Finding God’s love in a misused word

Series on Sin – Read this First

Imagine you’re sitting in a room—maybe it’s a church, maybe a circle of friends, or among family in your own home, when the word sin drops into the air. For a moment, you hold your breath. Your stomach tightens. Your heart rate increases. It’s not that you’re afraid of honesty, but the word feels heavy, maybe even threatening.

Too often, people you trusted have used this simple but powerful word to shame you, control your choices, or silence you. Echoes of sermons about inherited guilt, eternal damnation, and self-disgust come to mind.

If this is your story, let me say plainly: you are not alone and your pain is real.

But what if sin was never meant to be a weapon at all? What if it’s a word that uncovers and names an important truth like the way a doctor diagnoses and names an injury or illness? Then, once the cause and effects are understood, the doctor and patient begin the healing process together.

What if sin is not simply a personal tally of infractions on some moral scorecard. What if it’s far more relational than that? An honest naming of a real human condition or predicament that stands in the way of love, wholeness, and peace—with God, with others, and even within ourselves.

Centuries of misconception and misguided motivations have rendered the word sin nearly extinct in modern conversation outside the Church. Inside the Church, the meaning attached to the word has been diminished to the point where it is either a weapon and means of control, or an uncomfortable relic of language that is best avoided altogether. As a result, sin is seldom recognised as a revelation of truth that leads to an opportunity for recovery. 

The series of posts that follow are meant to offer a deeper and more faithful understanding: how sin points to wounds God longs to heal, to structures of harm God calls us to transform, and to the shared longing in every human heart for something better.

If the word sin stirs strong emotions. If it causes you pain. I invite you to walk with me through these reflections. Here, sin is a word that is discussed with nuance and care so that it profoundly and faithfully points us to God’s boundless love.