What is sin? Is it breaking one (or more) of the Ten Commandments. Is it doing something that hurts yourself and/or someone else? It is all of that and more. Sin is actually so pervasive that it is difficult to avoid, even when we are doing what we perceive to be good things. Rob Bell found this out when, as the pastor of a dynamic, growing church he discovered that a significant amount of his time was spent trying to please other people and he was crumbling under the load. As he describes in his book “Velvet Elvis”, he started going to a therapist for counseling. The therapist helped him to see that he was overreacting to an experience in his early teens that created a need in him to prove his worth to himself and others. His issue was a simple one: sin. Then the therapist said, “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”

Wow! Talk about pervasive. That covers a lot of ground – anything that keeps us from the relentless pursuit of who God has made us to be. Or, as I like to put it, that would be anything that hinders us from accomplishing our purpose in life, or in other words from fulfilling our God-ordained destiny. So to avoid sin we need to discover our purpose in life, the destiny that God intends for us and we need to passionately pursue it. And that means nothing short of our salvation; not only the forgiveness of our sins, but also our reconciliation with God and one another. God intends for us to learn to live more and more in harmony with him and all of his children. Our salvation then is part of his larger plan to restore the whole of his creation, of which we are an integral part. As the author of Ephesians says,

“{God} has made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will…” (Ephesians 1:9-11 NIV)

Or, as Rob Bell says,

“Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.”

In light of this understanding it is incumbent upon us to make sure we are doing nothing that hinders God from accomplishing his purpose in us and through us for his whole creation. The relentless pursuit of who God has made us to be means leaving all else behind and following Jesus wherever he leads us, rather than following our own agenda, however good we think it to be. Anything that hinders us in that pursuit is sin. Consider what is at stake, for

“All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:21-22 NLT)