The meaning or word ‘sin’ in its original form means ‘to miss’, ‘fall from the purpose’. So it is important to understand what was God’s purpose, when He created us? Only then we can understand the real meaning of sin. Bible says in Romans 3:23, ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’. That is, God’s purpose when he created us was to be in God’s image and God’s glory. God created man in His own image or in other words His own character. It was from this character that man has fallen. Therefore sin is actually the difference between the character of God and the present situation of man who has fallen from this character. That mean sin is the difference between the Holy God and the fallen man.

Only when we understand what sin is, that we can understand what salvation is. When the first man Adam violated the commandment of God, he and all mankind in him lost the glory of God. The Bible teaches real Salvation as ‘the transformation from this fallen state back to the original image in which God created us’, and not just as a way of saving us from hell and taking us to heaven.

Now the real question is what can Jesus do to give this Salvation?                                                                                              

In reality only Jesus can save man from this sinful state. When all men became sinners through Adam, and lost the glory of God, then Jesus was the only one, who after Adam was born without sin, in the image of God,  lived without sin and completely revealed God and God’s character. Only someone who is without sin can take away sin. Jesus was born and lived without sin, and hence became eligible to take away the sins of the world. Since the wages of sin is death, Jesus bore the sins of all mankind and died on the cross. ‘There is no forgiveness without shedding of blood’, says the word of God. Jesus shed his sinless blood and suffered death, for the sins of all mankind thus delivering us from death and reconciling us again with God. And so made it possible for us to have the same fellowship with God, as it was before man sinned and was separated from God.  

Not only that, because Jesus defeated death and rose again, He is able to offer His life which is eternal, to anyone who accepts Him. Anyone who acknowledges that he is a sinner and repents, when he accepts Jesus as Lord in His life, Jesus comes into his life and He receives the Life of Jesus which is Eternal Life.  When a man receives this Life, he is able to come to back to the same relationship with God which was in the beginning and being filled with this Life, he will be transformed  into the same image in which God created us originally. In this way we can return to the original purpose for which God created us. This is the message of salvation which the Bible teaches.

2 Corinthians 3:18 “So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord--who is the Spirit--makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image”.

2 Corinthians 4:4 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God’.

Jinu Ninan