Sin (Sickness Problem vs Legal Problem)

“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)

“Leviticus, indeed the entire Torah, envision sin and uncleanness not merely as legal infractions or ceremonial status, respectively, but as ontological realities among the people, in particular within the tabernacle, the center of their life…[The Torah considers and treats] sin as a contaminant, at least at a ritual level. This idea challenges an understanding of sin as the transgression of a commandment or similar views that hold sin to be a primarily legal category. Sin in the Torah is not only a deadly disease but a contagious one that, unless it or the perpetrator is cut off from the people, will infect not only the sanctuary but the entire community. These two understandings of sin, the legal and the epidemiological, are not mutually exclusive. The violation of the laws and commandments of God, though requiring legal punishment, are remedied by rituals of purification and cleansing.” (Fr. Stephen De Young)

“Although David himself confesses that his sins, adultery and murder, were primarily sins against God, “Against You only have I sinned and done that which is evil in Your sight” (Psalm 50/51: 4), the problem the sins manifest are not primarily legal or covenantal. This double sin does not create a legal problem before God so much as it manifests a medical emergency of the soul. David had been pierced by the arrow of adultery and the spear of murder. David had been wounded–and wounded people wound others. A wounded soul contemplates sin, and what we contemplate eventually determines what we do. The remedy for David, and for all wounded sinners, lies in his confession and repentance, not so that God can forgive him in some legal sense of the word; but so that David can see reality as it is, so that he can agree with God (confess/ homolegeo/say the same thing as), and so he can begin to ask God for mercy and thus begin to be healed.” (Archpriest Michael Gillis)

“Imagine that you’ve been brought into a hospital from a terrible wreck. You’re in the ER and there are a team of doctors and nurses standing by with their amazing array of medical equipment. Also standing nearby is a team of lawyers, specialists in accident litigation. Whom do you want to talk to first? I use this illustration to emphasize the nature of the human problem: we are sick and injured. We do not have a legal problem. There is nothing that a team of lawyers can do to make you well or make you recover from your injuries. A hospital is a place for healing. It is not a courtroom. The Church is a hospital for sinners. It is a thought with various attributions – but it speaks definitively and correctly about the nature of salvation.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“As long as we think of sin and righteousness legalistically, we run the risk of thinking we are not sinning because we are following “the rules.” However, we actually are sinning in that we have developed an unconscious pride in following the rules so well that we are sinning through an attitude self-righteousness. This is a subtle form of the sickness of sin, like an undetected illness. We may not feel burdened by it, just like we may not feel sick when we actually are. This will keep us from attaining true peace through the virtue of Christ which He offers us through Himself. One day we may realize just how burdened we are because God, out of love for us and a desire for our healing, will permit burdens in our life until we wake up.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

“St. Cyril [of Jerusalem] describes sin as illness, but he reminds us that humans’ “wounds are not beyond the healing of the great Physician.” (Fr. Joseph Lucas)

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