By Professor Charles B. Williams, B.D., Ph.D., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.
Theodore Parker once said: “I seldom use the word sin. The Christian doctrine of sin is the devil’s own. I hate it utterly”. His view of sin shaped his views as to the person of Christ, atonement, and salvation. In fact, the sin question is back of one’s theology, soteriology, sociology, evangelism, and ethics. One cannot hold a Scriptural view of God and the plan of salvation without having a Scriptural idea of sin. One cannot proclaim a true theory of society unless he sees the heinousness of sin and its relation to all social ills and disorders. No man can be a successful New Testament evangelist publishing the Gospel as “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth”, unless he has an adequate conception of the enormity of sin. Nor can a man hold a consistent theory of ethics or live up to the highest standard of morality, unless he is gripped with a keen sense of sin’s seductive nature.
SIN A FACT IN HUMAN HISTORY
Paul has an extensive vocabulary of terms denoting sin or sins. In the Epistle to the Romans, where he elaborates his doctrine of sin, he uses ten general terms for sin:
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Hamartia; 58 times in all, 43 in Romans, missing of the mark, sin as a principle.
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Hamarteema; twice, sin as an act.
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Parabasis; five times, transgression, literally walking along by the line but not exactly according to it.
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Paraptoma; 15 times, literally a falling, lapse, deviation from truth and uprightness (Thayer), translated “trespass” in R.V.
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Adikia; 12 times, unrighteousness.
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Asebeia; four times, ungodliness, lack of’ reverence for God.
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Anomia; lawlessness, six times.
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Akatharsia; nine times, uncleanness, lack of purity.
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Parakoee; twice, disobedience.
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Planee; four times, wandering, error.
Besides these general terms for sin Paul uses many specific terms for various sins, 21 of these being found in the category of Rom. 1:29-31. Twenty-one equals three times seven and seems to express the idea of completeness in sin reached by the Gentiles. It is literally true that Paul uses scores of terms denoting and describing various personal sins, sensual, social, ethical, and religious. Is this not an unmistakable lexical evidence that the Apostle to the Gentiles believed in sin as a fact in human history?
Again, in all Paul’s leading epistles he deals with sin in the abstract or with sins in the concrete. In Romans 1:183:20, he discusses the failure of both Jews and Gentiles to attain righteousness. These chapters constitute the most graphic and comprehensive description of sin found in Biblical, Greek, Roman, or any, literature. It is so true to the facts in heathen life today that modern heathen often accuse Christian missionaries of writing it after they have had personal knowledge of their life and conduct.
In 1 Corinthians, gross sins are dealt with - envy, strife, divisions, incest, litigation, adultery, fornication, drunkenness, covetousness, idolatry, etc. In 2 Corinthians, some of the same sins are condemned. In Galatians, he implies the failure of man to attain righteousness in maintaining the thesis that no man is justified by the deeds of the law, but any man may be justified by simple faith in Christ Jesus (2:14 ff), and mentions the works of the flesh, “fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,” etc. (5:19). In Ephesians, he recognizes that his readers were “once dead in trespasses and sins” (2:1), and exhorts them to lay aside certain sins (4:25 ff). In Colossians, he does the same. In Philippians, he says less about sin, or sins, but in 3:3-9 he tells his experience of failure to attain righteousness with all his advantages of birth, training, culture, and circumstances. In the pastoral epistles, he rebukes certain sins with no uncertain voice.
PAUL’S EXPERIENCE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROOF TO HIM OF HIS DOCTRINE OF SIN
Paul was a Pharisee. Righteousness, or right relation with God, was his religious goal. As a Pharisee he felt that he could and must, in himself, achieve righteousness by keeping the whole written and oral law. This kind of (supposable) righteousness he afterwards describes and repudiates. “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh: though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Howbeit, what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I suffered the loss of all things and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil. 3:3-9, Am.Rev.).
His experience as a Pharisee in trying to work out a righteousness of his own showed him to be a moral and religious failure. This experience he reflected in Rom. 7:7-25 (So Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and most modern New Testament scholars, though Augustine and a few modern New Testament scholars think the passage refers to the experience of a Christian). “Sin, finding occasion through the commandment, beguiled me and through it slew me … that through the commandment sin might become” (be shown to be) “exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I know not; for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do … Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. So we see that Paul by his experience with the law was led to see that “in him, that is, in his flesh, dwelt no good thing;” that in his members is the sin principle enslaving him so that he “is sold under sin”, that is, under the sway of this sin principle. He thought the law could help him to be righteous. All it could do was to show him his helplessness as a sinner and drive him in his despair to Christ as his only Rescuer “out of the body of this death”. All the righteousness he could achieve was insufficient. Only God’s own righteousness, given through faith in Christ Jesus, could satisfy the conscience of the awakened sinner or be acceptable to God.