Isn’t Sin Just "Missing the Mark?"
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 : By Hugh Williams
During Sunday’s Gospel Conversations class, I quoted a bit from a great book I read over the summer: Questioning Evangelism. The title does not mean the author questions the value of evangelism — rather, he advocates evangelism that is characterized by asking lots of questions. If you want a smart, fresh take on evangelism, I highly recommend this book. (Also see the review at 9Marks.)
Here’s the quote I read during our class, which focused on the gravity of sin and the fact that we can’t really understand the Gospel until we come to grips with the fact that sin is no small matter:
That answer [to the question about Jesus being the only way] must include both of these nonnegotiable truths of the gospel:
- God is more holy than we think.
- We are more sinful than we think.
…The second aspect of the answer, the depth of our sinfulness, needs clarification… Although most people are quick to admit that “everyone makes mistakes,” they can’t see what difference in makes. We must show that making a mathematical error in a checkbook is not the essence of sin; cooking the books or cheating someone is!
It doesn’t help that some Christians have tried to illustrate sin as an archery term.
“Sin is simply missing the mark,” they say. “The same Greek word for sin is used as an archery term, so we’re all just ‘target-missers.’”
Well, the same Greek word might be used, but the two concepts couldn’t be further apart. When the Bible describes the nature of our rebellion against God, it paints an uglier picture than our simply missing a bull’s eye (see Rom. 3:10-18). Rather than aiming carefully at God’s target, we turn our backs and shoot arrows everywhere else. Wanting to please ourselves, we ignore the true bull’s eye and set our affections on seductive targets that cannot satisfy, sanctify, or save. We are not primarily target-missers; we are self-centered false-target worshippers.
I wouldn’t suggest saying any of that to a non-Christian, but I would avoid the archery illustration. Following such faulty reasoning, a thoughtful seeker might wonder why God would go to all the trouble of the Cross simply because we aren’t spiritual Robin Hoods. (pp. 81-82)
About The Author
Hugh Williams is one of the Connections teachers at Grace Fellowship and is also one of the webmasters for the forGodsfame.org website. You may notice him playing bass with the music team on Sunday mornings, too, when he works hard on smiling while reading music and keeping rhythm at the same time. A native of the New York City area, Hugh and his wife, Krista, have lived in the Atlanta area since 1997.
More entries by Hugh Williams
12 Comments
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While I can understand the concern you are addressing, I think you are throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water.
I don’t know about the Greek word for sin, but in Hebrew, where the concept of transgressing God’s Law originates, the fact is that the word translated as miss in Judges 20:16 is the word sin. To sin is to miss the mark. The point in understanding this concept is not to capture the consequence of sin. The point is to capture the breadth of sin. We don’t only sin when we break one of the big 10 (murder, adultery, etc.). We sin any time we miss God perfect standard. So, while “sin is no small matter,” the slightest deviation from God’s standard, even small ones, is sin (see James 2:10).
The consequence of “missing the mark” is another matter entirely. Here it depends on the standard violated. Missing the target in archery practice is one thing. Transgressing the commands of an almighty God is quite another.
To say that “two concepts couldn’t be further apart” is simply not true. The author only sees it this way because he has conflated the concept of transgressing or missing with what is being transgressed or missed. Maybe this point is too subtle for many people and they get it wrong, but that doesn’t make the underlying concepts unhelpful.
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Missing the mark looks like a fallacy to me. The root word of sin in Greek and Hebrew is miss, but the word for sin is different, so the linguistics don’t say that sin is simply missing.
I don’t think I would explain sin in terms of what the law is but who is offended. I would explain that all sin is the de-godding of God or idolatry. It is worshiping creation in some form and not creator, in that I think Newman got it right.
Further, it is not what the sin is that is so offensive but who is sinned against. It is not the breadth of the sin that make it so grievous but it’s the height. I have been working on this analogy. If you were to hit one of my dogs, it would run away. If you were to hit me, I would hit you back. If you were to hit a lion, you would be picking your head off the ground. The sin is the same, but the power of who is sinned against is different(Luke 12:4-5.)
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I must not have communicated my point very well. When O’Ryan says “Further, it is not what the sin is that is so offensive but who is sinned against. It is not the breadth of the sin that make it so grievous but it’s the height.” This was the very point I was trying to make. I suppose I missed the mark.
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For the record, if explaining the original language leads your listener to conclude that sin against God is simply missing the mark (i.e., nobody’s perfect, no big deal), then I agree that you shouldn’t do it.
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I went OT since Eric sited a passage in the OT. Gn 4:7 as well as Gn 18:20 use Hamartia and the Judges passage uses Hamartano. The Lexicon used said the latter was the root of the former, though looking at the definition it seems they are equivalent. My bad.
The Hebrew for the same passages is still a valid point. Chatta’ahis derived from Chata’ so I don’t know, but that is what I found out.I am with you guys on the sentiment whatever the words mean.
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Using the Greek or Hebrew terms to describe sin as “missing the mark” is a fallacy called illegitimate totality transfer. Any given word has a range of meaning. The range of meaning of the Greek/Hebrew words spans a continuum from “missing the mark” in a literal sense to the more abstract concept of sin. The context in which the word is used in a particular text signals to the reader/listener which precise meaning is intended in each case. The problem with grounding the archery analogy in the “meaning” of the Greek/Hebrew terms is that it collapses this entire range of meaning into one narrow meaning. The archery analogy might be useful and valid to some degree (all analogies break down in some respects), but it is nonetheless fallacious to ground the analogy in the “meaning” of the Greek or Hebrew terms.
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There are many words that the Bible uses for “sin,” including the Greek noun harmartia and the verb harmartano. The most basic meaning of harmartia/ano historically, before the word group came to be used for “sin,” was the idea of missing a target or mark. From this idea, the use expanded to mean such things as “going astray.” It also came to be used metaphorically for “missed” intellectual “targets,” such as for being in error. It was when people began to apply this vocabulary to “moral” targets that the idea of sin came into play. For example, one may aim at honoring one’s parents, but fail to do so. In that failing, one has fallen short of the goal or “missed the target” of honoring his/her parents. In the case of sin, “missing the mark” is probably best thought of as “failing to meet the standard.”
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There is a danger in using past meanings of a word in order to establish later meanings of a word. For example, the English word “nice” used to mean “foolish, stupid” in the 13th century. This meaning of the word “nice” is completely obsolete among modern English speakers. To understand what “nice” means today, one would be much better off to look at how “nice” is used in modern contexts than to study the history of the meaning of the word.
Similarly, it would be preferable to study the usage of the harmartia word group in the NT and in the Septuagint in order to arrive at an accurate definition of “sin” than to study the history of its meaning. This is not to say that “failing to meet the standard” is a poor definition of the word “sin,” but rather that we cannot assume that this definition is accurate or complete simply because of its apparent connection to an older meaning used in archery contexts.
Eric Farr : September 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 pm