This past Sunday, we continued our series on Pictures of Sacrifice in the Old Testament by focusing on Numbers 16. This story offered us several lessons both on a national and a personal level. We see all around us today the result of people thinking that they can get costly things inexpensively. They paid out such a small price for their amusements and the debt that was incurred was ignored. But the more they purchased the more debt they built up. And eventually, the weight of that debt has come crashing down around them.

Sin is costly. It offers you your desires for a small price now-but it places you in debt. And someday, that debt all comes crashing down in the form of death. God seems harsh in His punishment of sin only for those for whom sin is cheap. Sin is costly.

The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the picture of Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16. We have rebelled against Him, we have tried to take over His place in this universe, we have wanted to set up ourselves over Him. We deserve death for our rebellions against God-that is the debt we owe. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus with focused purpose presents His prayers and the sacrifice of Himself to God as an appeasement of the punishment that we deserve for our debt. He bought us! Jesus stands between life and death making atonement for us!

Below is a definition of sin from Cornelius Plantinga ( Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995):

In Biblical thinking, we can understand neither shalom nor sin apart from reference to God. Sin is a religious concept, not just a moral one. For example, when we are thinking religiously, we view a shopkeeper's defrauding of a customer not merely as an instance of lawlessness but also of faithlessness, and we think of the fraud as faithless not only to the customer but also to God. Criminal and moral misadventures qualify as sin because they offend and betray God. Sin is not only the breaking of law but also the breaking of covenant with one's savior. Sin is the smearing of a relationship, the grieving of one's divine parent and benefactor, a betrayal of the partner to whom one is joined by a holy bond.

Hence in the most famous of the penitential psalms, traditionally ascribed to David after his adultery with Bathsheba, the author views his sin primarily, perhaps exclusively, as a sin against God (Psalm 51:1-4). All sin has first and finally a Godward force. Let us say that a sin is any act-any thought, desire, emotion, word, or deed-or its particular absence, that displeases God and deserves blame. Let us add that the disposition to commit sins also displeases God and deserves blame, and let us therefore use the word sin to refer to such instances of both act and disposition. Sin is a culpable and personal affront to a personal God.

But once we possess the concept of shalom [which Plantinga defines as "universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight-a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom He delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be."] we are in a position to enlarge and specify this understanding of sin. God is, after all, not arbitrarily offended. God hates sin not just because it violates His law but, more substantively, because it violates, shalom, because it breaks the peace, because it interferes with the way things are supposed to be. (Indeed, that is why God has laws against a good deal of sin.) God is for shalom and therefore against sin. In fact, we may safely describe evil as any spoiling of shalom, whether physically (e.g. by disease), morally, spiritually, or otherwise. Moral and spiritual evil are agential evil-that is, evil, that, roughly speaking, only persons can do or have. Agential evil thus comprises evil acts and dispositions. Sin, then, is any agential evil for which some person (or group of persons) is to blame. In short, sin is culpable shalom-breaking.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone trying to get a better and more biblical understanding of sin. Plantinga is a college professor so some of his material can get, as you can see, a little heady. But his overall treatment of sin is a must-read for anyone seeking a biblical understanding.