Are All Sins the Same in the Eyes of God?

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you'd much rather one of your children say something mean to you than, you know, stab your wife to death in her sleep, right?

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Alright Tim, the question for today is, are all sins the same in the eyes of God? This is one of those common

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Christian cliches that really don't make a lot of sense at all, but then it's a maddening thing that people will say.

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I did a few polls this last week that were asking about the severity of different kinds of sins, and I was a little bit surprised at how many people came along and did the level in game where basically every sin is treated as exactly equal, and really the

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Bible knows nothing of this kind of thought process, but the answer is no. Sins are not all the same in the eyes of God.

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God knows how to tell the difference between different types of sin. Okay, I guess my mind jumps to the fact that any sin will send someone to hell, right?

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It doesn't matter what that sin is. One sin is all it takes to fall short of the glory of God, so it seems like from that perspective

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God sees them as all the same, but then you're saying, hey, they are different, and I think I know what you're getting at, but why don't you sort of explain the difference and what's leading you to say, hey, no, we can read the

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Bible and see plainly that God really doesn't treat all sins the same?

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Yeah, well, I think there is a reality that we all enter into the world as sinners, and we enter in not just, it's not as if we're condemned the moment we sin one time, so we enter into the world, have inherited the guilt of our father

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Adam's sin, and then that's going to naturally lead that all of us do sin, so for as one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because of all of sin.

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So we enter into the world sinful, we inherit the guilt of Adam's sin, and then we have this contagion that's attached to us.

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It's going to mean that necessarily we all end up acting it out in one way or another. So sin is all equal in that it's missing the mark of God's holiness, and there's a sense in which

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God's holiness is infinite, and so even the smallest sin, when you contrast that to the holiness of an infinite

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God, is a grievous offense, right? So that's obviously true, and it's all evidence of our condemned state, even white lies, respectable sin, whatever, but that doesn't mean that God can't tell the difference between different types of sin, and that all sin are fundamentally the same.

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And that doesn't mean that human beings should pretend like as if all sin are the same either.

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And I mean, all it takes is just to use any human example that you can think of to demonstrate the point.

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So I mean, you'd much rather your kid, you'd much rather one of your children say something mean to you than stab your wife to death in her sleep, right?

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Yeah. Yeah, I think most normal people would probably prefer the first one.

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I mean, but isn't, you know, but then if you want to pretend like those things are the same to God even, then what you would say is that, you know, that anger that, you know, caused the rude remark from one of your kids, that God would institute the death penalty for that.

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But then the issue is that, you know, as you read through the Old Testament, one of the things you're gonna find is God does make certain sins capital offenses, and not every sin is a capital offense.

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So that means that God has some way of weighing the nature of specific sins, meaning it's not death penalty here and now for any sin, but some sins are death penalty kind of sins.

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Could you imagine if it was the death penalty for every single type of sin? Well, to the social justice warriors, they would wish it was for specific sins that they are particularly offended by.

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So whenever you, you know, I mean, they would put you to death if you say something they dislike or deem to be racist or offensive in any way, for sure, you know.

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But then you have to have some level of proportion, you know. In order to operate as a society, you have to have some way of keeping these things in some sort of perspective, and, you know,

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God is not unable to do the same kind of thing in terms of His own mind.

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So, I mean, just think about, like, Judas, for instance. So Jesus says of Judas that it would have been better that Judas were never born, right?

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Of Sodom and Gomorrah, He says that, you know, of Jerusalem, it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for Jerusalem, because they had received more revelation and they're guiltier.

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So, you know, in this life, God gives harsher penalties for certain sins than others.

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And then in the next life, God gives harsher penalties for certain sins than others.

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So that tells me that God is able to distinguish between different types of sin, okay? So are you talking about, like, some sort of Dante's Inferno?

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That would be levels of hell. So, like, the Dante's Inferno kind of scheme is levels of hell, like, and the

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Bible doesn't teach, like, different levels of hell, like Judas, and then, who is it,

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Brutus, or whatever that is. I can't remember the three who were in the bottom rung of hell, but, you know, no, there's not levels of hell in that way, but there's different, like, degrees of severity in hell even based on the amount of rejection of God that we do in this life.

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And there will be rewards, different rewards in heaven for the amount of faithfulness in this life as well.

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So God's able to distinguish these things both ways, okay? So now, like, there's a type of person then that uses the fact that, okay, like, lust, for instance,

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Jesus equates lust with adultery. He's the kind of person who says, well, I guess lust is fine because it's not nearly as bad as adultery.

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And then you have a lot of people who come along and essentially, with that kind of way of thinking about it, and say, well, that's repugnant to a biblical worldview.

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And absolutely, that's repugnant to a, like, you should never treat sin like that. Like, you should never compare certain sins to others in such a way that you're going to say, well, this one is really bad, and then the ones that I'm committing are not very bad at all, therefore

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I can keep on doing it because they're not really a big deal. That would be a wrong way of avoiding this, like, the problem of sin leveling in that way to where that's a way of making comparisons to produce more iniquity.

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Yeah, you're basically like the guy saying, God, thank you for not making me like this tax collector.

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Right, right, right. So that's a very bad impulse. But then practically, you know, we do have to have some way of distinguishing these things in terms of how we build a government.

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We have to do this in relating to other people as well, right? So there's certain sins that you can commit against your marriage that God says are appropriate reasons to get a divorce.

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But then same thing with your parenting. I mean, like, imagine if, like, you know, the smallest, most minor infraction that your kid makes, you treat everything as just, like, the worst possible offense ever, right?

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So you slightly raise your voice in the house. It's like, that's a spanking offense, right? It's like, well, I mean, you have to figure out what you're doing, okay?

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I'll be honest. There are certain times that, you know, there are certain things that my daughter will do that I just think to myself, you know,

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I've got to pick my battles. I might just let this one go because I know that there's four others that I've already got to deal with.

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Yeah, so you have to have some way of prioritizing, you know, these kind of things. Right. In the here and now.

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I mean, so, you know, with kids, one of the things that we've always done is if they lie to us, that's a really big deal because we know that if they learn that to lie well, they can get away with anything.

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So we treat lying very seriously. And there's other things that we, I mean, it's not as if we're not treating them the same level of, it's not as if we're not treating them seriously.

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It's just, they're not like that, you know, they're not. Now you deal with everything, but then you have to have some sense of proportion.

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I mean, imagine if you're a boss and, you know, literally anything your employee does wrong, you fire them, right?

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Right. It's like, well. That'd be a tough job. That'd be a tough job. I mean, it'd be nerve wracking, right?

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And so. And do you even hold yourself to that same standard? Do you hold that? Yeah. I mean, so I think you do need to have in any relationship scheme, you need to have some ability to say this is worse than this, and this is worse than that.

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And how do we, like in a level of severity, you know, and this is part of the thing that evangelicals are not able to do with the same -sex attraction kind of stuff at this point is that, you know, they basically are treating like they have, they don't have any category for saying that, you know, sodomy and transgenderism and all this stuff are, they reflect a different degree of depravity than other things.

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And so we have to treat everything as if it's just normal levels of depravity. And it's just like, then you end up with drag queen story hours at your library, that kind of thing, you know?

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You find yourself, you find yourself missing the old days when you just had to deal with these other certain specific sins that weren't as bad.

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Right, right, right. And so now, I mean, what people do, like if they're going to make a biblical case for it, they'll say, hey, but isn't, like you compare something like lust and adultery, right?

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And they'll say, well, doesn't Jesus say that lust and adultery are essentially the same thing, right? So you look at a woman with lust, and you've committed adultery with her in your heart, and then the same thing with anger, right?

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Isn't anger essentially heart murder? So you think you're okay because you didn't murder someone? Well, if you're angry with your brother, like that's the same kind of thing.

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I think, you know, one thing that's happening there is there's just a profound misunderstanding of Jesus' point, okay?

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Okay. So Jesus' point is not just to say, you know, if you lust after someone, you might as well go ahead and go all the way and commit physical adultery because it's all the same.

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Like, who can tell the difference? Like, literally, no one can tell the difference. It's like, no, that's not the point, right?

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The point is there's a type of person who didn't go all the way with it, and thinks that they're justified before their

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Maker because they somehow stopped short of the physical act. But Jesus is saying, you think that you're okay?

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You have lust in your heart? You have the seeds of the same sin there that this person you think is so bad has, right?

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Right. You just didn't go as far with it, right? Yeah, He's basically just teaching against the, you know, the people who would say, hey, desire is not sin.

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Right, right. Yeah, so just, you're a hypocrite, right? This is the same thing that you're doing. It's just to a minor, like a more, like it hasn't gone as far, right?

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A lesser degree, yeah. Yeah, so what you want to do is just think about, like, now, the thing is, like, in the

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Old Covenant, adultery was a death penalty issue, but you don't need to kill someone, like, do a death penalty for someone who engages in heart adultery, right?

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Why? Well, because they're not the same, okay? How do you even prove that? Yeah, you can't prove it, but it's not the same level of seriousness.

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It's the same way, like, you don't want to, you, someone, if you murder someone, you get the death penalty, but if you have an angry thought of it, you don't put them to death because it's not the same level of seriousness.

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So what you do is, like, if you treat, like, what you think about is, if you want to understand Jesus' point, like, adultery, you would think about adultery, like, as a fire that has consumed your house, right?

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And then lust is, like, a, you know, it's a, yeah, depending on what we're talking about, it can be a bigger fire or a smaller fire that is leading up to the house.

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Does that make sense? They're both a fire, but one is more serious than the other. Does that make sense?

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Okay. And if you don't put it out, the point is it's going to grow and it's going to consume the house. Right. Right? So both of them are sinful, both of them are wrong, but you would much rather stop that fire before it burns the whole house down because once it burns the whole house down, that's a much bigger problem.

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Does that make sense? So you have the same problem that is different degrees. Does that make sense?

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Yeah. So is it fair to say that, you know, in the eyes of God, sin is,

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I guess it's, like, the same in terms, in the eyes of God, all sin is the same in terms of where it's going to get you, right?

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Yeah. And it's all the same in that it sufficiently proves you're condemned. Yeah. Like you're guilty.

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Yeah. It establishes that. But then, so it establishes we're guilty, but then it doesn't necessarily establish just on its own the fact that you've sinned.

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How guilty, right? Well, you're fundamentally guilty, but you could be, like, they're just,

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I guess the way I think about it is God gives different punishments for different. Right. Yeah. Different about, so if in the next life, it'll be worse for, you know,

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Jerusalem than it will be for Sodom, then that tells you that he's treating the level of high -handed sin that Jerusalem get engaged in as more serious than Sodom, but they both get you to the same place.

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Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, and Jesus taught, you know, I think it's the apostles, they asked

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Jesus, hey, why are you teaching in parables? And Jesus basically says to, you know, basically to not increase the guilt.

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Right, to blind them. Yeah. Seeing that they might see as an act of judgment on them. So, like, the issue is, yes,

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Jesus is able to tell the difference between lust and adultery and between anger and murder, but what he's trying to say is, like, it's the same, like, you know, you're not okay if you stop short of the act.

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Sin happens way before that, and, you know, if you're the type of person who says, well, you know, lust is a smaller fire than adultery, the big fire, therefore,

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I'm gonna let it go, it's like, yeah, your house is gonna get burned down. Okay, weirdo, I don't know anyone else who's all right with fires burning in their house.

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Right, yeah, it's, you know, a small fire is a fire too, right? But then, like, you know, that all, so the issue is

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God can tell the difference, we can tell the difference, but, you know, none of us are righteous, no, not one in any, like, what we need to do is treat the smaller stuff much more seriously than what we do and stop it quicker, right?

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That's Jesus' point, stop it quicker, don't just let it burn the house down before you stop it or before you wake up, treat it seriously and know that, like, you need forgiveness of all of it, you know, more than what you think, not just the big stuff, the small stuff, right?

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You need forgiveness for all of it, but then, you know, living in the world that we live in and the way that God operates, the way we operate should be that we should be able to make certain distinctions between these things and it shouldn't be that complicated.

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Okay, fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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