It sin there..

What is sin? I know I wonder if just one bite more.., or stretching the truth a little bit.., or driving to aggressively is sin. Sin gets talked about either a) not at all or b) like it is a force in the universe, but what is it? Sometimes I wonder about the ontology of sin. Is it a something or a nothing? A lack? Barth called sin an "impossible possibility" in his Dogmatics. Prof Anderson puts it in some more human terms:

"As the object of grace, the human person is distinguished from all other creatures- there is only one possibility, one choice, actually to be the creature God determines;

Sin, indeed, then is an "impossible possibility"; for it cannot be a possibility willed by God and grounded in the nature of the human self; nor can it be a new possibility created by the act of sin itself;

Thus sin can be taken seriously as the consequence of the self "willing not to be itself" in relation to God's grace, but the person has no need to be determined by sin as either cause or effect of one's own personhood."

I believe he is communicating that sin is nothing - not that it is without effect, but that it is a no - thing. A contradiction, an emptiness, non-being. Our sinful acts rob us of our humanity, of life. Only Christ was able to fill humanity with the very life of God to make it possible for us to be fully human. cool.