An Archery Story about Sin

Quite literally, sin can be understood, especially in the Greek, as an archery term for utterly missing the mark.  While this is a functional understanding of sin, that is, man missing God's mark, it would be a gross misunderstanding to assert that sin is mankind aiming at God's target and "flubbing" the shot.  To get at the serious and egregiousness reality which is our sin, a story might be in order.

The English countryside of the late middle ages is full of undulating pastoral plains and pristine grasslands interlaced into rocky hills.  Villages are fairly secluded, distanced little contact with each other apart from traveling salesman, tax collectors, and itinerant preachers.  However, there was an annual archery contest in one of the smaller towns (if it could be called a town) that every year would attract the greatest archers from around the world for a chance to win the coveted prize.

Over a thousand yards, from the farside of the brook that formed the mouth of the valley to a small, blood-red target painted into the rocks across the village at the base of the mountain range that hugged the other side of the valley.  Every archer was given one shot.  A single shot.  But for this prize, archers would travel from the far-reaches of the world for that shot.

It is said, passed from the holy men and sages of the past, that if any man could make the shot with a perfect bullseye on that certain day he would be given life eternal.  However, if the shooter missed even in the slightest, he would instantly die and dissolve into the babbling water of the brook.  For decades, shooters tried and although some got close, everyone of them died.  After years, people stopped even trying to hit the mark and the yearly event slowed to just a couple of brave archers a year.  As more time passed, the day of the event faded into memory and then into legend.

Years later, a traveler was passing through and stopped at the inn for a meal and perhaps a place to sleep.  As he was talking with the barkeep, the legend of the archery shot of eternal life was brought up.  The barkeep said that no one had ever hit it and that people just stopped trying.  The traveler mentioned that the barkeep had to be mistaken because he noticed that as he was coming down the mountain trail, he saw the target with a single arrow in the direct center of the bullseye of a rock.

The barkeep just burst out laughing and poured the man another drink.  The traveler looked up at him in confusion.  "That was Harold," said the barkeep.  "Well, did he get life eternal?" answered the traveler.  "No! He shot the arrow and then painted a target around it before he died!"

This is what sin is about.  Not only do we miss the target, we don't even get close.  In fact, we are so far from even hitting the target that it could be though that we aren't aiming at all, which in some cases is the truth.  However, the target of sin has been hit and definitively.  Christ has hit that mark and, because of who He is, we can take part in that victory through faith.  This is the most beautiful event and truth that has ever occurred.  Period.  Let us then take joy in Christ and cling to Him in faith so that we would not have to shoot that shot, but that He has taken it for us!