Re-identified

The Greek word hamartia (“sin” in English Bibles) literally means “missing the mark,” but its deeper etymology carries an even more startling image which is, “without form, without identity, without a fixed center.” It is the formless void where a person should be.

When John the Baptist declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), he is not just announcing the removal of moral infractions. He is proclaiming a cosmic re-identification project. Jesus is not subtracting a list of failures. He is imprinting form onto the formless, etching identity into the erased, breathing a name into the nameless.

Every human being walks around with a cracked mirror for a soul. We see fragments (addict, failure, orphan, traitor, victim, sinner) but never the whole. Hamartia is the fracture itself. And Jesus does not come with a broom to sweep up the shards. He comes with blood that seals.

“He was pierced for our transgressions…and by His wounds we are made whole.” (Isaiah 53:5)

The Greek verb airō (“takes away”) means to lift up and carry off. Think of a shepherd lifting up a lamb that has wandered into a briar patch and has become tangled, wounded, bleeding, unrecognizable. He does not scold the thorns out of its wool. He lifts the lamb onto His shoulders and walks it home. The lamb arrives not as “former stray,” but as known, named, belonging. This is why Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation! The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor 5:17) Not merely an improved creation. New creation! Your old identity (hamartia) was never an identity at all.

You were never just “forgiven.” You were re-identified. The eternal God who is Spirit became form so we (the formless) could finally recognize ourselves in Him.