A young man writes in the ask, Pastor John, is it a sin for me to date a non-Christian woman?

What would you say?

I want to ask, what does he believe sin is?

If others, if I were talking to him here, before I would say yes or no, I would say,

what you think sin is, and here's what I'll be listening for.

In Romans 3, 23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So sinning is falling short of the glory of God.

What does that mean?

What does fall short of the glory mean?

And the word used to row means lack.

So sinning is lacking the glory of God.

Well, lacking in what sense?

I'm not supposed to be as glorious as God is.

Well, lacking in the sense of Romans 1, 23, probably where it says that sinners exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.

When they exchanged, they lacked it.

In other words, they looked at the glory of God.

They looked at images, maybe the one in the mirror, and they chose against God.

And thus they lacked God.

So sin, I would say, is a preferring of anything over God.

And sins, plural, are the kinds of attitudes and desires and actions and words that come out of us when we prefer other things to God.

When God is not our supreme desire, our supreme treasure.

So that's what I'd be looking for.

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