Faith is trust. Faith is the delicate balance between giving and receiving. And the destruction of that delicate balance is sin. Nothing more trivializes sin than our thinking that sin is a particular act. But in understanding the faith we must be more concerned with that condition we call sin before we deal with the acts of sin.
Sin is the condition which produces sins as individual acts.
It is important that you realize that this distinction is at work in our tradition every day. Sometimes the pattern of understanding is lost on us. When this sermon is ended, we will sing the Hymn of the Day and then recite the creed on page 85 in the Lutheran Book of Worship . The creed is a confession of our faith in three parts. Each part is an article.