We in this day and age are not well familiar, not so well as our predecessors, with biblical terms. Fine, but maybe risky. It is said in the good book, “Sin is lawlessness”. That is one biblical term: “sin”. What is lawlessness, though? I had no idea really what scripture might mean by it. Until a lawyer online explained that in old times when kings and other rulers judged as an individual, they wrote themselves out what criteria to use when judging. Only they perhaps saw it but that did not matter too much. In England it was called common law. Now it occurs to me, if you have your criteria like that, perhaps some principles you live by and perhaps, if for example you are a parent with children or responsible for supervising, you might judge by these principles, and you can even perhaps write them down for yourself to refer to, or even pass on like a company does with its employee code, this means you are principled. If you never deep down have much awareness of genuine principles, you are unprincipled and some might find you difficult if, say, you are supervising them. So when we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he died for you, we can get a glimmer of genuine principles and find it worth adhering to them. We become principled. Really this is the crux of ceasing to be an unprincipled sinner, lawless. It is a step towards eternal life, becoming more worthy of the resurrection by Christ Jesus when he soon returns.
