Sin 101

I've given myself the assignment of preaching on the 10 Commandments this fall. I've covered #1 (or at least preached a sermon on it) already--but just ran across another good bit from NT Wrigth that I wish I could have included somehow. It's good fodder for thinking about the 1st Command, but also our approach to the rest of them:

When we begin with creation, and with God as creator, we can see clearly that the frequently repeated warnings about sin and death, referred to as axiomatic by Paul, are not arbitrary, as though God were simply a tyrant inventing odd laws and losing his temper with those who flouted them, but structural: humans were made to function in particular ways, with worship of the creator as the central feature, and those who turn away from that worship—that is, the whole human race, with a single exception—are thereby opting to seek life where it is not to be found, which is another way of saying that they are courting their own decay and death. That is to say, with the entire Jewish tradition, that the basic sin is idolatry, the worship of that which is not in fact the living creator God.(NT Wright, Paul, pg. 35)