In the Story of Adam and Eve. God forbade them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
They could separate Good from Evil already. Since they knew that eating the apple was evil. However they did not truly know evil. Since one could only know evil after eating the apple.
What exactly is sin? The evil act required to get knowledge of evil or having the knowledge of evil itself (which would spiritually defile us)?
Thank you,
Fortunecookie
Martin Luther defined sin as "man turned inward upon himself", and I think that's a helpful way of putting it.
In Western theology (Roman Catholic and Protestant) the concept of Original Sin means that we bear the stain of the original sin--that is, Adam's offense--as Adam's children we bear not his personal guilt (a common misconception) but rather bear in ourselves the same sinful inclination as he himself had.
This is Sin not as a personal act ("a sin") but as a component of our basic human makeup after the Fall. We sin because we are sinful, rather than we are sinful because we sin. Sin precedes sin.
A helpful way the West has further described this known as concupiscience, that is, self-ward driven desire. The desires, the appetites of the flesh, twisted and bent toward oneself, bent inward, and thus away from God and neighbor.
In contrast God's commandments call us outward, they call us out from ourselves toward Himself and to our fellow man, to love God and neighbor. Sin, therefore, is missing the mark--not doing what we ought--and it is rooted deep down in ourselves, as inborn desire and drive that is in hungry pursuit of its own satisfaction and appetites.
This is often misconstrued as though the problem is natural desire or the natural appetites are themselves evil--the natural appetites for sex (intimacy and procreation), food, water, shelter, survival, etc--but it's not that these in and of themselves are the problem. it is the direction they are aimed that is the problem, namely they are aimed selfishly and result in the pain and suffering of our neighbor, causing injury in the world. The natural desire for sex is good and healthy, God commanded, "Be fruitful and multiply"; but the objectification of another, rape, self-centered sexual gratification, etc are a misdirected, twisted, inwardly bent misappropriation of the natural appetites.
Hence talk of the Vices or "Seven Deadly Sins": Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony. And in contrast, the Seven Virtues: The four "classical virtues" of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Courage, as well as the three "theological virtues", Faith, Hope, and Love (Charity) "and the greatest of these is Charity".
Thus sin is infraction of God's Law, of His commandments, of His commands that we love God, love our neighbor, that we seek what is good and beneficent for our fellow man, that we put others ahead of ourselves, etc. It is the outward, external calling to be just, to be righteous. Sin is every way in which we fail to be righteous before God.
Such sin arises from the bent and broken "flesh", a humanity and human desire bent, twisted, and broken under the weight of sin. This is also the meaning of "depravity", from the Latin prevare, "bent" or "curved", and thus the meaning of the Protestant (usually Reformed-Calvinist) language of "Total Depravity"; not that man is an entirely evil, malicious creature, but that man is in every facet of himself broken and bent inward toward himself. That includes the will itself.
That's why Sin is considered so nefarious and toxic. It's not merely the doing of the occasional "bad thing", instead it's the inward, natural inclination of the human person held heavy beneath sin's incredible weight. And, for example in the case of Lutheran Christianity, why we regard human ability not only insufficient to overcome it and be righteous, but that human ability is itself broken, bent, and shattered.
And thus what man needs isn't more Law, more commandment, more instruction on how to live a good and righteous life. Instead man needs an external agent, a gracious, merciful agent to come down, take hold of us, and rescue us--save us. To call out to dead, dry bones and call them back to life, and actually make them live. And this is what we believe God has done for us in and through Jesus, who by His death and resurrection has taken man, in all his sinful weakness, assumed our humanity in all its weakness and bore the brunt and weight of sin, death, and suffering; died, and then was raised up, taken out of death, as a victor over its power. Thus crucifying death in His body upon the cross, and raising up again as man over death, over sin, to live in the life and eternity of God. And that this Jesus, raised up, has been set before us as God's declaration that what He has done for Jesus He is doing for the whole world, and that this reality of resurrection and eternal life in Jesus is ours, by our union to Him, even now as we live in this mortal life, by God's promise and pledge, and to look forward to the Day when we are raised up, and God renews and restores all creation, new heavens and new earth, Age to Come, world everlasting.
This we call the Gospel. It is God's good word, the good announcement of what God has accomplished, and its preaching is for our own salvation; that what the Gospel promises it delivers, that what it declares it makes real. That it is the word of God spoken to us that makes dead bones walk again, that brings the dead to life. Which is why we call it good news--
Gospel. And that by it, what God's Law cannot do--make men righteous--the Gospel does do, by the righteous Jesus in whom the unrighteous are proclaimed righteous in Him.
-CryptoLutheran
