Sin has been your downfall! (Hosea 14:1). Sin wants to destroy you, but you must not let it! (Gen. 4:7). We all dread committing the sin unto death (1 John 5:16) or letting some sin domineer or dominate and rule over us (Rom. 6:14; Psalm 14:13). We all have some sin to keep us humble as a thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:9) and easily besets us (Heb. 12:1-2). Some of us even fear some unforgiveable sin (Matt. 12:32) or doing some egregious or heinous sin that we cannot forgive ourselves for. All sin is avoidable if we are filled with the Spirit and is a violation of our own conscience as well as God's perfect Law and plumb line of the Word of God and even falls short of the conduct of Jesus, our Exemplar. If we refuse to repent, "Beware you sin will find you out!" Numbers 32:23.
I know sin is a killjoy word and is avoided in the pulpit; it's a thankless job to call people to repentance especially when you do not know of what. Nevertheless, we must call a spade a spade and not invent pretty names for it. For instance, if you take the label of the essence of peppermint and apply it to cyanide, you do not avoid a possible poisoning. People do this by calling sin a mistake, error, flaw, weakness, shortcoming, or peccadillo. Sin must be seen as our birthright and the virus inherited from Adam as we are born in solidarity with him and we sin because we are born sinners as Adam's legacy. Sin is our Declaration of Independence from God! So, the question on the pulpit: Whatever became of sin?
Many will admit no one is perfect or to err is human but deny they are sinners! Sin is defined many ways: whatever Jesus would not do; anything irresponsible, autonomous, rebellious, unbelieving, unloving, or disobedient to God, either in commission or omission. The Book of Common Prayer says sin is any want of conformity to or transgression of the Law of God. Any thought, word, act, feeling, desire, or reaction contrary to what God would or would not do. In hamartiology, we say that sin is by definition, "missing the mark." It has been called "the refusal of the love of God."
We fall short of God's glorious ideals and standards of conduct. Confession means saying the same thing as and agreeing with God about what we did with no attempt at coverup or blaming others, but taking full responsibility for our sins. We then renounce and denounce our sins and ask for forgiveness because of the blood of Christ and Jesus making intercession for us.
It is the Law that convicts and shows us we cannot keep it and brings us to repentance: "Indeed it is the straightedge of the Law that shows us what sinners we are." Romans 3:20 By the Law is the knowledge of sin; the Law was not given to save us but to measure us! We must realize that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." And as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Prov. 23:7.
Jesus changed the concept of sin by internalizing it; i.e., making sins of the heart (as Jesus condemned in Mark 7; Matt 15) just as serious and sometimes more so than just doing the action. Ovid said, "I know the better things and I approve them, but I follow the worst." Pierre in War and Peace by Tolstoy said, "Why is it that I know what is right and do what is wrong?" Even Paul in Romans 7 admitted he struggled still with sin.
There are degrees of sin and of punishment for them. There are no mortal sins that remove us from our state of grace in salvation, and there are no venial sins in the sense that they are not serious or harmless. All sins can condemn a person; if you break one part of the Law, you are guilty of breaking all of it. Actually, we should not limit grace because where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. (Romans 5:20). We are all sinners and should not compare ourselves; God doesn't grade on a curve!
Sin is universal and no one can claim to be sin-free or have reached some point of maturity without any sin (Prov. 20:9; 1 John 1:8,10). But we all have feet of clay with flaws not readily apparent and we should pray for a lively sense of sin because that leads to less sin! The more mature we are, the more we see our sin and we must see how bad we are to be saved! and we don't know how bad we are till we try to be good! What a catch-22! Soli Deo Gloria!