Why is it so hard to talk about sin? Certainly, we can find it uncomfortable to tell someone outright that their actions are wicked. Worse, we know that sin leads to everlasting condemnation, which is a dark topic on which to dwell. Since the topic of sin inevitably reminds us that it is the cause of so many experiencing conscious torment in hell forever, it is understandable and, in some ways, right that we find sin difficult to discuss.
Nevertheless, we must remind people of sin’s consequences so that they will see their need for salvation and rejoice in the offer of redemption. Historically, confessional Protestants of all kinds have all been united around the reality that we must confront sin directly. This unity is rooted in the Protestant law-gospel distinction. The law demands obedience, which we have failed to perform, and we stand condemned before God if we stand before him on our own merits. The law says “do!”—but we have failed to do the requirements of the law. The gospel says, “Christ has done,” a message that is infinitely sweet because of the condemnation of the law. In other words, the gospel about Christ and his work is good news only and especially in light of the bad news about the law’s demands and our transgressions of the law.
Despite our historical pedigree, even confessional Protestants have struggled to emphasize the sinfulness of sin in recent years. A premier example has been how evangelicals have addressed the issue of same-sex attraction, especially with regard to the question of whether desires for sinful things are themselves sinful. Some have avoided designating sinful desire itself as sinful, but this omission is problematic. Although we certainly must be tender with those who wrestle with any temptation—no matter how culturally volatile that temptation may be—and must reckon with complexities in how to distinguish temptation from sin per se, we should not shy away from calling sinful desires sin. The category of “sinfulness” is not something that applies only to a higher order of moral problems like ‘bad sins’ or ‘enacted sins,’ but to all sin—whether sin of the heart, the soul, the mind, or the body. What can explain our hesitation to refer to sin and to emphasize its heinous nature? What has softened our discourse on this issue?
This essay argues that behind our decreased emphasis on sin is a diminished recognition of sin as a legal category, pertaining to our covenantal relationship with God. This setting aside of sin as a covenantal category has changed our understanding of what sin is, allowing us to dilute its seriousness and even avoid it. This essay focuses on two ways that this reordering has affected our discourse about sin: a focus on the corruption sin brings into the world, rather than our culpability as sinners, and an eclipse of our personal, God-ward responsibility for sin. Before we consider those two ways, we will outline the basic issues of thinking about sin as a covenantal category.
Situating Sin in Covenant & Law
For our purposes of considering sin as a covenantal category, we should remember that creation and covenant are intimately related. Among advocates for (at least some articulations of) classical Reformed covenant theology and among the best proponents of progressive covenantalism, there is a consensus that creation and covenant are bound together. God created Adam into a covenantal relationship.[1] We need not spend time arguing that connection here. We do, however, need to note how this connection brings a legal flavor to God’s original relationship with humanity.
1. Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 211–58; Harrison Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2024), 24–29; Harrison Perkins, Righteous by Design: Covenantal Merit and Adam’s Original Integrity (Reformed Exegetical and Doctrinal Studies; Fearn: Mentor, 2024).
A covenant always entails a law, and law is bound to a covenant. Both the law and the covenant are administered by a priest, such that a change in one (the priest) entails a change in the other two (the law and covenant). The author of Hebrews states “For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well” (Heb 7:12), and continues on to the culminating point in verse 22: “This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant” (Heb 7:22). Thus, we see that our covenantal relationship to God at creation has a legal dimension.[2] The particular contours of that dimension need not detain us at present. For now, it is enough to note that God’s way of loving Adam and Eve at creation did involve legal responsibilities on their part.
2. For more exegetical treatment of this issue in Hebrews, see Geerhardus Vos, “The Priesthood of Christ in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1980), 135–39.
Because covenants have a legal dimension, sin is also legal. The apostle Paul makes the point twice in Romans that death is the consequence of transgression. “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.” (Rom. 4:15) “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” (Rom. 5:14). In both cases, the Greek word Paul uses for “transgression” is one which always refers the violation of a covenant.
The purpose of these brief considerations of covenant is to show that sin has its context in a legal setting. Sin and transgression are the breaking of a law. Sin is wrongdoing. It violates a standard and goes against a norm. It is wickedness. All of these descriptions entail a legal context. However, sin’s legal context has been neglected in recent times, which sets up our next consideration.
Corruption over Culpability
Sin’s legal context means that sin brings guilt. It leaves us indicted, convicted, and condemned before the divine throne. We are criminals and deserve everlasting sentencing to our detriment. We are liable.
Sin’s legal consequences have long been part of the Christian framework. The legal framework has, however, not been the only consideration in our understanding of sin and its consequences. Westminster Shorter Catechism 18 rightly explains three aspects to what sin did to humanity when Adam fell: “The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want [lack] of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.” Sin leaves us guilty, lacking righteousness, and corrupted.
Modern discussions of sin have often prioritized the aspect of corruption at the expense of sin’s legal dimension. At a popular level, this focus comes out in the preference to talk about how we are all “broken.” This rhetoric can be challenging because, for one, it is true. Sin has brought corruption. It has distorted our ability to make good and righteous decisions. It has mangled our capacity to desire what it holy. It has ravaged our power to live out relationships well, to treat one another with true love, and to see others more significant than ourselves. Sin has truly warped all our faculties and fractured the once upright operating system with which God made us. In Reformed theology, this truth has been called “total depravity” because it affects our whole person and all our abilities.
The tricky part is when we focus on corruption to the exclusion of guilt. Intentional or not, a certain way of stressing our “brokenness,” as true as it may be so far as it goes, can squeeze out the legal aspect of our liability before God on account of sin. Since, as we have seen, our relationship to God has been covenantal since creation, we know that it has also always been legal. That means our standing as sinners has always been one where we are guilty before God. We are culpable for what we have done. How do these considerations shape the modern discourse in which it is hard to talk about sin?
Reducing Responsibility
A consideration of corruption, if isolated from guilt and a lack of original righteousness, minimizes the God-oriented problem of our sin. If we focus entirely on our brokenness to the exclusion of our guilt, we might easily suggest the impression that we are merely dysfunctional. Yes, we have our problems . . . but that is just “human nature.” To err is human, right? No one is perfect, so we should just be gracious with each other.
In some measure, this perspective is true, but only from the right vantage on sin itself. We are not perfect and need to be gracious to one another because each of us is a sinner. We do err, but not in an innocent fashion. We err because we are sinfully corrupt. Our wickedness is the root cause of so much of our dysfunction.
This view of sin as mere dysfunction also tends to leave the issue of sin at the level of how it affects our interactions with one another. Corruption is indeed a helpful way of explaining why we treat one another in terrible ways. It shows why wickedness is widespread throughout the whole world and throughout human history.
This horizontal emphasis makes sin out to be only an issue about getting ourselves together about how we treat one another. It places sin foremost in “systemic” issues. In other words, it depersonalizes sin. It removes responsibility from each of us. It pretends that we are corrupt because we are victims rather than because we are perpetrators.
That approach is an easier way to talk about sin. “Broken” is way more palatable than “wicked,” heinous,” or “despicable.” It reduces our involvement in sin to suggest sin is just swirling blindly around us.
The truth is that we choose sin. Sometimes we do so unintentionally. Sometimes we do so unknowingly. But many times we do so because we find wickedness more alluring than righteousness. If we want to know, “Why do bad things happen if God is good?” The answer is “Because you and I are evil and choose to do evil things.” We are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3).
We need to recover a sense of how sin also makes us guilty. We are each personally guilty because we are each personally responsible for our sin against God. The covenantal framework of human life before God reminds us that we cannot treat sin as merely impersonal and abstract. We have committed sins and transgressions against God by breaking his law. We are liable and culpable for all these infractions of the holy standard revealed to us in nature and Scripture.
Conclusion
We find it hard to talk about sin often because we have the wrong framework. We start with ourselves. We start from the perspective of the fallen world. Instead, we need to remind ourselves that God created us upright, innocent, and good. We did have the capacity to do what is right. We forfeited that ability by choosing sin.
The legal framework of the covenant of creation reminds us too that God is the ultimate ‘victim’ of our sin (loosely speaking, of course—God is not properly the victim of anything). The wrongs we commit are wrongs against God. We are not passive in our sin, as if it just happens to us. We are volitional creatures, who have chosen treason against the King and Creator of the universe. Within this framework, we see sin for what it is. And that framework also strengthens our bulwarks against slipping into sloppy descriptions of sin that let us off the hook.
Any discussion of sin has lots of bad news. We should not forget, however, that as crushing as this issue may be to talk about, Christ died for sinners. He did not come to save the righteous but the unrighteous. The gospel is for sinners. If we want the gospel to be for us, then we need to admit our sinfulness.
We can rejoice in this tension. Sin is bad news. The gospel is great news though. Christ has died to pay for our transgressions. He has covered all our wrongdoing. When we see the darkness of our sin and its guilt for how dark it is, the gospel becomes a bright-shining beacon of grace to all who come to Christ by faith alone, knowing their need for his mercy. Let us look to Christ, the Savior who is kind to sinners.
