What is sin?

"When the Spirit comes he will prove the world wrong to be wrong about sin, and righteousness, and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me..."

When we think of sin, we think about breaking God's commandments, and this is right.  Yet we may not think about the first and foremost command that supersedes and summarizes every command:

Believe in Jesus.

Before we believed, we disobeyed this command, and thus we sinned the ultimate sin.

Another definition of sin given in scripture is that we don't do the good we know to do.  And what is that good:  to accept Jesus.  Yet another definition of sin in scripture is this:  whatever we do apart from faith.  Faith in scripture is the definition of righteousness, so doubt must be the definition of unrighteousness, or sin.  We keep getting back to the same things:

The good we know to do is to obey God, and God's command is to have faith in Jesus.

But we didn't do that at first.  We rejected Jesus, and thus the mercy and goodness of God.  Here we are, rebels against our Maker and Creator, worthy of the death that comes when a leaf falls from a tree.  Some fallen leaves are green, others are brown, and some are crinkled.  But every fallen leaf is in fact dead--separated from its source of life.  We are dead without our Creator, our source of life.  And that's our fault, because we rejected his offer or reconciliation.  That's what sin is.

Some of you who are reading have repented of rejecting God.  Some of you haven't.  

If you haven't, you can do that right now.  

Admit that you've rejected God.  

Accept God as God.  

Accept His Son Jesus as Savior and Lord.