Just What Is Sin?

Sin was with us (mankind) since Adam made the wrong choice. It wasn't called sin, but was disobedience to God. We see time after time that he despised murder, homosexuality, lies and idol worship as well as other transgressions of His will. However, there was no standard for man to follow. Man's heart was evil and he just followed the desires of his heart. Those desires, thanks to Adam, were not God's will for man.
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What is sin? Sin is man's defiance of God's commandments (“Britannica Concise Encyclopedia”). Before Moses there were no written commandments. Was there sin? Yes! Man was punished for disobedience to God's will. Hence, I will redefine “sin” as “man's defiance of God's will”. In Exodus Chapter 20 God sets forth the “Ten Commandments”. Hence, the commandments are written standards of God's will for mankind. (Sin was already with us, but God wrote them down so we will be without excuse). If we examine those commandments we see that they break down into two categories: Honoring God an no other and 2) dishonoring God by doing what the pagans do. Honoring God is righteous. Doing what the pagan do is “sin”.

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Sin is exponential! One sin compounds and becomes many. We all know that a “little white lie” can become “a big black lie” as we attempt to cover ourselves from discovery. Likewise, sexual experimentation becomes fornication and adultery when we dwell in it. This works the same way in all aspects of disobedience! In short, we become slaves to our self-interests; slaves to sin. We are in servitude to the pagan God! We can see in the next verses that Pharaoh (symbolically Satan) burdened (enslaved) the Israelites with worldly tasks. This servitude is symbolic of “sin”:

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Exodus 1:8 “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. 9And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: 10Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. 11Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.”

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As Pharaoh is a picture of Satan, Egypt is a picture of sin. Whenever God or others refer to “deliverance from Egypt” the picture is “deliverance from sin”. Ezekiel shows us that Egypt is sin:

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Ezekiel 30:15”And I will pour my fury upon Sin, the strength of Egypt; and I will cut off the multitude of No.” (“No” is “No-A'mon” – Southern Egypt).

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The god of “No” was “Amon”. He was the sun god “Ra”. Likewise “Sin” (meaning muddy) was a city in Egypt (sin certainly muddies the cleansing water). “Sin” likely came from Ur with Abraham's line. Sin was the name of the moon god of the people. As you can see “sin” came from the worship of other gods and is in violation of God's will. The land of Sin was in Egypt and Egypt, thus, represents “sin”. We can look further in the “New Testament”:

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1 Corinthians 10:1 “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; 2And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; 3And did all eat the same spiritual meat; 4And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”

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The Israelites were in sin (Egypt) and by the grace of God they safely crossed the Red Sea. They were all “baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea”. "Baptized" is defined as submerged in water and is the sealing of our salvation. God is a represented as a “cloud” in “Old Testament” Scripture. Above we see that the Israelites were cleansed from their sin by water as God saved them from Satan (Pharaoh). Moses is a picture of Jesus (John 5:46 “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me”.) since the baptism of water was of Moses whose name means “drawn from (water)” in Hebrew or “Royal Son” in Egyptian. Both names certainly describe not only Moses, but Jesus since water represents the blood of Jesus!

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1 Corinthians went on with the significance of the Red Sea crossing! The Word was with Moses and the Israelites. The spiritual meat (rock/land) and drink (water/sea) represented the body and blood of Jesus. In being saved from sin (Egypt) they were getting a foretaste of communion with Jesus. They drank of the ”spiritual Rock” who Paul identified as Christ. The salvation experienced in the flight from Egypt is the same deliverance from sin which was provided by Christ's blood! Somehow, the prophet Moses by divine grace by faith recognized the salvation of God from Egypt as a picture of mankind's salvation centuries later.