Everybody has a definition.
Google "what is sin" and there are countless articles. Most of the articles have to do with sin being an act of disobedience or rebellion. One article said that sin is when the Bible says, "Do not lie" and you lie, that is sin. Another way that one defines sin is lawlessness; living outside the laws of God. And when the question arises of how sin entered the world, it's nearly universal that it started with one man-Adam. As I said, everybody has a reason as to how we as humans beings started sinning and everyone has a definition of sin.
And maybe that is where the problem lies right there. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, two trees stood in the middle of that garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I find it interesting that of the two trees, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the one that God said that they must not eat of. Not surprisingly, that would be the tree the serpant would tempt the woman to eat from. But what was it about the tree that God did not want his creation to partake in? I see it as two choices God set before Adam and Eve-one was life and the other knowledge. Knowledge was more desirable than life. To know is better than to live. The problem is when the fruit was eaten, it was not the knowledge of God that was imparted into man, but man's own knowledge. It was not the act of eating the fruit that was the sin, the sin was they now had a knowledge apart from God; a knowledge that unfortunately would cause them to judge themselves (i.e. realizing their nakedness when before they felt no shame). God was absolutely correct when He said that by eating of the tree they would surely die. It wasn't a physical death in as much as a spiritual one-something that rings true to this day. How many Christians suffer from idolatry or reoccurring sin, or so they say? Did God say? Or are they now interpreting the bible the way they believe it to mean and killing themselves with meaningless and endless behavior modification?
I believe that it was God's desire that man live forever, but after the tree was eaten from, God saw that if man lived forever, then man would be outside relationship with Him forever due to their own definition of good and evil. So he limited man's years so that He could restore the relationship later down the road. God could have allowed man to be corrupt but He desired fellowship with His creation so much that He could not allow that to happen. Enter Jesus: the King of Kings in human form who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped even to the point of living forever, so he gave up His spirit to reconcile man to God. Because of that we can know God's definition of good-his creation. Not once in the garden did God say that Adam and Eve are evil or corrupt. He was just grieved that they were outside relationship with Him which I believe means, they had a knowledge of themselves that was not based on how the Father saw them. I believe God is bringing us back to that place where we truly see ourselves and define ourselves the way He sees us, not evil but good.
