REMEMBER THE “FIRST THE NATURAL AND THEN THE SPIRITUAL” PRINCIPLE
Most Christians and Jews will automatically reject the idea that religion is sin. This is to be expected because their concept of sin is a Stronghold of Wrong Thinking. And they believe that their understanding of sin is correct because they can see for themselves that the Bible lays out very clearly what sin is. They do not see any room for argument with verses that talk about behaviors (e.g. adultery, murder, prostitution, homosexuality, greed, lying, etc.) that they can fit into the broad definitions of the Ten Commandments which everyone agrees is sin.

STUDY TIP: See Third Commandment and Fourth Commandment for examples of two commandments that are wrongly interpreted.

The problem with these strongly held convictions is that religious people do not consider that the Bible is full of mysterious language that is difficult to interpret. Ignorant of this point, they default to interpretation of the Biblical — including references to sin — literally, and do not bother to try to understand dark sayings, proverbs and riddles, figures of speech, words of the wise and riddles, dreams and visions, enigmas, difficult problems, shadows, types and patterns, parables/taunts/proverbs, and symbols, signs and allegories. Therefore, all the symbolic meanings of the Bible — including references to sin — remain mysteries and secrets for Old/First Covenant religionists, but are available for discovery by New Covenant disciples.

Errors in understanding what God means by sin come d own to failure to understand the “first the natural and then the spiritual” principle. Moreover, people who don’t understand this principle will not be able to understand the spiritual meaning of any part of the Bible, including the parts about sin.

STUDY TIP: See God’s Written Word and God’s Spoken Voice Part 1, God’s Written Word and God’s Spoken Voice Part 2, Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 1, Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 2, and Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 3.