I find it interesting that most of the comments on this post seem to emphasise sin from a personal or relational perspective. I have found these comments insightful but would like to experiment with another perspective.

Do you think this personal sin has to be intentional in order for it to be sin (no sin before the law came), or is sin sin even if the individual doesn’t know it is sin. Or is it sin if the action was not inherently sinful because it was done out of ignorance of the consequences. In short, will a well meaning person inevitably sin in a fallen world, or can ignorance always be an excuse for the “holy”.

What about allowing natural evil to happen through our neglect. It is easy for people to ignore what could be done in famine areas or in the prevention of particular natural disasters (tsunami early warning systems or effective evacuation out of the way of hurricanes). Is allowing preventable natural evil sinful.

Also, a new type of evil has become obvious in the struggles that “minorities” and the third world have continued to face even while most personal attitudes towards them are no longer obstructive. Many would agree that evil can be propogated by organisations, even while no individual intended or was even aware of that evil. Is this sin, that our cooperative actions have the effect of the actions of a sinful person.

In response to these cases, I would like to investigate a more objective definition of sin.

As an initial proposal I would like to suggest that sin is destruction without a probable creative offset. As all creation requires the destruction of what was previous, not all destruction can be looked on as evil. However, I think that as a first approximation of a definition it does not do a bad job of describing what we see as sin.

The main problem for evangelicals is that because it is not a personal definition of sin, there can no longer be a personal punishment for sin, and it may also make personal holiness problematic. We live in community in the world. We are holy or sinful together. A fallen humanity makes a fallen world, and our personal salvation can not be complete unless we live in a restored community in a restored heaven and earth. Does this resonate with anyone?

As a corollary to this Jesus could not have come to be an atoning sacrifice for the personal sins of all who accept it. It even makes a nonsense of the idea of God as the omnipotent bookkeeper keeping a record of all of our sins.

I have only recently found Psalm 130 which explains the ramifications of my proposed definition quite nicely: God does not hold sins against us, he freely forgives, but more importantly seeks to redeem the sins of whole nations. For me, this was God’s aim through Jesus: to redeem evil by making that evil the basis of new creativity. He wishes personal redemption in our restored relationships with him (as emphasised in other comments), but also an a redemption for the whole world.