humans are to enjoy fellowship with God. The concern, rather, is with individual offenses by which people violate the will of God. Specific examples of such sins are rarely provided within Matthew’s narrative. We are not told what sins the people who come to John the Baptist must confess (3:6) or what sins the paralytic must be forgiven (9:2). Still, from the overall context of Matthew’s story we learn that people violate God’s will when they do what is lawless (7:23; 13:41) or fail to do what God