SIN - WHAT IS IT?

Sin - What is it?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

"So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me." Loved ones, that's the problem, it's sin.

Now let me explain sin. Sin is living as if there's no God and it's living in dependence on the world and your ability with your mind to get from the world what you need. Instead of depending on God in faith on Him, you depend on the world and on your ability to manipulate the world to get what you want. That's what sin is.

All the church statements of doctrine agree on this one fact -- it's strange, they disagree on all kinds of things but they all agree in this one fact: that even in the regenerate man or woman -- that is, in the man or woman who was born of God -- even in the regenerate man or woman there continues within the power of sin in the form of the carnal nature. Now they all differ as to what you can do about it but they all do agree about that, that even in the person who is converted, who is born of God's Spirit, who has received Jesus as their Savior, they still find within them a heart that is unclean and that is dirty. It's a heart that is governed by sin, which is an attitude of independence of God and dependence on the world.