Is there a difference between sin and mistakes?

Answer 1

Short answer, I think yes, certainly there is a difference. I suppose another way to think of the question would be to ask, would Jesus (thought in Christianity to have lived a perfect life while remaining human) ever have spilled the juice. Would he have missed with the hammer and mangled his thumb? Would he have stubbed his toe etc.

I think a good argument for establishing the difference is to point out that Scripture certainly portrays human beings as being inherently finite and limited creatures. We, unlike God, are not intended to know everything, or have the power to do anything we want. We run into limits every day of our lives--not enough strength, not enough brainpower etc. These limitations will inevitably lead to mistakes, and the only way to avoid those mistakes would be to never test our limitations and curl up into a ball and never move.

Sin, though, is a different category. It's never correlated in Scripture with physical or mental limitation. It's portrayed as a faulty state of the heart: "Everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Romans 12ish). I think a person can be messing up all over the place in a certain task, and still, if their heart is in a place of deep reliance on God, they can be without sin.