Sin Defined Theologically

David Wells speaks of "the pictorial nature of the biblical vocabulary for sin" as it relates to God:

Sin is missing the target, falling short of a standard, and transgressing boundaries. However, the target that is missed, the path that is abandoned, the authority that is defied, the law that is transgressed are in each and every case God's. Sin is therefore going contrary to God, dismissing him, taking issue with him, defying him, refusing to submit to him, displacing him from the center of existence, ignoring him. It is, in short, arrogating to the self the place that only God should have.

—David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 189.