Sin is essentially the resolve – the mad, utterly blameworthy, but nonetheless, utterly firm resolve – to play God and fight the real God. Sinners resolve to treat themselves as the center of the universe and so they keep God at bay on the outer circumference of their lives – or so they think. They won’t allow the Creator to rule over them as he wills to do. If they appeal to God at all, they ask God to act according to their will and for their convenience like a servant who gets them out of trouble and bestows on them good gifts. They never serve him from the heart and only resent the claim to dominion that he makes. This is why people like Luther, Calvin, and Owen say, roundly and without question, that sin wills the fundamental abolition of God. Sin wills that God should not be there. Sin plays God, sin fights God, and sin wishes that God didn’t exist at all.

J I Packer, Atonement p. 11 (Ed. Gabriel Fluhrer, P&R 2010)