Missing the Mark
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Author Danielle Shroyer shares how the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek frequently define sin as “missing the mark”:
Though original sin has told us a story of being stuck in our sin, when we turn to scripture, we actually find a very different story. Though modern science has just come to realize how amazingly malleable people are, the wisdom of scripture has told us this all along.…
The most predominant word for sin in both the Hebrew [hatta] and the Greek [hamartia] assumes in its very definition our ability to hit the mark. We can’t miss the mark unless we assume the mark is where we’re aiming, right? In 768 instances of the word “sin” in the Bible, we are described as people who are standing with a bow and arrow, aiming at a target that we miss. That’s not a sin nature, and it’s definitely not total depravity. That’s novice, or perhaps distractedness, or bad aim. It could be any number of things. But the idea that we are not designed to hit the target set before us would be completely antithetical to the way sin is put forth in the vast majority of scripture.
When scripture calls us to goodness, to repentance, to grace, it’s not like telling a fish to ride a bicycle. It’s not something so contradictory to who we are and what we can do that it’s an impossible notion. Salvation is available to us because God has offered it, but also because God has designed us to be capable of responding to it. We can take aim at the target simply because God chose to make us that way. Yes, we miss the mark … but that doesn’t mean we are without any ability to play the game.
In Scripture, sin is often described as an error or mistake, not a condition of our being:
The Bible talks about sin as something that ought to be called out, but not something that ought to be condemning to the point of shame…. Sin is an action, a choice, or if we’ve made a number of them in a row, a path or a habit. There is nothing irreversible or determinate about it. Sin is not a state of being. It is a way of being in the world that is always and every moment in flux, based on our choices. It’s a growth mindset, not a fixed one.
To put this another way, there is a difference between having fallen and being fallen. Sin (hamartia, hatta) means that we have fallen. It doesn’t mean we are fallen. We may be in flux depending on our last action and our next intention, but we aren’t simply tossed around on the waves of our own competence. We reside in the boat of blessed grace, which holds us steady even as we falter and sway from day to day. We may have fallen, but we can get up.
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Returning to the Center
Inspired by the writings of Henri Nouwen
The spiritual life is not a straight line toward perfection. It is a continual process of wandering and returning.
We often think of sin as something that separates us permanently from God, but the deeper truth is that sin is usually forgetting who we are. We lose sight of our identity as God’s beloved and drift into fear, distraction, and self-reliance.
But the good news of the Gospel is that every moment holds the possibility of return.
When we recognize that we have wandered—through impatience, anger, indifference, or pride—we are already standing at the doorway of grace. The awareness itself is an invitation. God is not waiting to condemn but to welcome us home again.
The spiritual journey, then, is not about never missing the mark. It is about learning how to return—again and again—to the One who never stops calling us beloved.
Each small act of turning back—through prayer, repentance, kindness, or humility—re-aims our lives toward love.
We may wander, but we are never abandoned.
