpful. And we're going to actually walk through a verse in the book of Romans, or the letter to the Romans, where the apostle Paul uses a bunch of these words that we're like, I don't know what those means. And we're actually just going to walk through that verse, and each episode we're going to pause and say, what does that mean? What is that big word, and why is it good news? And so the verse that we're looking at is something that's super common Romans, chapter three, starting in verse 23 and I'm just going to read a couple verses just to familiarize our ears, it says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ. Jesus. Okay, all right, there is a lot. And so this episode, we wanted to start with just the very beginning, when it says, For all have sinned, what? I don't know about you guys, but I don't use like with my non Christian friends, I don't talk about sin. I don't use that word necessarily. A lot of church people don't like to use word sin scripturally, but.

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
Basically. And we're going to start Chris with you. You're going to be our guide here.

Unknown Speaker  5:04  
What is sin? When the Bible uses that word sin? What does that word mean?

Unknown Speaker  5:11  
Well, I guess any good discussion of this would need to start in Genesis. And so, of course, in Genesis, one and two, God creates the world. Everything is good, and very good people are placed in the world, and they're made in the image of God, creating this, this place where God is dwelling with his people. Things are as it was intended to be, and as Adam and eventually Eve are in the garden, they're given a number of opportunities to do things. They're naming the animals. They're told they can eat of every tree in the garden except one. So they have many good options, maybe even hundreds, if you think of all the different kinds of fruit. But there is one thing they are told they cannot do, and God is also very good in this that he tells them why? That if you eat of this tree, you will die. So the garden is meant to be life. It's meant to be a place where they live, they thrive, they prosper, they don't want death. So there's lots of good choices. One bad choice that leads to death. So of course, then, however long Genesis one and two lasted, we eventually hit Genesis three, where they do the very thing that God asked them not to do. There's an interaction with the serpent that he kind of misrepresents God. Can you really trust what God said? Did he really say these things? And they end up doing the thing that God asked them not to do. So that would be the first sin. And so if you look just at that passage, there's a couple other words we could use for sin, that sin would be disobedience, that that this is something God told them not to do. They disobeyed Him. You could say that sin is a certain amount of autonomy that says, I know best, that they, instead of trusting in what God said that he was for them and he wanted them to live, they took matters into their own hands, and they said, We will decide.

Unknown Speaker  7:13  
And so at its basic level, I think sin is that it is, it's disobedience, it's a lack of trust. It's doing things that we feel are in our best interest when God says they're not. And of course, then later, as we go throughout Scripture, it gets fleshed out much more through the 10 Commandments that every single sin that is possible to commit, whether in action, thoughts, Word, or even internally in our hearts, would hit at least one of the 10 Commandments. So at this basic definition, that's, I think, how we would frame what sin is in Scripture, and that passage in Romans tells us all have sinned. So this is universal. This is not just Adam. This is something that is the human condition from Genesis three on. So, so you said there, it's an action, it's an internal heart attitude. It can be any of those based on the 10 Commandments, and it's a condition.

Unknown Speaker  8:15  
It seems to be a state. It's a state that we can Yep, yeah. It's state that that we are in, yeah, yeah, I love that because, well, I don't love it.

Unknown Speaker  8:27  
Love the explanation. Love the clarity of it. Clarity

Unknown Speaker  8:32  
it is, I think about it often in Scripture, one of the explanations of our relationship with God is a father with his children. And I think of my own children like sin is when I tell my child to do something and they don't do it, disobedience. And I think that's the most common way we think about it. But I love that deeper explanation. It's actually a lack of trust at its heart. Yeah, it's a, I think, think prodigal son story. It's the I don't need you Mom, I don't need your dad. Like, if you're thinking parental, like relational, it is, it is turning your back away from God. It's the God allowing us to turn our backs on him. Because even in Romans, one it says that they gave God allows us to give into our our depraved minds, and so, yeah, that's why sin has so many facets to it. Because even the word sin is this, this archery term that is missing the mark, that's that's actually the the definition of sin. It's missing the mark of holiness

Unknown Speaker  9:42  
of God. So there's so much words, thoughts, words, deeds, yeah. Like, there's so many facets to it. It's yeah, it's worshiping of ourselves. It's idolatry. It's, it's pride of ourselves. It's yeah, it's death. Like, ultimately, that's what it is. It's, it's.

Unknown Speaker  10:00  
Death because you're removing yourself from the Life Giver, the source of life. It's again, go back to the prodigal son story.

Unknown Speaker  10:08  
You are connected to dad, who provides all the things that you need. Which this story is in Luke 15, if you want to look it up later, but it's the sun, the sun saying, I don't need you, dad. I just want my inheritance. I want your stuff, and then going away and then losing everything because he was away from the Life Giver, or, yeah, the Life Giver, and death came upon him. And so the reason he was able to live is because he went back to dad. And so that's what sin is. Sin is,

Unknown Speaker  10:38  
I would say, a condition or plague of death that has been brought into this world that is not just only affected our morality, but has brought death like there was no

Unknown Speaker  10:51  
there was no disease in the garden, there was no cancer, there was no hurricanes, there was no nothing. So sin has just destroyed and catastrophic. Yeah, it's been catastrophic in every area of life. So I go ahead. Yeah. I mean, Paul kind of sums that up in Romans chapter five, when he says that through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, and sin and death spread, that it went to all that

Unknown Speaker  11:20  
the good and very good world that God created in Genesis one and two is still good. It's still valuable. People are still in the image of God, but there is a brokenness. People are broken. The planet is broken. This sin and death, this epidemic, have spread, and we will continue to see that states until the final two chapters in Scripture. The first two chapters are the way things are intended. The last two are the way things were intended. Everything in between is life on a broken planet. Yeah, I think that's I often think of it like a nuclear bomb, like feels like any other bomb. It kind of destroys that area that it hits. But if a nuclear bomb, it destroys everything, the ecosystem, the whole ecosystem. It just infects everything. And that's kind of what Paul is saying.

Unknown Speaker  12:11  
It's catastrophic all of us. It's catastrophic in that everybody has sinned. And it's catastrophic in that it affects every not just part of our lives, our relationships, our world.

Unknown Speaker  12:23  
So one of the things that I often heard, and I just want to bring up, it's so I think important to put the placement of this story in what you said, Chris, that it didn't the story actually didn't start with them taking the fruit. The story started with God creating them in his image, which means they have a value that cannot be counted. I think often, when I was growing up, the story that told for me, what is the story of Scripture is you're a sinner. Jesus came and He died for you, which those are all true. But I think that's really hard for some people that they hear from Christians that the story of Scripture is your basic identity is that you're a sinner and you're a piece of trash and you suck

Unknown Speaker  13:14  
Connor. Is this true?

Unknown Speaker  13:16  
I mean, kind of not really, kind of not kind of, not really. Well, I it was I like it changed my relationship with God when I realized the reason sin is so catastrophic is not because I'm a piece of trash. It's catastrophic because I am indeed the opposite of a piece of trash. I am still made in His image, and that means I have a value that is attached to God's value. I have a value that cannot be counted, and that's why sin is so devastating, is because God's most precious creation has become broken. We are not living in alignment. We're separated from Him. We have been infected by this disease, and he wants to heal that he wants to restore that?

Unknown Speaker  14:03  
Yeah. So I think that that's all true, and we would certainly have listeners that would be they need to be reminded of their primary identity is not that they're sinners. That is a huge part of it. Their primary identities, they're created in the image of God. But we also have listeners that will have been impacted by humanistic thinking and kind of our secular mindset right now that we sing songs all the time about the goodness of God, and I'm forgiven, I'm accepted, and we also have listeners that would be thinking, I am only valuable, I am not a sinner, yeah. And I think that that is we need to actually have this almost like this dual identity that we are. We are made valuable in the image of God, yet we are broken due to sin. And it's it's not one or the other, it's both. We have turned our back on this one that has been nothing but good to us. And so I actually.

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
Run across a lot more people today that struggle with actually embracing their sinfulness. They're much better at, oh, I'm valuable. I'm, you know, God loves me, he accepts me. That's we, to the extent that we don't even like to use the word sin, we will say character defects, or personality mistakes, types, or, you know that, or that was my trauma, yeah? Sorry, the victim mentality. Well, sin is trauma. Sin is trauma, yeah, honestly, it is.

Unknown Speaker  15:30  
But you're not going to talk yourself out of that. Yeah, you're not there. Therapy is not going to save you. Save you. It might reveal the root of your sin. Might help heal you. It might help heal you, but note like repentance and confession and coming to Jesus,

Unknown Speaker  15:45  
like I when I first became a youth pastor, one of the first things I was like, I can I need to know the Word of God, like and I started to dive into to the book of Romans. And I came across, like, if you read the first three chapters of Romans, and you actually, like, read it. Read it. You're like, I'm terrible. I'm trash. Oh, when? When is this gonna get back? Because at first he's like, Hey, I'm so glad to see you guys, Rome. I cannot wait to see you. We're gonna encourage one another, but the wrath of God, let's talk about let's talk about that. And I remember in my first like in my Bible that I had then I went through this list in Romans, chapter one of like it's in, in verse 29 they became filled with every wicked, wicked, evil, greed, depravity. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They gossip. They slander. God. Haters. Insolent, arrogant, boastful. They invent ways of doing evil and and they disobey their parents. And I just started circling the things that were true about me. Don't worry, I didn't circle murder. Well, but did you murder in your heart? But I but, oh, probably, yeah. Like, and then you read the Sermon on the Mount, and you see, like, oh, I cannot. I cannot. I don't think it's, it's necessarily a thing you can't live up to, but oh my gosh, how sinful I really am when you actually take a look in the mirror, don't follow the way of Jesus. Do not follow the way of Jesus. And so, yeah, I think that is, that is a part of our society and culture that we we do have to take a hard look at this, the sinful nature of our lives currently, I think, too, if we remember the verse that we started with that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the standard is God. The standard is perfection. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes we think sin is this, but it's, it's just, it's also the ways that we just are not like God. And that's part of our growth as Christians, is we want to look more like Him, not less like him. I like to kind of tell the story sometimes that, and I tease it a little bit by just kind of making a blunt statement, like I sin. I think I sinned more today than I used to sin. And people look at me like, What are you talking about? And when I try to unpack that is that, you know, when I first got saved, I knew there was, like, three things that were sin that I needed to stop doing. And so, like that my whole life was about, you know, growing in those three areas. And then, you know, we answered the 10 Commandments. And you know, so then you got 10 but it's like, the longer you walk with Christ, the more you realize just how broken you are to your core. And now, like, after 30 some years of walking with Christ,

Unknown Speaker  18:31  
I realized that I sin in ways that didn't even know were sin when I first became a Christian, but because I wasn't thinking about those, just thinking about the big things. So like this is that continual thing that for the rest of our life, we will be finding ways that we don't measure up to God's standard. That's sin. And it doesn't have to be this heavy, like, I'm a horrible person, but, but we realize I'm not like Jesus, and I I need to trust him to become more like Him, and I also trust him to receive His forgiveness for just how utterly corrupt and broken I am to my core, yeah, all the while still being in the image of God. I think one thing I would speak to too, if I could bring some good news to this,

Unknown Speaker  19:17  
this actually was really good news to me.

Unknown Speaker  19:22  
I I did grow up in a very secular culture

Unknown Speaker  19:27  
in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, where there are more pets than children. And you know, you're in a secular culture when the pets are treated better and the pets are treated better.

Unknown Speaker  19:40  
And I actually remember going through Romans and my when, like, really studying it at Bible school, going through and this was all news to me.

Unknown Speaker  19:50  
And I remember sitting at a coffee shop, I actually was reading Romans, chapter five, which talks about sin has spread, just as you know, one man sin.

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
So it spread to all, and I remember weeping. I just burst into tears, and I'm not a crier weeping because it made sense of my life, yes, and I had been told not just of my own personal sin. I was overwhelmed by that, but also as I looked around me, it actually made sense in my life, because my life is a total disaster, and the secular answer for that is people are just mistakers. People just kind of whoops, you know, but we'll just try a little harder. My life could not be solved by trying harder. My life in God, Scripture was the only one that told the truth about my life, that your situation is pretty catastrophic. Lindsey, and it's bad. It's spread. Everybody's involved. And I was like, Jesus is the only one who tells me the hard truth, yes, and he's the answer to and then there's an answer to this, and it doesn't involve you trying harder, no, and you can't fix this? Nope. And I knew I couldn't fix it, but it was the only one that was just like, you know, yeah, this, this fits the puzzle piece of the question of life, of like, Why is everything broken and sin?

Unknown Speaker  21:12  
The explanation of sin hits every socioeconomic every country, every tribe, every nation, every government, every political issue like that, that actually makes me

Unknown Speaker  21:28  
like have some ground to stand on and feel comfortable when I see the news or when I see a family member who's who's hurting, or or I've been hurt by somebody, or whatever, like, I understand that it is sin in the world. But even better, I know that there is an answer, and his name is Jesus, and He paid the price on the work we're getting, like ahead of ourselves. But like that, he paid the penalty for sin, which is death, yeah. And he did that there is hope, there is there is beauty. And I will also say to comment on some of the things that we've been talking about is like when, when you are in Christ, you are made an image of God, and you are now a saint, and you now, Paul even says, if you are in Christ, you now, it's not you who's doing it, it's your flesh. In Romans, seven. And so you might find yourself sinning and doing things that, oh my gosh. Why do I keep doing that? Well, Paul has the great little tongue twister of, I don't know why I do the things I do, but, but I don't do the things I do want to do, but it but I know now that I'm recognized that I don't want to do these things, that it's the sin within me, it's the flesh of that is still within me on this side of heaven. Yeah, I think understanding, having healthy perspective on sin, it helps to answer a lot of the why questions, especially people that have questions about God. You know, why is there pain? Why is there suffering? Why does God allow this that we need to remember the whole big story that when God created the world, it was good and very good. We messed it up. Human beings are the result reason that we live on a broken planet. And so sometimes when we ask that, why? Question, it's very normal to blame God, like natural disaster is called an act of God. Well, no, these things are not God doing them, they are actually a result of the brokenness that we brought that that we have to look in the mirror and say we are the reason there's abuse, we are the reason there's pain, there's suffering, there's poverty, like it's sin, and God stays the good guy. And actually that's we want that if we God isn't the good guy, then we have to trust in ourselves, and that doesn't lead anywhere good. So sin actually gives us an answer to the brokenness that we see. But the great thing, as Connors alluded to, is that in Genesis chapter three, soon as sin enter the world, is the first promise that Jesus will come and restore it was broken. So literally, as soon as we broke it, God said you broke it, I'll fix it. Yeah, and that's, that's some of what we're going to get to unpack in next couple verses as well, just how he fixed that.

Unknown Speaker  24:14  
So I think, yeah, we're going to go there. So this is the problem. This is the most depressing Episode You're going to listen to you.

Unknown Speaker  24:23  
But hope is coming, and we're gonna keep going through this verse and unpacking these words. And thank you guys for just helping us to understand this, to unpack this. And I hope, if you're listening again, hit subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to, Spotify iTunes podcast, whatever it is, and

Unknown Speaker  24:45  
come back because I really don't want you to stop at this episode and not hear the good news. That would be sad for me. So I just want to welcome you back to keep listening as we continue to go through these big words that are actually.

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
Good news for those who are in Christ, so I hope you have a good week, and thanks for listening.

Unknown Speaker  25:07  
Thanks for tuning in to the pursue reality podcast. Reality church is a local church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to learn more or get connected, visit us at pursue reality.org

Unknown Speaker  25:22  
you

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