Are all sins equal? What is the sin unto death? What are the seven deadly sins? -Podcast Episode 180

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Welcome to the Got Questions podcast and joining me today is Jeff, the managing editor for BibleRef .com

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and Kevin, managing editor for Got Questions Ministries. So gentlemen, thank you for joining me again today.

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We're going to be continuing our series in questions about sin and we covered the biggies, what is personal sin versus imputed sin versus inherited sin versus original sin in our first episode and today we're going to kind of jump into some of the most frequently asked questions we receive about sin and covering each one in brief.

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Some of these we could probably do a whole episode on but we're gonna try to summarize them for you. So today we're gonna be covering the nine maybe not most frequent but definitely among the most frequent and then we'll have a couple more episodes we'll do after this just routing out our series on most commonly asked questions we receive about sin.

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So let me start us off with the question, how can I know if something is a sin?

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Now this one's interesting in that just this morning someone submitted a question of is it a sin to grow this particular flower?

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I was like looking at the question it's like I've never heard of this particular flower so I google it it's just a flower it's not smoked it's not psychedelic it's just like it looks kind of like a bird it's really really pretty flower like so why in the world is this person even wondering if it's a sin but this question how can

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I know if something's a sin well clearly if the Bible specifically says that it is the Bible commands you not to do it it's a sin to violate that command but so many questions that we deal with today are not issues that are found in the

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Bible the Bible does not specifically say do or do not do this certain things that's where some questions like this come up I'm often getting questions similar to this flower one where someone's like I'm really wondering it's is this a sin or is this a sin or it's a sin sometimes

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I just have to ask them well okay why is this even a question for you because clearly this is not a moral right or wrong issue why are you wondering if this is a sin because sometimes in Romans 14 talks about this sort of the violation of your conscience if it's bothering you you should examine why it might be bothering you and that's a good clue that's something you can use to help you determine

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I'm Romans 14 says that whatever it does not come from faith is a sin so if you're not absolutely convinced this is the right thing to do if you're questioning if you're doubting it you shouldn't participate in that until you are fully convinced this is something that's right this is something that's good this is something that's

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God honoring so that's it's one principle you can go by sometimes even a principle of caring for someone else for example with going back to this unusual flower question if if your next -door neighbor is deathly allergic to this particular flower you planting it in your yard knowing having this knowledge about your neighbor that would probably be a sin because you are not showing love and care for your neighbor so while planting particular flower in itself not a sin how that flower might affect other people very much could be a sin so you're not showing love you're not showing care sometimes you have to look to what are the laws of the land there are many things the

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Bible does not directly address but the the national law of the country you live in says that you're not to do this

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Romans 13 tells us we are to obey the laws that the government puts in place unless those laws violate

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God's Word but with that set aside if there's a law against it you shouldn't commit it

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I think speeding would be example this the Bible nowhere addresses driving a car above the posted speed limit but since there's a government law saying do not do this it therefore becomes a sin because you are violating a law that God has said we are to obey so I could go on and on there's lots of principles the

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God God's Word gives us to help determine whether something's a sin when the

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Bible doesn't specifically address it we don't have to ask questions about is adultery a sin is lying a sin is violence murder are those things sins the

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Bible specifically says they are but all these become gray areas or even not gray just areas the

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Bible doesn't address so many more principles and we'll include a link to our how can I know if something's a sin article in the show notes for these episodes because it lays out more principles than I have time but ultimately what

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I would usually point back to James 1 5 instructs us to ask God for wisdom so if you ever have a doubt about whether something you're wanting to participate in is a sin ask

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God ask God to give you his heart on this issue ask God to give you this sermon to make the decision whether this is something you should or shouldn't do whether it's a sin or not a sin that seems to be your prayer that God will always answer because God does not want us to have any doubt about what's right and wrong what honors and glorifies him and what offends his holy character so ask

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God for wisdom ask God to reveal to you whether a particular action is a sin maybe a couple other examples some video games a lot of questions by is playing this video game is in is playing this video game is in is playing this sport a sin is so many questions like that the

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Bible doesn't directly address but the Bible gives us principles there whereby we can make these sorts of decisions so there's a super brief answer on how can

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I know if something's a sin when the Bible doesn't directly address it just jump to question number two and Jeff how about you take this one are all sins equal to God that's one of those questions it's a little bit loaded because there's more than one way to answer it because there's more than one perspective to have on the question the the simplest answer is to say no not in the way that people typically mean it when they say are all sins equal at the same time all are equally condemning in the sense that they make us imperfect so we don't want to have this simplistic attitude towards it but when we do look at scripture we do see plenty of evidence that for example

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God does not consider the white lie exactly the same thing as murder

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God does distinguish between those things but that does not mean that there are not consequences for all of those things we do all sin separates us from God so it doesn't matter whether it's a big sin small sin it perfect and imperfect are not the same thing they were at different levels of sin and rebellion but it's not necessarily the case that God looks at every single sin as exactly the same thing we're all sinners we have

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James 3 to Romans 3 10 Ephesians 2 3 Psalm 51 5 just some of the scriptures that make it clear that every single human being is guilty of sin and in that sense we're all imperfect and in that sense every sin puts us in the same category the white liar the murderer it's all in that same category of somebody who is imperfect they've fallen short of God's standard at the same time scripture does tell us that there's a difference of degree in sin and that God recognizes that we can go straight to Jesus's own words

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John 1911 he talks about two circumstances where he says this person is guilty of the greater sin he explicitly indicates that there's one sin that's actually worse than another in that circumstance in Matthew 22 38 he mentions the greatest commandment and if something is greater that means that there is a higher obligation towards that particular law than others yeah

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Matthew 23 23 he talks about neglecting weightier matters of the law so there again

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Jesus is not just putting priority on some sins being worse than others but that some of God's commands have a higher priority than others in that sense in the

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Old Testament we have issues where the the Old Testament law talked about what we would sort of refer to as deliberate or willful or sometimes the language used is high -handed sins in other words that's when somebody is making a deliberate choice knowing it's a sin knowing they should not do it and purposefully choosing to do it anyway for which under the

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Old Testament law there really just is no sacrificial option for that you have to wait for the

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Day of Atonement when you can have those sins forgiven but within that context that's considered very serious

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Leviticus chapter 4 offers references to accidental sins if you do something that's against God's law without realizing it's a very different concept and then we see the same thing in the future

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Jesus makes a reference in Matthew 11 12 where he says that there's going to be two groups of people in different circumstances and he says well this group it's going to be more tolerable for them on the

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Day of Judgment than it will be for this group so there again he's talking about differences in degree and Revelation 2017 talks about how people who are lost will be judged according to what they do and when something is in accord or there's accordance it means that there's proportion it means that there is something coordinated with them so there's from a scriptural standpoint we can see there's a lot of evidence that yes

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God does actually differentiate between different sins he does not see every sin as being literally equal one place where this comes up for example is when we talk about adultery

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Jesus makes a famous comment where he says if you look at somebody with lust in your heart you've committed adultery in your heart and people say well does that mean that God considers lust in them in the mind exactly the same as adultery and scripture like this gives us good reason to say no he doesn't but that doesn't mean that lust in the mind is not a sin it is a sin and it does have serious problems and serious consequences attached to it so from a scriptural standpoint all sin is not equal in the sense that God will judge some sins more harshly than others he does think of some things as being worse or less moral than others at the same time every sin makes us separated from God so every sin puts us in the category of a sinner who needs salvation even if not every sin is something that God looks at and says oh well the murderer and the the petty thief are identical no

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Jeff excellent point and I glad you brought up Matthew 5 in the adultery in the heart passage but that's where I see this one coming up the most is someone's like Jesus says that if I look at a woman lustfully

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I've committed adultery in my heart is that the same thing as actually committing adultery and you look at the

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Old Testament law where there were penalties for committing adultery there's no penalty listed for having lust in your heart so clearly

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New Testament we know both are a sin but the way the Old Testament deals with it listing one of them in the

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Ten Commandments the other one not the clear distinction between how God views sin and Jesus also compares anger with committing murder anger can often lead to murder but nowhere in the

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Old Testament is the sin of anger given a steep consequence while murder is worthy of the death penalty in God's eyes in the

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Old Testament law so there's clearly in seeing how God punishes different sins or requires certain punishments or restitution differently for different sin clarifies that no in that sense they are not equal so Kevin next question to you what is the sin unto death yes this is a this is a tough one and we do get this question quite a bit we have an article online of course about it but I guess we should start with just taking a look at the scripture where this question comes from 1st

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John 5 verses 16 and 17 say this if anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death he should pray and God will give him life

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I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death there is a sin that leads to death

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I am NOT saying that he should pray about that all wrongdoing is sin and there is sin that does not lead to death so what do we know clearly from this passage first of all is that John does not name a specific sin he is giving a general statement here and in that general statement he makes the point that some sin leads to death some sin does not lead to death so then we're faced with the question what type of death are we talking about we have two options we'll talk about those in just a minute but then we should probably also note that John does not specifically forbid people from praying for the sin unto death he only says that he won't command that it be done so it seems like you can pray for that sin unto death if you want but probably not with the same confidence level that you would have and praying for the other types of sin and John is not going to command such a prayer as as far as he goes there should also look at the context what comes immediately before these verses

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I'll read verses 13 through 15 of 1st John chapter 5 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the

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Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life this is the confidence we have in approaching

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God that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us and if we know that he hears us whatever we ask we know that we have what we asked of him so in the verses immediately preceding our passage here he speaks of the assurance of salvation and the fact that God hears and answers prayer and we can pray confidently as we are praying in his will and then immediately following this passage that we're looking at verse 18 says this we know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin the one who is born of God keeps them safe and the evil one cannot harm them so John gives us the principle that the believer will not pursue sin in the same way that the unbeliever does he will confess sin be restored to fellowship a believer still sin but he's not going to be continuing to live in sin he's not going to be practicing a lifestyle of sin it's not going to be his his his go -to behavior it's going to be it's going to be unusual for him to be in sin he's going to take care of it's going to keep short accounts with God I guess we could say so what about this sin unto death that John talks about and the sin that is not unto death well too there are several interpretations

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I've read at least four but I'll share two of those that I think are both viable interpretations of this passage first is that the sins are committed by believers both the sin unto death and the sin not unto death committed by believers and in this view the death referred to is physical death so physical illness that would lead to physical death and so the one that leads unto death would be a willful premeditated rebellious unconfessed sin that a believer is just stubbornly holding on to and so God disciplines that believer eventually with a removal from this world and so we would be talking about cases such as Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5 and some of the

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Corinthian believers in 1st Corinthians chapter 11 where there is a physical consequence to sin the other in the same in the same view the same interpretation the other sin the sin that does not lead to death is the sin that a believer commits that is confessed and forsaken and so God does not discipline that sin with physical death because it is confessed it's repented of and so we pray for that sin

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John says we pray that the believer who's committing that sin would have godly sorrow leading to repentance and that there would be forgiveness and restoration there and that's what we're praying for so that's the first interpretation the second interpretation that I think is is actually a valid interpretation would bet would be that the sins that are being talked about here are committed by two different people one believer and one unbeliever and so in this view the death being referred to is not physical death and you'll notice that nowhere in the passage does it mention physicality it does not mention illness or healing physical healing anything like that it simply talks about the sin and so if the death is spiritual death that is eternal separation from God ultimate death then this is going to be committed by the unbeliever and so the unbelievers sin will eventually ultimately lead to eternal separation from God and John says

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I'm not going to tell you to pray for that with the same level of confidence as you would a believer who is caught up in a sin and for that believer that that is not going to lead to eternal separation from God but it's it needs to lead to repentance and in the forsaking of that sin so John says do pray for that and pray with confidence my brother or sister is caught in this sin

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Lord please restore him to fellowship we pray with confidence that God is going to answer that prayer it's part of part of God's will that that be that that be prayed for and answered and we know from verse 13 same context that the believer is not going to lose his salvation because we have that confidence that we can know that we are saved so the message is loud and clear that God answers prayer whether or not you go with either of these interpretations the fact remains that God answers prayer

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John does give two conditions for answered prayer in his book first one is in chapter 3 of his epistle and that is a heart that does not condemn us so first John 3 verses 21 and 22 dear friends of our hearts do not condemn us we have confidence before God and receive from him anything that we ask because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him so the first condition for answered prayer is obedience to God and a heart that's right with God no unconfessed sin and then the second condition is mentioned right here in chapter 5 the passage that we've been studying verse 14 if we ask anything according to his will so we ask according to his will then

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John gives an example of praying according to God's will a prayer that's going to be answered and that is pray for my brother or sister who's caught up in sin that this person would would come to repentance and forsake that sin

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Kevin I well said I familiar with both of those interpretations and probably some of the others and similar to the previous conversation we had about the unpardonable sin or the blasphemy of the

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Holy Spirit this passage has led a lot of people to being very concerned like oh no have I committed the sin unto death if I sin so grievously against God that he has done with me those type of things and I think your explanation and the context of the passage makes it clear it's not talking about any one certain sin that is unforgivable or that will definitely ultimately lead to your physical death and or spiritual death it's talking about a different quality of sin different person committing the sin and that sort of thing and so I think those explanations are are very very helpful so go ahead and jumping on to the next question

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I'll take this one the question is what are the seven deadly sins so both this one and the next one both have a little bit of a

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Catholic background to them the seven deadly sins were actually not something in Bible the

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Bible does not have a list of these seven deadly sins nor does it ever describe any certain sins as the seven deadly ones but the

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Pope I'm Gregory very early in church history about 6th century AD came up with this list and the list of the seven deadly sins are pride envy gluttony lust anger greed and sloth or laziness so you look at this list and I think we would agree that all these are sins and in various points in the

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Bible they are specifically identified as sin but to identify these particular seven as the seven deadly sins not biblical at all gluttony it's a sin that's often overlooked sloth or laziness another sin that people are often very willing to indulge in and don't see anything wrong with it so it's good for us to be pointed out to different things the

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Bible says are sins but to identify these seven as being smell on a different level than all the others

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I'm not biblical at all but what I would love I want to point someone to in Proverbs chapter 6 verses 6 to 19 it says there are six things the

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Lord hates seven that are abomination to him haughty eyes a lying tongue hands that shed innocent blood a heart that devises wicked plans feet that make haste to run to evil a false witness who breeds out lies and when he sows discord among brothers so why come up with a list of seven deadly sins that the

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Bible identifies the sins but does not place on a special level when there's actually a specific passage in the Bible that identifies seven sins that the

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Lord specifically hates so seven deadly sins hey it's something that's well known throughout church history has a lot of background history to it but it's not a list specifically identified in Scripture and some people tend to think that one in Proverbs 6

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I just read those are the seven deadly sins but took two different things two different lists one biblical one not so I think part of the point that's really intended when that list came up originally was just that those are those are seven things that are especially corrosive to your spiritual relationship with God I don't want to try to go back you know fourteen fifteen hundred years and put words in somebody's mouth but I can see somebody looking at those and saying hey these are these are seven things to which we're prone that are especially damaging to our faith and our relationship with God if you think about it in that sense then you know it's as long as you keep it in that context it's fine but we don't want to take it at the point of saying these are seven things that are biblically identified as being somehow worse than or more serious than any other

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I think using the term deadly kind of can makes us a little dangerous and that I was really lazy yesterday is that that a deadly sin

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I mean corrosive like you said dangerous something we should avoid the Bible condemns laziness but tried put it on a list of deadly sins

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I think is maybe a little over -the -top maybe seven corrosive sins would probably be more accurate but again the

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Bible identifies all seven of these as sins but to place them on another level not something the

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Bible does and the second sort of Catholic related question Jeff I'll let you tackle this one does the

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Bible teach mortal and venial sins well first we have to understand what we're talking about in a venial would mean something in the body you know mortal would mean something that's fatal there's a lot of misunderstanding about this and the the cartoon version of this is a suggestion that Catholicism teaches that if you commit a mortal sin that it is unforgivable and that you are permanently and forever separated from God and that's not what

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Catholicism teaches about mortal and venial sins the difference essentially between a mortal and a venial sin in Catholicism is whether or not that is something that God is willing to forgive without confession repentance absolution so on and so forth so for example if a person commits a venial sin and then dies immediately afterwards the teaching would be that that person can anticipate that God would be willing to forgive that that wouldn't interfere with that person's eternal salvation however if a person were to commit a sin like murder and then not confess that sin not be restored to right fellowship not repent of that and die that God would not choose to forgive that that's the basic idea of mortal and venial sin so in even shorter terms a mortal sin is something that in Catholicism is so serious that if you do it and you don't confess before you die then your soul is damned whereas a venial sin would be something that as long as you're in good standing with God to begin with and you commit that sin then you can be forgiven of that from a biblical standpoint that is a complete and absolute warped version of what salvation even is or even means for mortal and venial sins to work that way would imply that we have to have participation from other people to be saved that if I don't have a properly approved priest with whom to confess my sin and provide me with the right rituals and sacraments that my soul is going to be forfeit on account of that or the flip side being that if I can have that rightly approved person say the right words and have me say the right words that God will accept that as an acceptable forgiveness there's just nothing in Scripture that speaks to salvation that way either we are saved or we are not if we are truly saved

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God can and will forgive any sin that we commit that doesn't mean that believers are going to be expected to act just like non -believers but it does mean that when we sin we can expect that God will forgive so there is there's nothing as as blatant as this mortal and venial sin in Scripture itself it's an interesting idea that sometimes misunderstood but it is not biblical well praise the

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Lord for his grace and his forgiveness in Christ where would we be without that the next question that I'll have here is what does it mean to have a seared conscience and this is a good question and a seared conscience

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I'll just say at the beginning is definitely something we want to avoid we do not want to get to the place where our conscience is seared and this wording comes from 1st

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Timothy 4 verses 1 and 2 where Paul writes this the spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons such teachings come through hypocritical liars whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron so what is the conscience first of all the conscience is the soul's early warning system it's automatic and it's something that God has hardwired into every person's soul it's a part of who we are and it's its job is to alert us of what's right and wrong and the conscience doesn't really have an off switch it is constantly running constantly assessing the rightness or the wrongness of the things that we are considering the things that we are seeing happen or the things that we're actually participating in the things that we're doing but the warning here that we can draw out of this passage is that the can be seared and literally the the word could be translated cauterized as if with a hot iron just like a something hot can cauterize flesh so there are ways that the soul that were the conscience can be cauterized in which case it would be rendered insensitive such a conscience would not work properly would not be working as designed it's as if I mean we could think of it as maybe a spiritual scar tissue has overgrown the conscience and has dulled it has numbed it to the place where it can no longer sense right and wrong can't differentiate between the two so to keep this in context

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Paul is referring specifically to false teachers in the last days and that these false teachers are characterized by three things one is they are teaching the doctrines of demons so false doctrine and secondly they are hypocrites so they're living a false life and third they are liars they they are characterized by lying and so don't they know lying is wrong well you know they do but they don't care and that's because of the seared conscience how can they stand in front of people and wear that mask how can they how can they be pretenders like that how can they pretend to be righteous and the answer is you know maybe they maybe it used to bother them but not anymore because of the seared conscience their conscience is not working as it should what used to produce guilty feelings in them is no longer producing those feelings and their conscience has been numbed so they can lie and lie and lie and lie and they just don't care it does not bother them they feel no shame they feel no guilt in what they're doing because they've reached that place where their conscience has been seared or cauterized

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Paul contrasts the seared conscience in the same epistle we go back to chapter 1 of 1st

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Timothy verses 4 and 5 he says that advancing God's work is by faith and then verse 5 the goal of this command is love which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith so sincere faith no hypocrisy pure heart there's no unconfessed sin there you're you're actually living a righteous life and then he says it comes from a good conscience so the conscience still works the conscience still has the capacity to tell right from wrong and the heart is free from guilt this is what advances

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God's work this is where the love comes from that we have for God and for for others so how does a person actually end up with a seared conscience well

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I think through repeated exposure to evil your sense of right and wrong can become numb to that point we can no longer distinguish between right and wrong and also them if you over and over again are saying no to your conscience your the conscience is is saying hey this isn't right we should get out of here we shouldn't be involved with this and you if your response is you just need to be quiet you ignore that conscience you'll eventually get to the point where the conscience will shut up it won't be alerting you anymore that alarms not going to go off so repeated repression of what the conscience is saying can

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I think very is a very big part of getting to that place of having a seared conscience and Lord have mercy

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Lord preserve us from getting to that point what's especially frightening about that is the idea that a seared conscience is truly insensitive is it would be like having a smoke detector in your house and when you hear it beep you choose to ignore it but then eventually what happens is it stops beeping in other words you don't have the option to then start listening to it again once the conscience is seared the problem is that that person is insensitive to it and that's a scary place to be when

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God just takes his hands off and says well then I'm not even going to give you the capacity to recognize this anymore that that's a terrifying aspect of a seared conscience very true

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Kevin I liked your illustration of like a scar tissue where you have a wound eventually the scar tissue covers over and it in that sense it functions great but scar tissue is less sensitive than regular skin if you have a big scar somewhere your body you can touch it and it doesn't feel quite the same it doesn't trigger your nerves the same so it it's there but it's sub it's not optimal it doesn't work as well as the original skin and so a seared conscience

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I mean to a point it can still function until ultimately it gets completely shut off but it's no longer warning you like it should

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I think that's an excellent way of looking at it so so Kevin Jeff thanks for joining for part one of this conversation of some of our most frequently asked questions about sin we'll have a part two where we cover several more questions we're frequently asked about sin so I hope this conversation has been helpful to you we covered various questions how can

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I know if something's a sin are all sins equal to God what is the sin unto death what are the seven deadly sins does the

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Bible teach mortal in venial sins and what is a seared conscience and how can