Sin is more than breaking rules

When Christians talk about sin, we often think first about things people do: lying, stealing, adultery, murder, hatred, drunkenness, dishonesty, greed. These are certainly sins. But if we understand sin only as a list of wrong actions, we have not yet understood the depth of the problem.

Sin is not merely something we do. Sin has affected who we are. This distinction is essential if we are going to understand why character matters. A person can stop one wrong behaviour and still have a heart that remains centred on self. A person can clean up his outward life while leaving the inward life untouched. A person can become religious without becoming righteous, and that is a dangerous possibility.

Jesus confronted precisely this problem. The religious leaders of His day were extremely concerned about outward behaviour. They knew the Scriptures. They followed religious practices. They were careful about appearances. Yet Jesus said to them:

You are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

That is one of the strongest warnings Jesus ever gave. They looked right, but they were not right. Their problem was not a lack of religion. Their problem was a corrupted character.

The heart of the problem

Jesus said that nothing that enters a person from outside defiles him, and then He explained where defilement begins:

What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.

Notice where Jesus places the source: within. The problem begins in the heart. The outward act is often simply the visible expression of something already taking place inside. Anger may eventually become violence. Lust may become adultery. Greed may become theft. Pride may become oppression. Hatred may become cruelty, and dishonesty may become deception. The behaviour is real, but underneath it is a heart that has become disordered by sin. Jeremiah asks the question that no one can answer by himself:

The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

That is why God must do more than modify our behaviour. He must transform the heart.

A man who kept all the rules

One of the most searching scenes in the Gospels shows this clearly. A man ran to Jesus, knelt down and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus pointed him to the commandments, and the man replied:

Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.

Scripture does not say that he was lying. He may have been sincere. But look at what happens next:

Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Jesus loved him, and Jesus did not lower the standard. He touched the one thing that the man’s outward obedience had not reached: the place where his treasure was. He had kept the rules and yet his heart belonged to his possessions. He went away sorrowful, and he took his possessions with him.

Saul, the first king of Israel, shows the same problem in the form of religious activity. When he spared what God had told him to destroy, he explained that he had kept the best of it to sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel answered him:

Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.

God was after Saul’s heart, not his offerings. Isaiah describes the condition many years later: a people who “draw near with their mouths And honor Me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me” (Isaiah 29:13).

The tree and its fruit

Jesus gave us a simple illustration:

For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit.

The fruit tells us something about the tree. If we continually see bitterness, pride, selfishness and dishonesty coming out of a person’s life, we should not merely ask, “How can we stop the fruit?” We should ask, “What is happening to the tree?” He goes on:

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

This is why Christianity cannot be reduced to behaviour modification. You can tie good fruit onto a bad tree and make it look different for a while, but you have not changed the tree. The gospel goes deeper. God wants to change the source. He wants to transform the heart from which our words, attitudes, decisions and actions flow.

The law reveals the character of God

This is also why God’s law matters. The law does not merely tell us which actions are prohibited. It reveals principles of righteousness: “Love your neighbour.” “Do not steal.” “Do not bear false witness.” “Do not covet.” “Honour your father and your mother.” “Do not commit adultery.” These commandments reveal something about the character God desires. But the law cannot, by itself, manufacture that character in us. It can reveal the disease. It cannot be the cure. Paul says:

Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Paul also guards us from treating God’s law as the problem itself: “Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). The law cannot save us, but neither is it opposed to grace. It reveals God’s righteous standard and exposes our need for Christ.

Christ provides the remedy, and then He begins to write God’s principles into the heart. That is the beauty of the new covenant:

I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; And I will be their God, And they shall be My people.

God does not merely want us to know what is right. He wants us to love what is right. That is character transformation.