We often hear from the faithful words such as “sin,” “to sin,” “sinner,” yet we seldom reflect on the true meaning of these words. However, when alarming words like “death,” “disaster,” “incurable disease,” and other troubling phrases that announce misfortune are spoken, we become actively anxious, unlike the passive perception of words related to “sin.” We believe this occurs due to a misunderstanding of the meaning and reality represented by the word itself. Speaking of sin, the Church reveals to us the cause of evil and suffering in the world: why innocent children get sick and die, why the entire history of humanity, which ceaselessly seeks happiness, is stained with wars, murders, and other evils that do not diminish with the advancement of scientific and technological progress but, on the contrary, increase; why do we get sick, suffer, and die? So what is sin? What are we talking about when the Church speaks of sin?
Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). The definition of sin by the apostle John is deeply ontological, not metaphorical. It would be extremely erroneous to interpret this word legally. Sin is lawlessness, a distortion of the law, that is, the order given to creation by the Lord, the internal arrangement of all creation, the wisdom in which the meaning of the world resides.
What then is this law on which everything stands? God is the Law and the Creator of all that exists, for everything stands by Him, and everything is for Him and in Him (Acts 17:28). The God of Christianity is not a self-contained monad, but a Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the life of the Church, God reveals Himself as the foundation of existence, personal, eternal life. God’s personal way of existing constitutes being (to constitute – to organize, form, and define the structure of human existence – all exists theo-anthropologically): God as Personality, is the hypostasis of being, that is, the mode of existence of everything. Scripture says that God is Love (1 John 4:16). This means that each of the Persons of the Trinity lives not for Itself alone but gives Itself to the other hypostases, so that all Three exist in love with One Another. The life of the Divine Persons is an interpenetration of hypostases, so that the life of One becomes the life of Another. The law of existence of personality is identified with self-sacrifice, self-denial, diminishing oneself to the end for the life of another. Thus, the principle of existence of all creation is the principle of personality. Humanity, created in the image of the Triune God, is a personality called to realize the Trinitarian way of being in its life. All creation, through the mediation of humanity, is called to enter into absolute union with God, to achieve the deification of its essence, that is, to enter into the Divine life, into the very life of the Holy Trinity, and become partakers of the Divine essence (2 Peter 1:4).
Only personality, and only in the act of freedom, can realize its life as love. If personalities refuse to emulate the Divine image of being and choose another path, then their existence does not achieve its purpose, that is, the fullness of life in God. The fall begins with the free decision of a person to refuse personal communion with God, to limit oneself to the autonomy and self-sufficiency of one’s own nature, affirming oneself without relation to another – to God and all creation. Thus, the root and source of all evil are pride, selfishness, self-identity.
Sin is a miss, a failure to hit the target, a defeat concerning existence and life, suffered by personality in realizing its destiny. This defeat in any case transforms nature, since it distorts and destroys it. Such a defeat was suffered by humanity when it chose the path of self-deification, and thus the path of death. As a result of the original sin of the ancestors, an irreversible process of decay and decay of nature took place, the end of which is death.
Sin is always a rupture of unity: of a person with God, of a person with another person, and in the very nature of a person.
“Ignorance of the law does not excuse responsibility,” – lawyers assert. Similarly, in the life of every person: ignorance of physical and spiritual laws does not exempt from the consequences (wounds) when they are violated. Whether a child or an adult touches hot iron, regardless of their knowledge or ignorance, both will get burns. Thus, whether I know or do not know, want or do not want – laws exist independently of me. While it is not necessary to know all physical laws, spiritual laws must be known by all, because they can be violated at any moment, unlike physical ones. Condemnation, anger, envy – all these reside in us.
When the Church says, “Do not sin,” it thereby affirms, “Human, by committing sin, you harm yourself, you injure yourself, you inflict wounds on your nature, you cripple it.”
When Scripture speaks of God’s punishment, it always indicates the consequences of one sin or another, for which, in the language of the Bible, “God punishes.” God does not punish anyone; we condemn ourselves to suffering by committing lawlessness. Gospel commandments are not a collection of legal statutes or prohibitions externally imposed on a person; they are natural laws of the life of all existing beings.