Sin is Not Transgression
Moses 5:11 “And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.”
2 Nephi 2:25 “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”
Doctrines of Salvation 1:114 “”TRANSGRESSION” NOT “SIN” OF ADAM. I never speak of the part Eve took in this fall as a sin, nor do I accuse Adam of a sin…It is true, the Lord warned Adam and Eve that to partake of the fruit they would transgress a law, and this happened. But it is not always a sin to transgress a law.” – Joseph Fielding Smith
James 1:13-15 “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”.
Genesis 31:36 “And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass? what is my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after me?”
1 John 1:10 “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
1 John 3:4 “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.”
The Holman Bible Dictionary defines transgression and sin in the following manner;
Transgression: “the image of sin overstepping the limits of God’s law”
Sin: “actions by which humans rebel against God, miss His purpose for their life, and surrender t the power of evil rather than to God”.
We could list pages and pages of other LDS references giving examples of how they’ve explained away the sin of Adam and Eve and went so far as to adulate their rebellion against God who is only righteous and holy.
The biblical refutations we’ve shown here are good to have in our memory banks when discussing these things with a Mormon to show how wrong the LDS doctrines are. Sin is sin no matter how you describe it or what adjective you choose to employ in your descriptions. When we sin we’ve stepped outside the proscribed boundaries God set for us to live in.
Paul’s admonition brings it home doesn’t it? He begins with Eve being tricked into believing Satan’s lie of looking at what God said in another perspective and then explained when they receive teachings outside the parameters of the apostles’ teachings they (the Corinthians) are trusting in and worshiping a different Jesus.
Fast forward some 2,000 years and we have Smith and friends doing the very thing Paul warned the Corinthians about.
Take special notice beloved in Christ how many times God clearly explains the meaning of sin and transgression. Now take notice how the Mormon Church went out of their way to denounce what God has brought forth through His servants from Moses to the Apostle John.
Just how many things in the Bible could be mistranslated?
[…] why does the Church teach that sin isn’t a transgression? We wrote about this in an article Sin is Not Transgression. Two of the references we listed come from their own canon and both contradict the teachings of Mr. […]