Quotes of the Day for March 25, 2026 – Thoughts on the depths of what sin really is
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“In Christianity, hamartia means “estrangement from God,” or more accurately “failure to achieve one's destiny,” correspondingly the verb harmartanein means “to fall short of one’s destiny” - the original meaning was “to miss the mark.” These words were later translated as “sin,” “to sin.” The primary objective of human life is to unite with God; so any action or even thought that estranges us from God is a sin. As St. Paul tells us, “The sting of death is sin" (1 Corinthians 16:56); sin has no legalistic dimension, it is simply estrangement from Life.” (Archimandrite George)
“Adam’s sin is not a legal problem. Adam is legally correct: “Eve did it first and then gave it to me to eat.” The sordid nightmare of human sin can be broken into its discreet, individual components. But this takes us into the very depths of the problem: we do not love one another. Adam had not seen Eve as a legal gift when God presented her to him. “This now is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” he cried when he first saw her. That is the heart of love. But where is love when Adam stands before God beholding his own sin?” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The great advantage to thinking about God in legal terms, is that nothing has to change. If what happens between us and God is entirely external, a matter of arranging things such as the avoidance of eternal punishment or the enjoyment of eternal reward, then the world can go on as it is. In the legal model that dominates contemporary Christian thought, the secular world of things becomes nothing more than an arena, the stage on which we act out our moral and psychological dilemmas, waiting only for our final grades to be issued when we die…For sin is not only in human actions. It’s much deeper. It is in the heart, and like a worm in an apple, it can eat away the whole heart from the inside, even without visible external manifestations.” (Father Stephen Freeman, Dmitry Lapa)
“Indeed, if sin were merely a matter of paying a debt–which has been paid once and for all in Christ–why would one need to continually repent? But sin is not essentially a legal problem; rather, it is a wounding of the soul, a wounding of which I may be largely unaware.” (Archpriest Michael Gillis)
“To become a person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His love even to people we do not like and who do not like us is obviously not a matter of meeting a basic legal standard of outward behavior. To love our enemies as He loves us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of God. It is not enough to be kind to our friends, to those we think will return our good will, or to those with whom we have something in common according to conventional social standards. It is not enough simply to restrain ourselves from abusing our enemies or even to go through the motions of being decent toward them. No, we must become brilliant with the gracious divine energies to the point that we convey the merciful love of Christ to everyone. If we approach this sublime calling merely as a matter of obeying a religious law, we will either fall into despair or delusion about our ability to fulfill it.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
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