Youth Sunday School - What is Sin? (Feb. 10)

This week the youth lesson was about sin - what is it, how do we view it, how does God view it, etc.

We started the lesson by brainstorming definitions of sin. Some of the answers given were:

• An offense against God in any way shape or form
• Wrong choices
• Anything that separates us from God’s perfection and holiness
• Disobedience to God’s laws
• Unrighteous behaviour
• Words or actions
• Thoughts, intentions, or attitudes
• Disbelief in God
• NOT doing good things when we should
• Can even be sins out of ignorance (this is a danger when we don’t learn about God and read the Bible)
• Sin is a deviation of God’s will – so it can be things we do or don’t do

A great "all inclusive" definition is that sin is missing the mark, or missing the target. Basically, if the target is sinless (which is what God intended for us), we miss it by sinning.

Next, we read the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. Here are some discussion questions:

• What choices could Adam and Eve made that would not have lead them to sin?
• What was the punishment for each of the three people involved in this passage?
• How are Adam and Eve’s punishments still happening today?
• Are any part of our lives exempt from sin?
• Individual sins are sins that we commit by ourselves (they usually still impact other people!). What are some examples of individual sins? Lying, swearing, violence, murder, cheating, etc.
• Corporate sins are sins that groups of people commit (not one person can be blamed, it comes from a  group mentality or effort). What are some examples of corporate sin? Genocide, slavery, allowing other people on earth to suffer and not helping them, etc.
• How does sin alienate us from God? What about from other people? What about from ourselves?
• What is the punishment for sin? 
• Is there anything we can do to get ourselves out of that punishment?

Finally, we did an activity - I drew a target on the whiteboard and called out different sins we could commit (ranging from everyday sins like lying and gossip, to sex outside of marriage, all the way up to murder). Students called out how far from the bulls-eye that sin would be according to human judgement and implications (e.g. talking back to a teacher isn't as bad to us as cheating on a spouse, which isn't as bad to us as murder, and so on). Once were were done, we talked about how even though some sins have harder implications for us, God doesn't rank sins or punish us more or less (or love us more or less) depending on how bad we are. No matter what the sin is, it's missing the bulls-eye  and that's what prevents us from being holy in any way shape or form except through the grace of Jesus. We can't earn salvation just because we follow rules, because we will still sin in "less bad" ways.