What Is Sin According to the Bible?

Someone with anorexia may feel intense guilt if she eats lunch and conclude she’s sinned. Someone with blunted emotion may feel little or no guilt if they bully a classmate and may conclude what they did wasn’t wrong. Someone with cognitive distortions may really think they’ve lied when they told someone inaccurate information, even though they didn’t know it was inaccurate at the time they told them. I once spoke with someone who would repent to God in prayer if she unexpectedly walked by a group of people who were cussing in conversation, because she believed she’d somehow sinned just by overhearing the cussing. I used to plug my ears on the late bus heading home from school, because the bus driver would play music that glorified sex before marriage, and I believed it was a sin to listen to it, even though there was no way to get away from it and I wasn’t the one choosing to turn on that station.

A woman in psychosis may have cheated on her husband because she really believed she was married to the neighbor and he was her husband, and her current husband was just a friend. She comes out of psychosis at the psychiatric hospital after being put on medication, and is able to now tell the truth, that she is in fact married to her husband. She’s not sure how to make sense of all of this. Did she sin and commit adultery? She had never wanted to cheat. She didn’t even know she was cheating. But her actions really hurt her husband badly. He’s also trying to make sense of all of this. Can he trust his wife and should he stay married to her? Or is she untrustworthy and her actions are grounds for divorce?

How do each of these people determine if what they are doing is actually wrong, or these are just feelings or distorted perceptions they’re experiencing?

The Bible’s definition of sin never changes. It’s a core eternal truth. And the definition of righteousness or goodness (sin’s opposite) never changes either and is also an eternal core Bible truth. Whether you’re someone with depression who is trying to evaluate whether your depression is purely biochemical or chosen depression on your part, or whether you’re a perfectly healthy person without any mental symptoms, endeavoring to evaluate your thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to see which are sinful and need to be surrendered to God, the definition of sin never changes. It’s the same for everyone, and God is just and fair, and doesn’t altar His law, or make exceptions, and doesn’t pick favorites.

Once we know the Bible’s definition of sin, then we can plug in our unique situation and state of cognition into the equation, and see if what we’re experiencing is actually sinful in God’s eyes. The person with intrusive sexual thoughts can figure out if those thoughts are sin. The person with intense guilt from eating, can figure out if it’s actually a sin to eat lunch or if their mind and emotions are just playing tricks on them.

Because there’s an objective standard of right and wrong, we can compare ourselves and measure ourselves by that standard to see if we’re committing sin or if our mind and emotions are just out of sync.

Biblical Philosophy of Sin

What we really need is the correct Biblical philosophy of sin. It’s important that we get this right and clear up any misconceptions that we might have that aren’t Biblical.

What is sin according to the Bible?

Sin is how the fall happened, it’s the moral evil that entered the cosmos through Lucifer, and then later through Adam who brought it to this world, resulting in natural evil such as cancer and disease. It’s why Christ had to come and die to redeem us – it’s the crux of everything, or rather God’s law is, and breaking His law is the cause of disorder and destruction. What is it?

Sin is anything that goes against God’s perfectly loving character/nature. The Bible tells us “God is love” John 4:8, then it says “The commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet and any other commandment, are summed up in this one decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:9-10

God is love and his law is love. Sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4); love is the fulfillment of the law. Sin then is the opposite of love.

Anything that is not Christlike, not loving, not moral and good, is sin.

The 10 commandments contain the inherent rights of God and man. God, being the true God, the Creator who brought all things into being, and who died for man to redeem him to Himself, has a right to our worship for being the Creator, for being a perfect Standard; for having a character of perfect self-sacrificial love for His children, for giving His own life to pay our debt. To worship anyone or anything else denies God the love and worship that is his by right.

People have a right to being treated with dignity because they are beings made in God’s image. It would be wrong to treat a person the way you would treat a dog; it would deny a person their inherent right to dignity. People have a right to sow and to reap what they sow. To engage in work and reap the results of that work, whether it be monetary or otherwise – and not have their work stolen from them by someone who did not do the work and who has no right to the results of their labor. To steal from them is inherently immoral as it denies the rights of an individual.

People have to life – to not be murdered. This is one of the most basic rights. Not only does a murderer violate a person’s right to life when they kill them, but it steals from God who is the Giver of all Life and the Creator of that person.

Fornication is wrong because it takes from someone privileges reserved for marriage without fulfilling the responsibilities of being that person’s husband or wife. It merges two people into one flesh in a union that is designed for marriage alone. It is not merely a physical act but a spiritual union is created when two people have sex.

So you can see how the breaking of the 1st, 8th, 6th, and 7th commandments is a violation of inherent rights of God and man. And the other commandments similarly are inherent rights of God and man, but I won’t go into all of them here.

What this means is that right and wrong exist as principles inherent within the very fabric of moral reality, coming from the character of God Himself.

Some have made the argument that it’s only the heart that matters, and whether they keep the letter of the law – whether they do the exact actions depicted in the 10 commandments – isn’t important. It’s common for people to say “Yes, maybe I told a lie, but God knows my heart; He knows I did it for a good reason”, and to believe that it wasn’t really sin for them because their heart was in the right place, or because God understands their predicament and unique situation.

Some lovers have argued that they don’t need to be married to sleep together, and that living together for life unmarried is the same thing as getting married, that marriage is just a piece of paper. While this argument may seem to have weight to some people, some men have cheated on their wives and then claimed it didn’t matter or mean anything because their heart wasn’t in it. It was just a physical act, but their affection and their heart was with their wife.

This argument that our actions don’t matter if our heart isn’t in it has been applied to many different sins.

It’s really obvious in this second example that one cannot have love and knowingly break a commandment.

The people making this argument that their heart wasn’t in it, so it’s not sin, aren’t people in psychosis. They reveal they have a knowledge of right and wrong, because they know some kind of justification or argument for their actions is needed, because what they did was wrong. Someone in psychosis would argue something like that it wasn’t wrong to cheat on their spouse (and honestly believe it wasn’t wrong), or that they weren’t cheating by having sex with another woman, and that cheating is something else, usually a nonsensical idea.

This particular argument that it’s not sin for a person to cheat because their heart wasn’t in it, is a very typical argument seen in people who know right from wrong as a way to justify their actions. It shows a clear, logical, traceable motive, something you won’t see in people in full psychosis.

Selfish Motive Always Present When We Sin
Because each commandment has the same underlying principle of love, to break any commandment means the person has to embrace an attitude of selfishness in order to do so. The person committing sin promotes and advantages self at the expense of others, by violating their rights.

Thus motive is always present when we sin. The man who cheated on his wife, and claimed there was no selfish motive, is lying to himself. He may have become calloused, doesn’t feel like he’s done anything that wrong, and doesn’t know his own heart to see clearly the selfish motives there. His motive is clear to his wife though. He is willing to put his selfish desire for variety and pleasure, above his respect and love for his wife. He’s willing to harm her to take something that isn’t his by right. The motive is clear.

If someone steals $200 from you in a very respectful manner and with a kind expression on their face, it’s still stealing. It still wrongs you. Likewise the man who cheats on his wife, claiming to not have any feelings for the person he committed adultery with, he still becomes one flesh with the other woman, severs his union with his wife, and brings great pain and a sense of loss to his wife.

There is objective right and there is objective wrong. They are not subjective ideas and preferences in the minds of individual people – they exist outside of us. Stealing is objectively wrong. Adultery is objectively wrong. These things cause harm to other people and violate their inherent rights.

Those Who Worship In Spirit and In Truth

Jesus said that the Father seeks those who worship in Spirit and in truth. What He’s referring to are people who know Bible truth and believe it, and allow it to change their character so they have a heart that is in conformity to that truth.

The Father isn’t looking for people who know stealing is wrong intellectually, but don’t conform to this truth, and don’t have His Holy Spirit living within them to actuate them to holy desires, motives, and actions, and steal regularly and have a selfish character.

But neither is the Father looking for people who claim to have a heart of love without truth, without the commandments, like the man who claims he didn’t really cheat on his wife because his heart wasn’t in the act. Or the couple who claim they really love one another, even though they refuse to get married.

God wants people who love His Bible truths – the commandments being one of the central truths in the Bible, the very principles behind His own character – and who live them out because they are filled with His Spirit.

Letter and Spirit both matter. What you do or think, and the spirit you do it in both matter to God. And it’s impossible for someone who knows stealing is wrong, to break the letter of the law and steal, and yet keep the spirit of the law while doing so.

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24

Jesus explains that the 10 commandments are really 10 categories that encompass far more than just the literal breaking of the written law. For instance, hate is murder, and lust is adultery. (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28)

The moral law – the 10 commandments – involves all of our thoughts, motives, desires, choices, and actions. This law judges and evaluates every thought and desire, and God categorizes each as either holy or unholy, moral or immoral, good or evil.

Let’s say we make plans to buy our mom a card for mother’s day. That’s a good and right desire that keeps the 5th commandment about the importance of honoring our parents.

Or let’s say we think a mean thought about a school bully and want them to get a bad grade on a test. That’s a thought that breaks the 6th commandment about hate and murder.

So this moral law is very relevant to our lives. By it we have a knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20), and can know when a thought or desire or action is one that God approves of, and is right for a Christian to have, or whether it’s immoral and wrong for a Christian to have.

The Bible says the Word of God, which contains His 10 Commandment law, is – through the power of the Holy Spirit – “alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12

Thus we can use the Word of God to know right from wrong, and depending on God for help, His Spirit whose role it is to teach us all the Words of Christ, will teach us when a thought or attitude, or desire is a moral one or an immoral one.

God has given us a conscience, through the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts.

“They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)”
Romans 2:15

Because we have this conscience made possible by God’s Spirit interacting with our mind and consciousness, we can judge our thoughts and motives and actions to know if they are moral or immoral. We have a compass.

“…by the law is the knowledge of sin”
Romans 3:20

“…where there is no law, there is no transgression.”
Romans 4:15

“…I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
Romans 7:7

The Bible tells us that everyone has a general knowledge of right and wrong – even those who have never had access to the Bible to know the 10 Commandments or to hear the gospel. These people have a conscience in a primitive, general sense, and can be saved by responding to the Holy Spirit’s convicting voice.

(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
Romans 2:14-15

Thus even pagans in ancient China had access to salvation, and some of them will be in heaven.

But those of us who know the 10 Commandments have a fuller knowledge of right and wrong, and our conscience is thus more accurate, and the Holy Spirit can more accurately convict us of sin, and help us gauge whether our thoughts, actions, and attitudes are moral or immoral.

The same way that a baby Christian may know certain things are wrong, and not know other things are wrong, because they don’t yet have a solid enough knowledge of the scriptures, or the same way that people growing up in pagan societies such as ancient China can be saved if they follow all the truth they do know, even while ignorantly engaging in error, because what they don’t know isn’t sin for them, only going against what they do know would be sin, the psychotic person who loses their judgment and doesn’t know right from wrong, cannot be said to be sinning either when they do something the Bible says is wrong, if they’ve lost the capacity to understand God’s moral law.

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
James 4:17

To know whether a thought or attitude you’re having is in fact a sin or not, measure it against the 10 commandments.

First Commandment: Would this attitude or action place yourself, another person, or another thing before God? For instance, let’s say you really want to play hockey, but it will be time-consuming. You’ll end up spending all your energy and attention and time getting in shape and practicing hockey so you can win games. You come to the conclusion that you should only be putting that much attention, time, effort, and planning into God’s work, and recognize that playing on a hockey league would be having an idol.

You decide to skate for recreational purposes and for health reasons, on your own time, and not join a league.

2nd Commandment: Would this thought or action involve bowing down or serving someone who claims to stand in God’s place? For instance, bowing before a statue of Jesus, or confessing sins to a priest.

3rd Commandment: Would this thought or action involve doing or thinking something that would be disrespectful to God, portray Him falsely in a bad light, or result in living a hypocritical light?

4 Commandment: Would this thought or action go against God’s Sabbath and the purpose of His Sabbath? For instance, working on Sabbath or thinking thoughts about work on the Sabbath.

5 Commandment: Would this thought or action disrespect my parents and their authority? Would it fail to give them the love and attention that is theirs by right because they are my parents? Authority figures are also involved in this commandment.

Commandment 6: Would this thought or action harm someone either physically, spiritually, or mentally?

Commandment 7: Would this thought or action involve giving sexual attention to someone who is not my spouse?

Commandment 8: Would this thought or action involve taking from someone something that is theirs by right, or failing to give them something that I owe them?

Commandment 9: Would this thought or action involve distorting information, either by exaggeration, or omitting something that is central and important, or failing to give the truth in some other way?

Commandment 10: Would this thought and desire involve wanting or fantasizing about something that belongs to someone else and isn’t mine by right?

Our Conscience Not Infallible
However our conscience isn’t always perfect. If we have incomplete knowledge of right and wrong, our conscience will reflect our knowledge and understanding. It’s possible for a more mature Christian to have a better grasp of right and wrong than a baby Christian, for instance, and learning and growing in the Word of God is crucial for the Christian. And while our conscience is subject to error because we are fallible human beings who do not always have a perfect knowledge of God’s Word (and some people do not have access to the Bible), and only God’s judgment is infallible and perfect (1 Corinthians 4:4), God does give us guidance and knowledge to live a godly life in this world. To follow Him and obey Him and to be a faithful Christian. He gives us enough knowledge of moral truth to do that.

With the knowledge He gives us from His Word and the help of His Spirit teaching us His Word and giving us a conscience that aligns with His law…we can then surrender wrong attitudes, desires, thoughts to God, and repent of wrong actions and choices, and our High Priest will forgive us and change those immoral things about us.

While God’s moral law is an objective standard of right actions and thoughts, for a person to be said to be sinning, there are a couple other dimensions to this that the Bible specifies.

It’s a Sin to Suspect Something is Wrong, But Not Know for Sure, and Go Forward and Do it Anyway, Without Checking God’s Word
In Romans 14, Paul speaks of how we should not eat or drink something that could cause a brother to stumble. This can be something that is ok and not a violation of a commandment, but because it would cause confusion and doubt to the new believer and your brother in Christ, it becomes wrong to engage in it around that person. He explains that whatever we do that is not of faith is sin.

21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.

23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

What does this mean that whatsoever is not of faith is sin? Even though objective right and wrong exists and everything is either right or wrong (there are a lot of things that are right so we have a lot of moral options as we engage in life in this world), as human beings we don’t always have perfect knowledge of the scriptures or of right and wrong, and we may not completely understand what is right or wrong. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, only that we understand it imperfectly. We may for instance disagree with a brother about what is right and wrong. This scripture tells us that if there is any doubt that an action is wrong, doing it would be a sin. It’s also a sin to do something completely innocent around a brother who himself has doubts as this could cause him to engage in it before he has adequate Bible knowledge on the subject and could cause him to be tempted to go against his conscience and do something he has doubts about.

This adds another dimension to sin. It’s not merely the actions that are sinful, but also if one in their limited human knowledge isn’t sure but suspects something is sinful, then they sin by engaging in it. Tempting or encouraging someone to engage in something they have doubts about is also sin. We are each stewards of ourselves under God and we have a one-on-one relationship with Him, and an individual conscience. Therefore no person should ever assume the role of conscience for another person. To do this is to make oneself a god and to violate the human rights of another person, treating them as less than human.

It’s also true that if someone does not have enough knowledge to know something is sinful, or they are lied to, that it’s not a sin for someone to do something they really don’t think is a sin.

Mothers for instance from other time periods were told by doctors of their day that medical practices were safe that we now know to be very unsafe, such as taking mercury for colds and flues. These mothers weren’t sinning who gave their children these treatments because they didn’t know they were harmful and thought they were giving their children the best that medicine had to offer.

Now, for a mother to know mercury is a poison and hire a physician to give it to her child – would be a sin, because she knows it’s harmful and she’s giving it anyway.

It would also be a sin for a mother to worship the doctor and blindly do whatever he suggests, without doing her own research and praying to God for wisdom. Her child has been entrusted to her by God and she’s responsible for its well-being, not the doctor. Doctors are helpers not dictators. Therefore she goes against her responsibility of stewardship if she blindly listens to a doctor and obeys him like a robot.

There have doubtless then been many cases through history of people not sinning and yet causing harm without realizing it. Human knowledge is limited and we’re not omniscient. It’s also possible to do an inherently good thing with a selfish motive and sin. Giving money to help the poor so that people will praise you and like you, for instance, rather than doing it to actually alleviate suffering and caring about the sufferers. Paul talks about this when he says “if I give my body to be burned but have not love, what does it profit me?” showing that one can do inherently good acts from a selfish motive and it’s therefore not love.

So to not be sinning it’s not enough that we do inherently good things. Knowledge is also part of this, and motive is as well.

James 4:17 speaks again about this other dimension: “He who knows the good he ought to do and does it not, to him it is sin.”

The person must have knowledge that an action is wrong, or they aren’t sinning by doing that action. They also must have the ability to know and to reason, so someone who has lost the ability to reason due to a stroke or due to severe mental illness cannot choose to sin.

Jesus speaks about this concept:

“If you were blind,” Jesus replied, “you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
John 9:41

One must be able to “see” to do the right thing, in order for it to be a sin for them to fail to do the right thing.

Notice also in James 4:17 that the person must be able to choose to do or not to do, in order to sin.

There is not an instance in scripture where someone is declared guilty by God for something they didn’t do.

Fornication for instance is a sin, and rape is a sin, but being raped is not a sin. In the case of being raped fornication is happening and it is very sexual and it can certainly feel “wrong”, but the victim is innocent. It is only the rapist who is guilty.

25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.

Deuteronomy 22

Like murder which is certainly not the fault of the one who is murdered, so rape is not the fault of the one who is raped, and the guilt and sin lies only with the rapist. So you can see how something sexual and even violent and impure doesn’t make it a sin. It’s only if the person does that thing. If that thing is done TO that person against their will, as in the case of rape, the victim is innocent.

The Bible definitely tells us that a person can sin in their thoughts.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7

We can sin even in our attitudes and intents of our heart, our motives.

Repent, therefore, of your wickedness, and pray to the Lord. Perhaps He will forgive you for the intent of your heart.
Acts 8:22

21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Matthew 5:

Someone who desires to murder another – even if they never act on it – is sinning in the intents of their heart.

Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
1 John 3:15

So, it is not just our outward actions that we can sin with, but also our attitudes and intents and motives in our heart. Our thoughts.

However, even in our thoughts they must be chosen in order for them to be sin. There is not a place in scripture where someone is pronounced guilty by God for something they did not choose to think or to do.

Explain how we are born with a fallen nature and so we inevitably will sin, yet sin is active.

As in the rape example, things done to you aren’t sin on your part. Biological processes happening to you also aren’t sin.

This is the Bible criteria for sin. If you know it’s wrong, and you’re choosing to do it, it’s sin. Knowing it’s wrong, doesn’t mean that you recognize that the action or thought is on a checklist of things people consider wrong. It doesn’t mean that you’re aware society doesn’t approve of a certain action, or that you’ll go to jail if you do that action. I remember being in psychosis and thinking that lying was on this arbitrary checklist determined by society for no reason. They just decided not to condone it. No, to know something is wrong means you understand the underlying selfish principle of the action or thought. You can see that stealing from someone takes something that is theirs by right because they worked for it. You didn’t work for it; it’s not yours by right, and you’re wronging them by taking it from them when you never earned it or have any right to it.

When someone knows something is wrong and can see the underlying selfish principles inherent in that action, for them to go forward and do that action or think that wrong thought always involves a selfish motive.

If you don’t know it’s wrong and don’t suspect it’s wrong and you choose to do it it’s not sin. If you aren’t doing it and it’s something that’s happening to you, then it’s not sin.

This means there’s lots of things that can go on in your brain and body that aren’t sin. Biological sexual feelings and urges, that feel very sexual, aren’t lust and aren’t sin, for instance. If they were then every kid going through puberty would be sinning merely by developing as a sexual being and having sexual urges and feelings. This of course is not the case. God would never design us with a biological process that would cause us to sin by its very nature.

However, lust is a sin. So while it’s actually not a sin for a man to become sexually aroused if a woman in scantily clad attire walks past him, because getting physically aroused is an involuntary process of his body that occurs when he sees a woman with a lot of skin showing, and this is how God created and designed men, it is a sin if he then engages in active fantasy in his mind about the woman, imaging himself having sex with her. Both of these experiences may feel just as sexual as each other. Getting aroused is a sexual experience, and yet if he’s being aroused by something involuntary and not something voluntary, then it’s not a sin.

Similarly pastors don’t tell someone with a gay attraction that they are sinning by simply being tempted by that desire. It’s only if they think gay thoughts or act on those thoughts that they have sinned. It’s also not a sin to be tempted to be violent or to be jealous. It’s only a sin if you deliberately think a jealous or violent thought.

Very sexual or violent dreams can’t be a sin because the frontal lobe – the part of the brain involved in choice – is dialed down when we sleep. The emotional centers of the brain are kicked into high gear and this is why dreams are very emotional. And because the frontal lobe is dialed down the person will dream random, nonsensical, things without a moral filter. You may dream about having sex with someone you’re not even attracted to in real life, or someone violently attacking you, or other immoral themes, that are connected with emotions you felt that day or week in your real life, and magnified and exaggerated. The emotional parts of the brain do not filter and evaluate ideas based on their morality; they are incapable of doing that. It’s not a sin to have unconscious thoughts race through your mind.

It’s not a sin for someone in psychosis to hear voices that cuss at them or shout mean things. These voices are not under their control and they happen due to stimulatory neurotransmitters and inflammation causing overactivation of the auditory centers of the brain. The thoughts are part of the unconscious processes of the brain and aren’t controlled by the frontal lobe, thus they will be about both moral and immoral things and there will be no filter. It’s only the frontal lobe that distinguishes between moral and immoral things. The other parts of the brain do not discriminate. Thus if you were to overhear someone cussing, it gets stored as a memory and processed by the unconscious parts of the brain without discrimination. These parts of the brain do not tell you cussing is wrong. They just process memories, store information, and these memories and information can be activated when there’s inflammation present, as is the case in people in psychosis.

Sin is always deliberate and chosen, even in cases where it’s a sin of omission (meaning something that you should have done that you neglected), it’s deliberately neglected.

Sin Not Exactly the Same Thing as Character
Sin is different from having a fallen character. While having a fallen character is what causes us to sin, and it makes sin inevitable for us, one has not actually sinned until they deliberately think a selfish thought or do a selfish action.

Due to the fall we’re all born with a fallen, sinful character. But a zygote in the womb hasn’t sinned, because its brain hasn’t developed enough mental functioning to have will and choice, and to choose to think a selfish immoral thought. I’m not exactly sure the point at which a person’s brain is developed enough to choose to think a selfish thought, but at whatever stage of development that becomes possible, it’s after that that each of us deliberately think our first selfish thought, and incur guilt before God, and then the only way to wash away that guilt is through Christ at that point. There’s no other solution. And then we go on to think many other selfish thoughts where that one came from.

It’s true that as long as our character is imperfect, that it will cause us to sin. But sin is still deliberate because we’re the ones doing it, and we’re choosing in what ways we sin. There’s agency going on.

For instance, you can have a selfish character that wants to steal something, and yet choose not to steal. Or you can choose to steal. There’s agency there, and the act to steal is a willful act. Unconverted people often bite their tongue and choose not to sin. I’ve noticed it’s often the case that when they go against these sinful inclinations that they consider themselves to be good people for doing so, and this is where a lot of humanists err and think they are good people. Not doing bad things isn’t all that’s entailed in goodness. They are a far cry from actively working to promote good on the earth, selflessly laying down their lives for others, but they don’t realize all that is involved in true goodness. They aren’t looking to Jesus as the Standard of love and good.

Before conversion the current and general direction of our heart is one of selfishness. We might choose to respond to the Holy Spirit in some ways, and some atheists can do some nice things for example (every time anyone does something benevolent it’s due to the influence of God, whether they realize it or not), but the general nature of the heart is bent towards selfishness.

After conversion we get a brand new character that can love. We can not only refuse to steal when we feel like stealing, but we can actively care for others, and put the glory of God first in our lives. While we still have some selfish desires and inclinations – a lot of them – left in our character, the general direction our character goes is in the direction of unselfish love.
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Character is not something we form with unconscious processes, but with conscious ones. To choose to repent of sin, to resist sin, and believe and follow Christ, is done consciously. To choose to sin is also a conscious process. While our fallen nature is what predisposes us to a life of sin until we find Christ, each of our sins are consciously chosen and done using our agency. It’s not possible without Christ to choose not to sin, and yet when we sin it is consciously chosen and done. An unconverted person can often bite their tongue, or control their actions and choose not to do certain sins, but they don’t have the option of living a godly life except through Christ, and in their own power it’s not possible to be truly benevolent. Their desires and thoughts run in the channel of selfishness.

But while their thoughts and chosen desires – the ones we ruminate on and pine after and consciously think – are sin according to the Bible, desire is not sin according to the Bible.

Character Not Exactly the Same Thing as Sin
Character is not quite the same thing as sin. We form character by choosing to sin, and then we have a selfish one, but fallen people do not always choose to think the thoughts they desire to think or carry out the selfish actions their character is bent towards. They have some regulatory power over it, and some people choose to indulge in sin more than others, rapidly descending into a life of great evil, while others do not choose to go that far into evil.

The Bible says “after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin.”
James 1:15

So desire – or the fallen things our character is bent towards – is not sin. This is just the state of our character, it’s not active sin. However, if we allow desire to become pregnant – if we actively think about and lust and pine after our fallen desires – sin is birthed by this process. So what we are called to do as Christians is to put to death the desires of the flesh. Do not act on them, do not pine after them and cherish them, resist them, until our character is changed so that we are no longer tempted by them and desire holy things instead, more and more as we do this process more and more through life.

If we had perfect characters, then we would not have any fallen desires that could lead us into sinful thoughts and actions.

The Bible says temptation is not sin.

“each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their evil desires and enticed.”
verse 14

However, if our character was perfect, there would be nothing in us that was bent towards sin or enticed by it. So character plays an important role in all this, though distinctly different from sin itself.

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Now that we know what sin is, we can take this knowledge of what sin is, and apply it to various mental states that individuals are in. People we are counseling with and helping, or to ourselves if our judgment is good enough to self-evaluate. This must be done on a case-by-case basis.

The six main questions to ask are:
1. Was the thought, action, or motive actually something that breaks God’s law? Compare it with the 10 Commandments to be sure.
2. Did they know it was wrong?
3. Was there a motive (there will always be a motive if they knew it was wrong and could see the way in which it violated the inherent rights of people or God, so #3 always follows if #2 is answered in the affirmative)
4. Did they do it or was it done to them?
5. Was it an involuntary, biological process, or a chosen thought or action?
6. Did they have the ability to control their impulses or compulsions, or were they out-of-control at the time the action was committed?

Forensic psychiatrists do this line of work, and their writings can be very helpful. If an older man does a violent crime, for instance, assault, they have to evaluate him and determine whether he has dementia, and if he has dementia, they must also evaluate what stage it’s in. Has it advanced to the point where he completely lost agency, and it was impossible for him to control his violent outburst? Or, was he in the beginning stages of dementia, and still had the ability to control himself, and just chose not to, and gave way to his anger during a heated argument?

Similarly in a young person with psychosis who say committed a murder, it has to be determined if their psychosis was severe enough that they were in complete delusion and thus not guilty by reason of insanity, or whether their psychosis was mild enough that they knew what they were doing at the time the crime was committed.

Let’s take a girl with anorexia who passes away due to starvation. Anorexia can cause cognitive distortions, and can re-wire the brain’s motivational centers and reward centers so the person doesn’t get any enjoyment from anything in life except starving themselves, and they get reward from that, but there’s also a lot of false feelings of guilt and shame and fear that they feel daily, especially centered around food. Because even anorectics eat, they just eat less than the rest of us.

So there’s certainly compelling emotions of both reward and fear giving her motivation to starve, and there’s also confusing cognitive distortions where she may actually believe if she eats she’s sinned, and that not eating is being virtuous and living a godly life.

It has to be evaluated how severe the cognitive distortions were and also how severe the compulsions were for her to starve herself. Perhaps the compulsions were so strong to starve, that she entered into a state where she wasn’t actively in control. Or perhaps it’s discovered that she had more than just cognitive distortions and had full-on delusions that if she ate she wouldn’t go to heaven because she’d be committing the unpardonable sin.

It’s not uncommon for someone to have both psychosis and anorexia. So if the girl with anorexia was starving herself due to a psychotic delusion, it may not have actually been a sin for her to starve herself to death. If she had been a Christian walking with God in obedience before developing the delusion she may go to heaven.

Others with anorexia may have cognitive distortions and not full delusions, and if they starve themselves to death it would be sin for them and they would not go to heaven.

It doesn’t matter the mental condition, or the situation, sin is always defined the same way in the scriptures. So whether the person has dementia or psychosis, the same criteria will determine whether an assault a person did is sin for them or they are innocent.

Only God fully knows the heart of a person and their mental state at the time the wrong thought or action was done, but there are questions we can ask the person to help get closer to the truth, and make a good assessment.

One of the key things you’ll want to ask the person is what is the gospel? If they have heard of it, but can’t accurately define sin, the nature of man, the need for a Savior, and the way in which sins are atoned for by His blood, this can be a really good way to figure out if they’ve lost their moral perception.

My aunt, for instance, who had schizophrenia, went to the zoo and preached to the animals because the Bible says to “preach the gospel to every creature”. She tried to teach pets to pray. It was clear she didn’t know what sin and wrongdoing were, because she couldn’t see clearly that animals do not sin, and thus have no need of a Savior, and human beings alone can sin because we’re moral agents made in God’s image. We need to be washed clean by Christ’s blood because we are capable of making moral choices, and we’ve all made sinful ones and incurred very real guilt.

My aunt never committed a violent crime or anything like that, and she was always very good-natured and kind, but she did break laws involving trespassing, and she would leave food and drinks for people she believed were trapped in storage bins.

She wanted to help these people whom she believed were suffering, and she couldn’t understand the Bible concept of respecting the law and the governing authorities, and doing things in a way that is alignment with the law. She wasn’t connected with reality, including the moral law.

I was similar when I went into full psychosis. I remember caring whether people felt pain and suffered, and wanted to take people’s pain away, but I lost the ability to understand the inherent rights people possessed, and how lying was wrong. So I would lie to people, and at one point I stole money from my dad and didn’t think it was wrong. But I would also go online and try to encourage people with mental illnesses and lots of depression not to commit suicide.

My knowledge of right and wrong was becoming more primitive, more like a golden retriever than a person. I wanted to protect people and reduce their suffering, but I didn’t understand the importance of being honest and upfront with them and not lying to them or stealing from them.

Old Writings of Mine That Show My Logic and Moral Perception Were Slipping in 2012

I found some old writings of mine from the years of 2010-2012. I had been fairly stable in my health and moral perception from the years of 2009 to 2011. I wasn’t completely sane, but my psychosis was mild during this time. 2012 was the year when I was exposed to toxic black mold and began to see a decline in my moral perception, as well as my physical health, which culminated in my full psychotic break in 2016.

These writings below show a person who has mild psychotic thinking.

I’m going to post an old article, and then in red I’m going to edit it and point out the ways in which I now believe it to be wrong, and the faulty perception that I can see now after being treated.

As you can see from the article, the same subjects that interest me now interested me then, I just had logic that was off back then more than it is now.

Even when in full psychosis and trying to open dimension portals to let angels into this world to fight off demons, my brain was trying to think about the same topics that have always interested and concerned me: science, faith, God and the war of good vs. evil. I had delusional ideas which caused these categories to blur into one another i.e. I opened dimension portals with faith, rather seeing dimensions as a scientific idea and faith as a spiritual idea.

How to Know if Something Is Sinful?

How do you determine if something is sinful?
Does it tend towards life or death?
Must look over both the short term and long term.
The commandments are a short list, but the underlying principle is death or life; harm or help.

I got the first premise right here, but the second one terribly wrong, and since I grew up in a church that taught the commandments thoroughly, I would have known the arguments against premise two, and been familiar with them, but I didn’t embrace them because I couldn’t deduce they were true due to faulty moral perception.

Common Misconceptions
Lie: Something is sinful if organized religion classifies it as such.

Truth: In Christianity we believe God has the only true authority to deem something sinful or not. God Himself makes us aware that He does not randomly say or deem or declare. He gives arguments and while He doesn’t tell everything about Himself He tells enough that we can see His perspective. God’s criteria for sinful is if it tends towards death. While He doesn’t specifically specify everything that tends towards death, He does give some definite examples. These things are sinful. The rest is left up to the interpretation of the individual, looking at of course the criteria and using their mind intelligently to decide what is sin for them and what is not.

While it’s true that right and wrong is not determined by God’s church, but by God Himself (it’s actually his own character that is the standard of right), I lost sight of the relationship the church shares with God. How it is meant to obey and to teach His truth from the Bible, and lead people into godly living with rebuke and exhortation from the true doctrine found in the scriptures. It serves a vital place, and there’s true doctrine about the authority and place the church holds in relation to God, which is found in His Word.

You’ll see how I slipped from a true understanding of the Word, and started leaving it up to the individual to determine right and wrong for themselves, losing the moral perception to know that right and wrong are objective things.

Lie: I should avoid sin in order to please God.

Truth: The main argument in the scriptures for resisting sin is for your own benefit! and the combined benefit reacted upon society when everyone does this. This is in fact what “pleases God.” God does not ask you to do stupid things that repress you and cause you to carry a heavy yoke in order to please Him. Instead, like a father who is pleased when their child avoids a life of crime and pain and instead goes to college and builds a life of happiness and success for himself, so God is pleased when we take the higher, beneficial road.

While it’s true resisting sin benefits us, this is not actually the main reason to do it. Doing it primarily for self, would be selfish and would break the first commandment. Jesus summed up all 10 commandments by dividing them into two. 1. To love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind. He said this was the greatest. 2 And to love your neighbor as yourself. As I lost moral perception and it became blurry it became harder to see that people are to live for God first and foremost, and that we keep His commandments to honor Him first and foremost. This of course reacts upon us with natural benefit such as health and joy and societies that function well, but while these things are good, they aren’t our primary focus. God’s Name and His glory are the primary focus and greatest desire of the Christian. Jesus adjures us to “seek ye first the kingdom of God”, again showing God comes first and then others and self.

I come off very narcissistic with these comments from 2012ish. Bipolar 1 or Schizoaffective disorder which I was diagnosed with (initially it was bipolar 1 and now my psychiatrists say schizoaffective) shares overlapping symptoms with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. What a lot of people don’t know about narcissistic symptoms is that they aren’t always done with selfish intent. People with personality disorders while not usually in full psychosis (unless they also have psychosis on top of the symptoms associated with personality disorders), often have distorted logic and often lack insight and awareness into the fact they are coming across as selfish and cruel. The degree to which their logic is distorted and their insight into their cruel actions and words spoken exists, varies from person to person, with some having a lot better logic and a lot more awareness than others. You can lose categories of information in the brain due to inflammation and faulty neural “wiring” and it starts to seem like only you exist and God doesn’t really exist in the same way. I wasn’t trying to superseded God and had no malicious intent, my brain just could not really see the two categories of the commandments anymore, and they were blurring into one.

After I came out of psychosis and was effectively treated, it’s been painful to read through these old writings and to think of many of the things I said while in this narcisstic state. I recoil at reading them or hearing people mention them, and now have a sense of how shameful and wrong it is to exalt yourself in such a way. I can also see socially, how arrogant it comes across, something I wasn’t able to see when in this state. I thought people were being arbitrary by setting social rules that people needed to present themselves more humbly. My social cognition was not great at this time.

Why Was Life Easier as a Lost Soul?
According to scripture life should not be easier before coming to Christ. But many churches have laid such a heavy yoke on people that this is actually the case! The argument in scripture is that God liberates you from sinful practices that drain your energy and complicate life and sap your happiness. But many churches have so embraced control and the countless number of little rules and traditions that they make life a burden to people! Then they use guilt to tell you if you don’t do these things you hate God and are going to burn in hell.
God liberates the world represses.

During this time I was very into how churches suppress people and lay burdens on people. True, sometimes churches are legalistic and arbitrary. There’s varying amounts of Bible knowledge in different churches; they don’t all know the same things and some are ignorant on truths that others know. And so some can be legalistic and not know it’s false doctrine. Also I’m sure there are some congregations who are willfully embracing and teaching doctrine they know to be false, because sin is appealing to the flesh and false doctrine is a powerful temptation.

But in my writings I emphasize legalism way more than being lawless and liberal with sin. And this was during a time when by and large the prevailing error in churches was lawlessness and being overly accepting of sin. Also I’m becoming unable to see the church as a good thing. I start to believe that organized religion is man-made and that it wasn’t Christ who established the church. Due to how my mental illness is making me lose logic, I’m not able to rightly divide the Word of truth, and begin to see organized religion as immoral, and encourage people to stay away from it. I’m no longer able to see the good in organization and how needed and necessary it is. When I come out of psychosis with treatment, it is very easy for me to see that Christ established the church and not man. The gospels are crystal clear on this, showing Jesus calling the 12 apostles and appointing them with church authority, and establishing an organized body of believers.