This post is going to be the start of a new series of building blocks. These building blocks will serve as the fundamentals of understanding who God is, what his creation is in existence for, how humanity has separated itself from it, and what God did and is doing to rectify that. We will also dive into how Christianity is an identity that results as a disposition of God’s actions toward creation.

What better place to start then the thing that we all are familiar with but overcomplicate, Sin. Sin has been part of our world since nearly the beginning. Yet, we still struggle with understanding what it is or why we even use that term. The word has been in use for so long that it has too many derivatives for us to work backwards from, as I sometimes do. So, for this post, we will work our way forward. That means we must start at the very onset of sin, the Genesis account.

In the origin account of Genesis, there was a moment in time were sin was not in the world. But through some choices that man made (we will get to that in a little bit), sin became part of the world and has been here ever since. So, what exactly is sin? The very first words that were used for sin come from the Genesis story and are therefore Hebrew. These Hebrew words are “Chattah” and “Chataah”. But what’s interesting about these two words are that they are speaking of an action that you take because of sin, or an occurrence that is the result of sin. Both words are derivatives and root back to the Hebrew word Chata. So why is Chata not the first occurrence of the word as you read through the book of Genesis? Good question. The book of Genesis was not written at the event of occurrence. In other words, Genesis was not written down until the linguistic skills of the Jewish people evolved to the point of written text. Prior to that point, these stories were passed on from one generation to another through oral transference. This means that when the text was written down, there was already some developed ideologies that were established with the intended audience.

This means the Chata is the starting point for what we know sin to be. This Hebrew word means “to miss” or “to go wrong”. What is really neat about this word though is that since it is so old (like really old), it actually has roots in the hieroglyphic nature of the Hebrew language. That’s right, the Hebrew language was once a pictorial language like the Egyptians and Mayans early writing systems. In fact, the modern form of Hebrew is still based off a stylized form of the original hieroglyphs. In Hebrew, the word Chata is made up of three letters/symbols that are “Chet Tet Aleph” and we can pull a deeper meaning out of that then what Strong’s concordance can give us from above. Chet is derived from the symbol for a gate or a fence. The meaning associated with this symbol is “Private”, “to separate”, or “to be cut off”. The second letter, Tet, is derived from a symbol that looks like a coiling snake and has a meaning of “to surround”, or “to encircle” (this can be read in a good way or a bad way, but implies “all of”). Lastly, the third letter is Aleph which is a stylized symbol of an ox. This symbol holds the meaning of “strength”, or “strong leader/head of the family”, and can often mean “God” (as the leader/father).

When you put all of “Chata” together into a pictorial statement, it is something along the lines of “To be separated from the entirety of God”. This is such a simplified take on the word when we overcomplicate it today with so much baggage that has been added to it throughout time. This definition also seems to check out with the story that it is tied to when we first see sin enter the scene. Remember that we had a perfect creation and then that whole serpent and fruit thing happened? In what has been termed “The Fall” of mankind (Genesis Chapter 3), we see the choice that man made, resulting in the addition of sin into the world. Or, more accurately, the removal of something from man and creation.

I call it a choice because at the time this event happened it was decision that made sin a fundamental attribute of this world. Prior to this, God’s creation had order and mankind had an unhampered purpose. The purpose of man can be found in Genesis 1:28 and the parallel list of “sin applied” purpose can be found in Genesis 3:16-19 (we can look at that correlation another time). God had warned them that if they chose to act against what He had commanded, then death would enter the world. We often associate this with just the human body but there is more to it then that. This is where the separation (sin) comes in. When man chose to put himself in a position to determine what was good and what was evil, he automatically put himself against God. Aside from disobeying a direct order, man’s choice was a little deeper then that. He took a stance that he did not need God to determine what was good and could do that himself.

The moment this choice was made, both Adam and Eve felt naked and ashamed. The moment they made that choice, they separated themselves from God and felt for the first time what it means to not be connected to God. You see, it wasn’t just death to the human body that occured, it was separation from God. In fact, the death of the human body was actually part of the physics that God changed when he cursed man and his own creation. The last part of God’s condemnation in the account is that man will return to dust (Genesis 3:19). So, corporeal death was not what God was referring to when he commanded them about not eating of the tree of good and evil. The death, or separation, he was referring to was the “separation from himself”.

The best way to understand this is to look at both Plato’s Concept of the Body and Soul, and the understanding of Paul’s spirt, soul, and body (1Thessalonians 5:23). Whether you know the philosophy of Plato or not, you inherently see his work embedded into everyday thinking now. In short, Plato worked through the reasoning that there is distinction between the body and the soul (mind). His work showed that the body is only part of this world and that the soul is what distinguishes us from the rest of the world. He goes on to explain the soul into three parts that basically make up Reason, Emotions, and Appetite (desires). Even though Plato was on the right track, he was still working in a framework that did not include spirit. That is the big difference between Plato and Paul. Paul understood that something was missing because he knew what that something was. Paul saw what completeness looked like, to have a physical body, an independent soul, and a connection to God through His spirit. But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.

So, “Sin” is the separation of man from God by removing his connection to him through the spirit. Without the connection to God, man was left to make decisions for himself, particularly decisions that are in opposition to God. In order to slow the inevitable spiral of destruction that man was headed down, God altered the physics of his creation to introduce death and decay (entropy). We actually see God do this a couple of more times through out Genesis. In Genesis 6:5, we see that man had reached a point of self-destruction that was so great that God stepped in and altered physics again with the flood. Thirdly, we see that man was still chiefly pursuing himself in Genesis 11 that we see God alter physics yet again to distribute the people over the face of the earth by changing their language. Throughout all of this time, we see that man is choosing himself continually (with a few exceptions) and that something has to change in order to direct mankind back toward God.

This is where the story of Abraham comes in. This is the first time that we see an intentional redirection established in man. Abraham knew there was something more to mankind and looked for it in God. In return, God established Abraham as the start of mankind’s return journey. Eventually, Israel is established in the blood line of Abraham and God introduces his law to them. The purpose of this law was to show the people of Israel what “Good and Evil” was. These people continued to try to keep this law (and still do for some), but ultimately they are not able to return to God without God repairing the separated spirit.

This is where Christianity picks up. Up until the life of Jesus Christ and the events that established Christianity (other topics we will cover in the building blocks series), there was no way for mankind to reconnect to God. Sin (the separation) was an established part of life and interwoven throughout all creation, including mankind. Through Christ, and eventually the Holy Spirit, we have the opportunity to make a choice of our own. Much like the first of mankind made a choice that caused all of mankind to be separated from God, we have the choice to realign ourselves to God through Christ and eventually be resorted to a completed form of Soul, Body, and Spirit.

To sum it all up, Sin is separation from God created by a choice. In other words, Sin is choosing something other than God; often this is ourselves.

• Building Block 1: We Overcomplicate Sin
• Building Block 2: Repentance, It’s Not About Feeling Bad
• Building Block 3: The Realignment of Faith
• Building Block 4: How Then Shall We Live
• Building Block 5: In The End, We Begin