Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Straying
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Romans 3:20
The Bible displays the Father's and the Son's standard in a multitude of word-pictures that reveal their nature and characteristics in word and deed. Just in case we have difficulty understanding clearly what sin is from the word-pictures of God's attitudes and conduct, He provides us with specific and clear statements. For instance, Romans 3:20 reads, "Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." He has made it even simpler by inspiring I John 3:4 (KJV): "Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." At its simplest, sin is a deviation from what is good and right. However, within any given context, the deviation and especially the attitude involved in the conduct are often revealed more specifically by other terms. It helps to be aware of these terms so that we can extract more knowledge and understanding. The most common verbal root in Hebrew for the noun sin literally means "to miss, to fail, to err, or to be at fault," and it is often translated by these terms depending upon context. It is chata' (Strong's #2398). Job 5:24 does not involve sin, but chata' appears in the verse: "You shall know that your tent is in peace; you shall visit your habitation and find nothing amiss." Here, chata' is translated as "amiss": Nothing is wrong; the habitation is as it should be. Chata' is also used in Judges 20:16, translated as "miss." Again, no sin is involved. Solomon writes in Proverbs 8:36, "But he who sins against me [wisdom personified] wrongs his own soul; all those who hate me love death." Here is a context that involves moral or ethical issues, requiring chata' to be translated as "sin." The person is failing to live up to the moral or ethical standard. Genesis 20:9 also contains it: And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, "What have you done to us? How have I offended you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done." The word "offended" is translated from chata', and "sin" is translated from a cognate. Abimelech charges Abraham as having missed the standard of behavior against him and his nation. Jeremiah writes in Lamentations 5:7, "Our fathers sinned and are no more, but we bear their iniquities." Here, the fathers missed achieving God's standard, that is, the level of conduct He would have exhibited were He involved in the same situation as they. "Iniquities" is translated from the Hebrew avon, which suggests "perversity." Leviticus 4:2 presents us with a different situation: "If a person sins unintentionally against any of the commandments of the LORD in anything which ought not to be done, and does any of them. . . ." Chata' appears as "sins," but it is modified by the Hebrew shegagah (Strong's #7684), which means "inadvertently, unintentionally, unwittingly, or by mistake." It can also indicate that "wandering" or "straying" is involved. These suggest weakness as the cause of missing the standard. The descriptor defines the sin more specifically, helping us to understand that God's judgment includes more than the bare fact that a law was broken. It more clearly delineates the deviation. David writes in Psalm 58:3-4: "The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent; they are like the deaf cobra that stops its ear." Also, Ezekiel 44:10 reads, "And the Levites who went far from Me, when Israel went astray, who strayed away from Me after their idols, they shall bear their iniquity." In both contexts, the people sinned through ignorance, wandering, and other weaknesses. Even so, it in no way tempered the effect of them as minor. The sins wreaked destructive results, even though they were committed by simple carelessness, laziness, indifference, or not considering the end.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sin, Christians, and the Fear of God
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Hebrews 2:1-3
What God has freely given us is of such monumental importance to our eternal well-being that one would think nothing could ever dislodge it from our minds. However, Hebrews 2:1-3 warns that God's truths can indeed slip from our minds. Through neglect, we can allow our minds to drift from the firm anchor they once had. Drifting away will happen, not because any of God's Word will change, but rather because the human mind has a propensity to allow even once-meaningful ideas and habits to diminish in importance, which leads to harmful changes in our behavior. We might object, “I would never let that happen!” But what happened to Solomon? I am not his judge; I do not know if he has lost his chance of salvation. But there is no doubt that God tremendously gifted him with understanding, wealth, and power, but toward the end of his life, he let things slip and drifted away from God and His ways. Drifting from what we once thought thoroughly lodged within us can indeed happen when we allow our focus to wander through neglect. This wandering from the way is a very real danger because it may be happening, and we remain unaware of it. It can occur subconsciously as we unthinkingly spend less time with God and His Word and more time engaged in this world's distractions. I remember swimming in the ocean as a boy and not realizing that the ocean's current was causing me to drift away from my parents on the beach. By carefully studying the shoreline, I realized that it was not the same as the one where I had entered the water. Only then did I become aware that I had drifted. A similar kind of unintentional drifting from God's truth can take place in our minds. Unless information from God's Word is consciously kept fresh within us, we will begin to stray! If we fail to work at keeping things fresh, we have a proclivity to forget them. If this were not so, God's warning would not appear in His Word. Even prolonged acquaintance with the truth can create drifting because we can allow our familiarity with it to produce an attitude of contempt. “Contempt” may be too strong a term in many cases, but this tendency is a built-in weakness that grows unless we take some purposeful action to counter it from time to time. When exciting revelations are new, they generate focused attention that keeps us alert in the hope that God will reveal even more to us, adding even more excitement. However, we must be careful because the new becomes old, and the exciting tends to dull over time. They become “old hat,” and we soon pay them scant attention. Then there exists the reality that most of us are hardworking and productive people. Some of us have a problem controlling the amount of time and effort we expend on producing material things; such people are workaholics who burn through time and energy they should spend in more spiritual pursuits. They consume their time in physical work, and that time, once used up in an activity, is gone forever. Past time cannot truly be redeemed. We can only “redeem” future time for its best use. So, too many of us allow time to drift away, spending it on relatively unprofitable things. We need to prioritize our time better, spending it on burning eternal things into our minds and hearts so that God's way is always our first response. The presence the word “neglect” urges us to pay attention because we can lose priceless understanding by slacking off in our necessary work to retain Christ's testimony and bring glory to God. Neglect means “to ignore,” “to disregard,” “to be unmindful of,” “to be slack, inaccurate, inattentive to, or slovenly inexact.” It is warning us that we will pay a high price for carelessness. What do we lose if we drift away by neglecting to follow our spiritual responsibilities? Hebrews 2:1-3 does not say what we lose by rejecting God's truths, only that we can drift away through neglect, by failing to take care of the responsibilities God has called us to perform. The author implies that by doing so, we trade an eternity of sharing life with the glorious and wonderful Jesus Christ for what? A momentary bit of excitement, a fleeting relationship with another flawed human being, a temporary chance of wealth, ephemeral prestige, or some other transient, earthly achievement? Do these sound like good trades?
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Thirteen): Hebrews 2 and the Next Five Years
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