Sin (2) Ordinary Words

When Jesus and Paul were sharing the gospel, they did not use religious words. They used words that had a natural meaning in everyday life. The Greek word translated as sin in the English New Testament is “hamartia”. It means “missing the mark” or “failure to achieve a prize”. I think that our New Testament and our gospel sharing would make more sense if we used ordinary words to translate the Greek word “hamartia”, rather than the religious word “sin”. For example,

missing the mark
serious failure

Using these words would subtly change our message as they are not pre-loaded with shame and condemnation. They make sin more normal, which it is. Who has not failed to achieve their own standard? Who has not made a serious failure? Our tone should be sympathetic, not critical.

I am really enjoying reading John Goldingay’s translation of the Hebrew Old Testament called First Testament. I like the way that he avoids the English word sin in his translation. He used the words: waywardness, wrongdoing, and rebellion for the Hebrew words: awon, chattath and pesha, respectively. This conveys the meaning of the text in a way that is not religiously loaded to produce shame and condemnation.

I suggest that we follow this example in our efforts to share the gospel with modern people, who react negatively to anything religious. We need to listen more carefully to how we sound. The good news does not need a religious loading to be effective. It will actually be more powerful without it.

When a person who is not a follower of Jesus hears the word “sin”, they hear judgment and condemnation, even if the person speaking did not mean it, so we should be careful about how we use the word. Mostly we should avoid it. If we can’t share the gospel without any religious words, then our understanding of the gospel is probably deficient.