ANALYSIS OF THE WORD SIN
It is by practice, discovery, remembering, and knowing; that we attain spiritual awareness of the one true Source of all that is.
Among the Ancient Greek Olympics, sin was an archery term. When the Archer would miss the bulls eye of the target, people would exclaim “hamartia!.” This term literally means “missed the mark.” On a metaphysical and mental level, what people think of today as SIN ... is a must have experience if we are to rise above ignorance and unknowingness.
Know this also: The Hebrew (chatá) and its Greek equivalent (àµaρtίa/hamartia) both mean "missing the mark" or "off the mark.”
One of the most commonly mistranslated Hebrew words is “chait,” which we will usually see translated as “sin.” A more accurate translation of the Hebrew chait is “error” or “mistake.”
People don't “sin.” People make mistakes. After all, we are all human. And the ancient Hebrew lesson was to learn from our mistakes. What we are to do is apologize, clean up any mess, and move on with life.
So now, the etymology of this word “
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We’ll now begin with the NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon:
Strong's Number: 266 (sin)
Original Word
(h)amartia
from (264)
Transliterated Word
Hamartia
Phonetic Spelling
Parts of Speech
ham-ar-tee'-ah
Noun Feminine
Definition
1. equivalent to 264 - amartano
a. to be without a share in
b. to miss the mark
c. to err, be mistaken
d. to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong
e. to wander from the law of God, violate God's law, sin
2. that which is done wrong, sin, an offence, a violation of the divine law in thought or in act
3. collectively, the complex or aggregate of sins committed either by a single person or by many
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In the Comedy/Tragedy of theatre, the word hamartia refers to a flaw or mistake that leads to a fictional character's downfall. Classical tragedies revolve around the main character's hamartia, the tragic flaw that sets a series of disastrous events in motion.
Achilles’ heel was his hamartia – his fatal flaw. Most tragedies couldn’t exist without hamartia. It’s in the tragic plays of the ancient Greek writer Aeschylus to works like Shakespeare's Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. In Shakespeare, examples of hamartia are Hamlet's indecisiveness and Juliet's blind loyalty to Romeo. Hamartia comes from a root meaning "to miss or fail."
When the Greek books of the New Testament were written, Christians were using the word hamartia to mean “moral flaw” and it was in that sense that it was translated into English as “sin.”
Gnostics (Knowers) do not look to salvation from sin (original or other), but rather from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence. Ignorance - whereby is meant ignorance of spiritual realities - is dispelled only by Gnosis (knowing), and the decisive revelation of Gnosis is brought by the Messengers of Light, especially by Christ, the Logos. It is not by His suffering and death but by His life of teaching and His establishing of mysteries.
The “eternal sin,” or unpardonable sin, as referred to by Jesus in Mark 3:28-30, is the belief that God is the creator of disease or disharmony of any nature. This belief is labeled as ‘eternal sin” because that which is eternal is immutable. As long as mankind (in mind) abides in the conviction that “God” causes him to suffer, he closes his Mind against the inflow of the gifts of health, peace, and harmony. This wrong thinking can be referenced by the Bible verse in Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed (metamorphosis) by the renewing of your Mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Man's sins are “forgiven” when he begins to open his Mind to the fact that he is heir only to the goodness, and not the suffering and ills created in this realm. The sin, or wrong thinking, has laid a dark path of fear and guilt. Until man comes to the realization that he IS a Divine Spark of the Source of all things (God), he cannot ascend to a higher state of consciousness and escape the worldly egocentric way of Life. Man is NOT punished FOR his sins, he suffers BY his sin ... his error in thinking.
Just a thought ...
Justin Taylor, ORDM.
