Now that's what sin is about. Sin - I'll define it; sin is literally transgressing, or breaking the law of God, the Bible tells us. When you break the laws of God, that is what sin is about. He says don't steal. If you steal something, hold something back, mislead someone as to the value of something, and rip them off or cheat them - that is sin. There's a consequence.
You may delay the consequence, hide the consequence, conceal it for a little while, but there's always a consequence. And I'll show you, there are several consequences of sin that you may not have thought about or considered, but it's always there. Whether you believe in it or not, it's as inevitable as stepping off a building. Just the same, see? So if I step off a building, you all know what's going to happen; I'm going to fall on the ground. I'll hit splat on the ground, and if I can still breathe a few things I could be saying something like this - it's not my fault you know? [Laughter] No one told me about this. Not my fault. Actually it's just stupid that they don't make the buildings wider, so I could walk further out. [Laughter] Now you see, that's - now you understand how stupid that reasoning is, but when it comes to sin, we apply that kind of reasoning. When it comes to these things that God talks about as sin, so sin is - get it clear - sin is whenever you break God's law. Now whether you know the law's there or not is irrelevant. It's like when you drive down the road. It actually is, it says over there 30kms so go down there at 70km - whether you saw the sign is irrelevant. The cop's there, you're done. You're guilty. You broke the law, you pay the price, simple as that. Don't complain. Don't make excuses. You just did the crime, do the time. That's kind of how it works.
We understand - and something about that appeals to us. Have you noticed that? Especially when it's someone else that did the crime. We think they should do the time. It really appeals to us that. You notice young kids feel that way? They'll always do that. They'll point out someone else's crime, to make sure that they do their time. Have you noticed that they do that as well? There's an inbuilt sense of justice in us, and it's bigger than that; it's actually part of godliness. We have a sense of justice in us. We hate to think that people who do terrible crimes get away with it. It's not right, it's unjust. Something should be done - in fact our nation would be an unsafe place if there wasn't a consequence for bad actions. Imagine if everyone could drive around, do whatever they wanted, bump people off, knock people, mug people and they could do it with impunity, no consequence. What an unsafe place it'd be - be hopeless. You couldn't run it. It'd be absolute chaos and disorder - so we live in our life off this expectation that if something is wrong, there should be a consequence.
And if you want to raise good children, make them understand there are consequences for their choices. Give them the freedom to choose, but make sure they understand the consequences, and make sure they experience it, or you don't help them at all. Okay, so we've got the deal now. God makes the rules. He's got rules that govern the natural law, rules that govern spiritual world and our interactions, relationships, how we do life, and this is what He says very clearly; if you sin - sin is the transgression of the law, sins breaking God's laws, so I'll put it this way - sin is saying yeah, I know you're God, but I'm going my way. That's sin, and sin is a little more than that; it's going my way, and then it's doing it my way, which means what's best for me, so sin in its full manifestation is just living your life without God, going your way, doing it your way for your advantage, and using people to get where you want to get. That's sin.
Now it's got many ways it shows up, but that's what it is, and God says this about it; there's a consequence. You get to choose, but not the freedom of what happens. Now you see the problem is, we just don't believe in this, and so we've got some certain approaches to sin, so what we tend to do is this. We tend to find ways of trying to avoid the consequence, so first of all we'll just not call it sin; I have a problem. See sin's got a remedy. It's got God's remedy. A problem? A problem usually comes from sin, so what you're dealing with is the fruit, the root is usually sin, doing it your own way for your own advantage, ignoring God and hurting someone on the way. That's usually what is sin.