By Tony Williams
There is much said in the Bible about sin, and I would like to add what N. B. Hardeman often said in his sermons: “The Bible speaks plenty along that line.” He would then mention 1 John 3:4 which says, “Whoever commits a sin transgresses the law, for sin is a transgression of the law.”
That’s very simple. This is a positive, affirmative definition of sin. Here is God’s law: if you or I walk across it, or transgress it (the definition of transgress is “to walk across”), we violate God’s law by walking across it. We sin, positively and affirmatively. Many people who profess to be Christians focus strongly on not transgressing the law. They concern themselves with not committing an open violation of the law. They concentrate on what they don’t do and think, “I try not to do anything bad.” Many people think they know what the law of the Lord is and their greatest fear is not to transgress it.
But there’s another way to be guilty of sin. In this same book, I John, chapter 5 verse 17, the negative side of sin is explained further. John says, “All unrighteousness is sin.” Before we know what that is, we have got to break up the word unrighteousness. “Un” means not, and “righteousness” means the doing of that ordained of God. When I fail to respond to duties demanded by His Word, I have sinned, not by doing anything, but by not doing something.
All of us should recognize this and know that there are duties to do as a Christian. Christianity is not a Sunday-only obligation. If we come to every church service and try to refrain from committing sins, we are still lost if we don’t do the will of the Lord. Hence, there is a sin of commission and a sin of omission, and it is so vital to us that God has affirmed it and defined it both ways, positively and negatively. T. B. Larimore would say in his sermons, “I try to do as much good and as little evil as I can.” And so should we.