If anything this topic is even more an ink and blood tub than your last one. Especially since some scholars, with good reasoning behind them, think that the entire passion narrative is a fiction, crafted out of allusions to the Psalms and Isaiah and presented as an apology for how one thought to be the Jewish Messiah, and hence the temporal redeemer of Israel, could have died at all, much less have died without accomplishing the goal of Jewish independence from the Romans. To some people, denial that the Passion was a historical occurrence would render the whole topic of "Christ dying for sins" moot.

what do the Christians mean by the word “sin�?

You will get 13 different answers for every ten Christians. I can only tell you, in a very oversimplified fashion, what it means to me.

A sin is a thought or action of mine that focuses on my self rather than the group to which I belong, despite having received instruction that the thought or action is harmful to the group. I might want to have sex with that skanky blonde in the office, but my wanting might get communicated to my wife, who will begin to worry about, and possibly start distrusting, me. If I act on the wanting, I amplify the worry and distrust, and might further burden my family with diseases transmitted through the illicit intercourse, or the costs of keeping the skank and any offspring therefrom. Thus, both my thought and my action, if I go that far, are sinful.

The self has real needs, the community has real needs, and these needs often come in conflict. There is no difference between humans and other social animals in this regard - and there are huge bodies of literature documenting this observation. No person is smart or lucky enough to walk the tightrope between the needs of self and community without falling, especially since circumstances have the nasty habit of whipping the tightrope out from under you. It is therefore impossible to go through life without sinning.

why would the death of Christ be associated with that term?

Because no one can go through life without sinning, and any sin puts one at odds with the community, some action is needed to tell the community that the sin is recognized and repudiated, and tell the sinner that the community recognizes the repudiation and accepts the sinner back.

In Judaism until 70 CE, this was accomplished by ceremonies involving animal sacrifices, in which the destruction of the animal replaced the destruction of the person which would otherwise result from the sinful thought or deed. It also, by the way, was a principal source of food for the priests of Jahweh.

This metaphor was extended to Jesus by the early Christians, most notably by Saul/Paul of Tarsus, who was a Jew and was active in the 50s CE, when Jewish animal sacrifices were still current. Hence the constant comparison of Jesus to a lamb, one of the most commonly used sacrificial animals.

The metaphor was extended further, and became more poignant, after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, and the customs of animal sacrifice with it. It was made more powerful still by casting Jesus as a particularly potent symbol of release from sin, which was cast against the Pharisaic Judaism that replaced temple worship near the end of the 1st century CE. Pharisaic Judaism tended to offer very strict interpretations of "the wages of sin", and very limited opportunities for redemption of the sinner. Jesus is credited with raising several people, including himself, from the dead, thus symbolizing the power to release a person from the "death" that the rules of Pharisaic Judaism placed on its adherents, and allow that person to repudiate the sinful event and rejoin the community.

Hope this helps. Any more of this and I'll apply for my MA in Religious Studies. :)

If you will read Isaiah 53, you will find one of the Old Testament passages describing Christ, a prophecy which was fulfilled in Christ's life and death. All of the many lambs that were killed during the sacrificial services of the Old Testament were foreshadowing or pointing to the coming of the Real Lamb....Christ. There are literally hundreds of examples in the Bible of how God feels about and deals with Sin. Sin is so bad that no man, no angel, no other being of any kind, only God Himself, could deal with it....or atone for it, if you will. So, He came, in the form of man, taught, lived a perfect (sinless) life, and died. This had to happen, because, as He had tried to teach people for thousands of years, "The wages of sin is death."

And God's law never changes, which leads us to the easy part, the definition of sin. Sin is the breaking of God's law. This is described perfectly in the Bible, nothing vague about it. Read it, it's great!

What I mean is the 'good book', whatever the religion, can be interpreted in many ways, so this may mean different things to different people, cultures, etc. The truth is no-one really knows what any of it means. Personally, I believe it is all speculation. I'm quite happy NOT following what some book says, however many ways it can be interpreted. I know what a 'sin' is in my 'book'. I have my own beliefs and morals and that is MY word!

That first comment was, i feel, pointing out that "sin" can be thought of as roughly comparable with "selfishness." That concept could then be expanded to consider "virtue" as "selflessness." That is a point that I agree with. That's the only conception of sin and virtue that seems to work for me, personally.

The idea above seems to be that the death of Christ as atoning for sins was an extension of the same idea that had originally utilized animal sacrifice for that purpose of atoning for sins. That certainly sounds like a plausible explanation; it doesn't strike me, though, as something that a Christian would necessarily want to accept. And I wonder what sort of explanation, if any, a Christain would come up with for how the death of Christ would bear any relation to the sins of human kind.

The above comment by a Christian seems to me to be only repeating the Christian position without offering any explanation for how that process works of having one individual atone for the sins of other individuals.

Once again, that above statement made by a Christian strikes me as a position that is put forth with an expectation that it be accepted on faith.

That doesn't work for me.

Is there no other position that a Christian can come up with?

"Once again, that above statement made by a Christian strikes me as a position that is put forth with an expectation that it be accepted on faith.
That doesn't work for me.
Is there no other position that a Christian can come up with?"

NO....there is not. Faith is what all religion is based on. If it were fact, not faith, it would be called science. Any religion is about putting your FAITH into somethign you cannot see or touch, but perhaps can feel. Faith is not unique to Christians, the resurrection, or Crist. Faith is what all religion is based on.

Later

I agree one hundred percent with Nancy J. all of the sacrifices that led up to Jesus's death, were meant to atone for our sins. Had Jesus not come to earth and died for us, we would still be sacrificing animals today. When he hung on that cross, he took all of our sins on himself, to the point where God had to turn away, because he could not stand the sight of sin. So, by taking all of our sin, he washed it clean with his blood, and now we are able to be washed clean when we accept him.

To sin means to miss the mark. Term was used in the practice of archery. A sin was when the arrow missed the target. Understanding this helps you to take responsibility for naming the target--like calling your shots in billiards. Only in this game, tou get to define how the world works, in other words, what principles you aspire to, and then how you say what constitutes missing the mark relates to how you defined the mark.

Regarding the assertion made above that all religion must be based on faith. I don't personally feel entirely certain that that is true. In fact, such statements are a dis-service to religion. Statements like that turn people of a more logical mindset away from religion and that need not happen. That statement strikes me as referring to a particular branch of religion. I'm not sure how to properly classify that branch: perhaps it could be said that that statement refers to a "theoretical" area of religion. There are statements of many religions, like the ones that i have brought up, that simply cannot be accepted unless one feels inclined to accept them on faith.

However, another area of religion could, perhaps, be called "practical." That "practical" area of religion involves statements and assertions in religous texts which can be tested and proven to be true or false through one's own experimentation. Examples of this "practical" area of religion include yoga and meditation tequniques.

So, the above statement that all religion is based on faith is a severly limited view of religion and it also one that can mislead people and also turn people away from religious practices.

Okay I apologize for leaving yoga or anything else out that anyone considers a religion. I think we are getting into semantics here, though. The question was regarding a fundamental belief in a traditional theistically based religion. I was addressing that. If yoga, painting, medatation, incense burning, or even simple thinking are your religion that is fine and I'm certainly not here to argue what is or is not religion.

For the purposes of this post, though:

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Wicca, et al are religions based on faith and little else.

Later

See tons of ink and blood, above. :)

all religion must be based on faith

They are not. But this is a tough point to make to a Christian, especially of a more fundamentalist bent, because of the explicit statements of Saul/Paul of Tarsus, in his preserved Letters, that salvation (release from sin and death, literally as well as figuratively) comes only through faith, i.e. in the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and his redemptive power manifest (literally as well as figuratively) in that death and resurrection.

Compare Saul/Paul with Harry Kemelman, the creator of the fictional amateur sleuth Rabbi David Small and himself a rabbi: "With us [Judaism], faith in the Christian sense is almost meaningless, since God is by definition unknowable... Our religion is a code of ethical behavior." Kemelman correctly points out the difficulties in knowing, and hence having faith in, an unimaginably potent figure who has explicitly barred humans even from trying to draw his picture (the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a code violation). Jesus the demigod, however, is another matter. Hence the call to "know Jesus", and, through Jesus, enough of God to get by on. Saul/Paul, a convert from Pharisaic Judaism, explicitly contrasts law (code) with faith as a basis for belief, with his vote (naturally) for the latter.

Faith, in all of its manifestations, serves one essential role that no amount of logic can replace. It's a mechanism for rallying the troops in time of emergency. When a challenge arises, he who hesitates is indeed lost, and having a "faith" in place minimizes hesitation, because what you have faith in is automatically right and one need lose no energy debating it. If you have to think about it, it's too late. That faith can be in God, or Jesus, or Muhammad - or Hitler. Konrad Lorenz's book On Aggression (originally Das sogennante Böse), written by the famous Austrian animal behaviorist (and médicin malgré lui in the Wehrmacht) in the years immediately following World War II, is must reading in this connection.

I'm feeling that I'm still being inadequate in dealing with this matter. But see "MA in Religious Studies", above. :P

If I didn't know better I would think I wrote that blog.

I believe in Science and Nature.

I'm not an aetheist, just agnostic. When ever anyone tries to "give me PROOF", it still seems vague to me.

Save a horse, ride a cowboy!!!

Faith can be abused. So can a hammer. That's not a knock (sorry) on the hammer, but on the user. If you or your group are in a tight place in life, you want the faith that you will get through it. And those who have that faith have a better chance of actually doing so than those who do not. You learn to use the hammer on nails, not on heads.

I'll toss in my two cents here.

Sin first off is anything that opposes God or God's law. THe Bible gives us a set of guidelines of how to live our lives and when we go outside of those guidelines then it's a sin so to speak

Jesus being associated with our sins is that he is God in human form, and he bridges the gap between man and heaven. Jesus dying on the cross is to represent our sins dying in a sense. We are forgiven because Jesus died. He took on all our sins and the punishment for those sins which is death.