Sin and forgiveness in the Old Testament

Abstract

The reference to the Bible as "Salvation History" is very appropriate, for indeed, the story of the Bible is the story of man's falls and God's reactions to these falls. This is tantamount to saying that sin and conversation are the major Old Testament themes. It is God who creates and who and who sees that everything "was very good" (Gen. 1:81). It is man's folly that destroys and frustrates God's plans. If God emerges as an all-powerful, all-loving person, man proves himself to be a week and selfish creature by his own choosing. The Genesis account of the first sin, which I will discuss in detail in the following chapter, is explicit in showing that what is weak in man is not his will or character as created by God, for this would throw all responsibility of sin into God's own hands. Rather, it is man's love for his Creator that fails. All sins can be explained by this lack of love: man never seems to want to toe the measure of love God sets up for him. And it is this lack of love on man's part that inflamed primarily not God's anger, but rather God's excess of love. Had there been no sin, there would have been no salvation history and no incarnation [...].