The word sin means to miss the mark. We sin when we don’t achieve what God would like us to do. A selection of verses showing the serious results of sin.
The apostle James tells us that we sin as a result of our own natural desires. He also points out the consequences:
14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. 15 Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when it is full grown, produces death.
The apostle Paul tells his fellow Jews that they are no better than non-Jews because we are all sinners:
9 What then? Are we better than they? No, in no way. For we previously warned both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. 10 As it is written,
“There is no one righteous;
no, not one.
He also spells out the serious consequences of sin:
12 Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; so death passed to all men, because all sinned.
The book of Genesis tells us what God says when he passes sentence on the man through whom sin enters the world. The results are with us still:
17 To Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to your wife’s voice,
and ate from the tree,
about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
the ground is cursed for your sake.
You will eat from it with much labour all the days of your life.
18 It will yield thorns and thistles to you;
and you will eat the herb of the field.
19 You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground,
for you were taken out of it.
For you are dust,
and you shall return to dust.”
The apostle John tells us that we are deceiving ourselves if we deny that we are sinners:
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
These chapters have links to this theme:
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