HOW DOES GOD DEFINE SIN? (JER. 2:13)
Some people define sin as "missing the mark"- just as an arrow misses a bulls-eye on a target. Gods commandments are the target, and we miss Gods best when we sin.
Others define sin as "falling short" of God's perfect will. God desires that we live in wholeness and follow all his commandments;when we fail to do so, that is sin.
Still others desine sin as "trespassing." God designates certain areas of behavior as off-limits and when we tresspass into those territories, webecome subject to penalty.
My personal favorite definition of sin comes from jeremiah 2:13: "For my people have comitted two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of the living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns that can hold no water."
Cisterns are resevoirs dug into earth,usually out of solid rock,designed to hold water. A fountain, on the other hand, is an artesian spring, bubbling up from earth with an unending supply of fresh, pure water. But instead of choosing gods living water, too often we choose to build our own cisterns. To build is an act of the will. When we choose our way over God's,we reject the artesian spring for a well of our own creation. And the lord notes with sadness but with certainty, "It doesn't work.It can't. It's broken."
Jesus once told a sumeraratin woman by the well of sychar, " If you knew the gift of god, and who is is who says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would ahve asked him, and he wolud have given you living water" (john 4:10). in this way he used the same word picture developed in jeremiah to descrbe himself. Jesus has life to give, eternal and freely offered. His forgivnessand the eternal life associated with it- is from a fountain in which we can freely draw from forever, whenever we like.
We have a choice make . We can dig and dig, make cistern after cistern, and strive and struggle all we want- but it will never bring us fullfilment of forgiveness. or we can choose god's way.
Only God's forgivness, granted god's way, brings the results we need. Any time we attepmt to meet our own needs or accomplish anything without god, we sin and set ourselves up fo failure. We build broken cisterns that can not hold water. So why not rather go to the fountainand drink our fill?