Is sin just [quote]"missing the mark"[unquote]?  If you've been in Christian circles for any length of time, surely you've heard that phrase recited in books and from pulpits so many times that you would think that it was settled and indisputable.  As the explanation goes, [quote]"it is like an archer shooting an arrow at a target and missing the mark"[unquote].

"Sin" is usually translated from the word αμαρτια, which is the noun form, or αμαρτανω, which is the verb form.  It fundamentally refers to any kind of failure, error, or fault, or to fail or err in some way. Then there are the other grammatical parts of speech, and some variants of the word, like αμαρτημα, which adds the mu-alpha suffix to denote an effect or consequence of failure, or αμαρτωλος, which is a person who fails or has a record of failure, normally translated "sinner" in the Bible, and so on.

The origins of the "missing the mark" thing are actually from Homer's Iliad, set during the Trojan War, where sometimes Homer speaks of this or that warrior hurling a spear and missing.  Okay, if you throw a spear at someone and miss the mark, you [quote]"failed"[unquote] to hit him.

The problem is that these people have the definition backwards.  It is not that αμαρτια is "missing the mark."  It is that hurling a spear and missing the mark is a type of failure.

If I put bread in a toaster and burn the toast, I have failed, and if I was speaking in the Greek language I would use the word αμαρτια in describing that failure, wherein I burned the toast.  How silly it would be to define [quote]"failure"[unquote] as [quote]"burning the toast"[unquote].  "Sin is burning the toast."  But that is just what has happened with this now-popular idea of defining sin as "missing the mark, like that of an archer [usually they substitute a bow and arrow for Homer's spear] shooting an arrow and missing the target."

Probably the most quoted verse that can be translated to hint of this "missing the mark" thing is Romans 3:23, which is usually translated,

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

If you picture the archer shooting an arrow and simply missing, then this verse becomes less provocative.  "Oops.  You shot an arrow and missed.  Nice try, though."

Actually, the "fall short" in Rom 3:23 is υστερουνται, which means to be deficient.  You can see this in the definition of the word.  A better translation would be,

"For all have failed and are deficient of the glory of God."

So, because we have sinned, we have fallen short.  It is not that sin *is* [quote]"falling short"[unquote].  It is that we have fallen short because we sinned.

What does this mean to us?  Well, very simply, when you read the word "sin" in the Bible, remember that it fundamentally refers to any kind of failure, error, or fault, or to fail or err in some way.  Obviously, we are talking about the Bible, which is why we have the more religious word "sin," and we know that we are not concerned with such things as burning the toast or shooting arrows at a target and missing.  So, to "sin" is to fail or err in a moral or spiritual way, particularly in a way that God would hold to account in a spiritual or judicial sense. But it isn't just [quote]"missing the mark"[unquote], and people need to stop saying that.