Evil and Sin in Modern English
January 19, 2025
Referencing https://biblehub.com/greek/4190.htm, the Greek ideas of evil for ponéros is “malicious,” and for kakos, “harmful.” Both have been translated as “evil” in the various Bible translations.
Right away, I hope readers immediately have a better understanding and can begin to relate to these two ideas more clearly.
Still and all, this is one of those cases where “sin” has become one of the dogmatic religious words with no depth of understanding available for those who read or study the Bible… and “sin” then has existed in a vacuum without anything ordinary folks like myself can relate to…
As for the word for “evil,” that is, “malicious,” doesn’t this imply intentionally doing harm or hurting somebody with purpose?
Both of these selected definitions dovetail with my previous research and evolving understanding of the word “sin” which I associate with doing hurt or harm to oneself or to others. Yes. Basically, sin means disobedience to God, but the word “sin” is again unrelatable to most people. What underlies the religious word is more important.
The loving God of Creation, in His role of father, only wants the best for us. Furthermore, because He created us, He does know what is best for us — also what will be harmful. So, in giving the Law as a type of supervisor to manage our morality, ethics, and ideas about virtues, it was given to help us to know exactly what hurtful and harmful actions are — in order for us to choose to make better decisions.
He made these provisions by giving us the Law of Moses as a guardian, protecting us from doing harm to ourselves or to others until we would find grace and a newness in our innermost being. That newness would become a changing of our nature to be more like His. Instead of leaning towards disobedience and harmful actions, we would lean toward righteousness and justice.
Now, that provisional gift is granted to us only through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus:
“…everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. — John 3:15–21, New International Version (NIV).