The Sword Room

I once knew a man who over the course of twenty-five years of married life had more affairs than I could count on both hands. He claimed to be a Christian and based his eternal destiny on having repeated a sinner’s prayer after his mother at age seven. It was always his wife’s fault: she had gained weight and let herself go; she was a nag; she didn’t put out in the bedroom. He would pop into church for a few weeks and sit near the exit. Then, when he was playing the field with his latest girlfriend he would disappear for awhile, only to re-appear when the relationship went south, as it always did. He would not genuinely repent or try to change, but he was always coming to me wanting me to reassure him that should he die heaven would be his home. He would even go to his mother for support, and of course he never told her of his adultery. 

Whenever I brought up the seriousness of his sin he would go into this routine about all sins being equal. He would point to Matthew 5:28 as evidence that he was no more guilty of adultery than any other man who had looked lustfully on a woman. He also mentioned the verse in 1 John 3:15 which equates hatred of one’s brother with murder. From here he would conclude that in God’s eyes his sexual sin was no worse than breaking the speed limit.

Now there is a certain sense in which he was right. All sin falls short of God’s righteous standard. In Matthew 5 Jesus is speaking to the external righteousness of the pharisees. They judged others for their sinful behaviors with the assumption that thoughts and desires were exempt from God’s scrutiny. But when it comes to righteousness all have sinned repeatedly in word, deed, and thought. God does not evaluate the sinfulness of thoughts by a different standard than any other sin.

Having said this it is clear that God does make distinctions between certain kinds of sins in terms of the effects they produce and the consequences they merit. In 1 Kings 16:30 and 2 Kings 21:11 we read that certain kings of Israel were more wicked than those who went before them. But how could this be possible if God considered all sins to be the same? If all sins are the same in God’s eyes then how could Jesus say that all other sins except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would be forgiven (Matthew 12:32)? How could he say in another place that it would be more tolerable for Sodom than for Israel on the day of judgment? Why does Scripture distinguish between sins that lead to death and those that don’t (1 John 5:16)?

The fact is that some sins are worse in their effect. The man mentioned earlier had a beautiful daughter. I wonder if he would think worse of a man for raping her than merely lusting after her. Why, if all sins are the same? Hating a brother is in one sense just a sinful as murdering him. But if the brother has his choice between the two, which do you suppose he would prefer? And why does most civil law, after Scripture (Genesis 9:6), see murder as a capital offense? If all sin is equal should we not execute those who openly profess or demonstrate their hatred of others?

The case of the Corinthian church is most instructive. This church numbered at least in the hundreds and possibly thousands. Corinth was rife with sexual immorality. There is no doubt that sexual lust was a battle waged by many men and perhaps even women in that fellowship. Paul tells them it is better to marry than burn with lust (7:1), so we know lust was an issue. And yet there was only one man in the Corinthian church of whom Paul said, “Put him out of the church,” and that was the one engaged in the open onngoing flagrant adulterous affair (ch. 5). If all sins are the same then why did not Paul command that every member of the Corinthian church engaging in known sin be excommunicated? The answer is that Paul drew a distinction between fornication and all other sins (6:18). All other sins are outside the body, but the fornicator sins against the temple of the Holy Spirit–a result often erroneously attributed to practices like smoking.

Eventually I broke fellowship with the man mentioned above. I do not know if he is a believer or not. I cannot determine this, and it is not my job to do so. But because he continued to live like an unbeliever I had to treat him like one. If I saw him today I would be cordial and friendly. But I would make no pretense of spiritual fellowship with him.

So the answer to the question: Are all sins the same is–yes and no.

Is sin forbidden because it is bad, or is it bad because it is forbidden? In other words, why is sin sinful? A blogging friend wrote an entry today discussing the fall of Adam and Eve, and after reading his post the gears started turning. Was the command not to eat the forbidden fruit due to some inherent badness in the fruit. I do not believe so. God could have designated any tree in the garden as forbidden. The fruit of the forbidden tree did not possess magical properties to curse the eater. It looked pleasant and probably tasted great. What made eating it wrong was the divine prohibition–and that is all that made it wrong. Eating a piece of fruit in and of itself is not sinful. The prohibition was not fruit-centered.

Nor was it man-centered. Now it is true that disobeying God often leads to pain and suffering for us, much as a child’s disobedience to his mom’s directive not to touch a hot stove results in getting burned. Our disobedience to God’s commands can also negatively impact others. But sin is primarily God-ward, and the issue of human suffering is secondary. Knowing his sin with Bathsheba caused suffering to her, her baby, and her husband (not to mention himself), David declared: Against You, you only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight (Psalm 51:4). Sin is sin because God says it is sin, and that is the only reason. What God has declared sin cannot be vetoed by man or Satan. The whole world could unanimously out-vote God, and his decree would still settle the issue.

Take adultery as an example. Say a man has sex with his secretary and then the next night has sex with his wife. Physiologically there is no difference. In both cases you have two adult human bodies copulating. In fact the sex might be “better” with the secretary than the spouse. The intimacy and emotional attachment might seem deeper. In fact the man might even say he feels “more married” to the secretary than to his own wife. How can something that feels so good be wrong? How can love between two people ever be wrong? The minute we start thinking this way our morality becomes man-centered. God-centered morality says adultery is wrong because God declares it so. Period. End of discussion. Human emotions and rationalizations be damned.

When Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord at Gilgal (1 Samuel 15:33), his actions physically were no different from those of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. But Samuel’s actions were righteous while Dahmer’s were evil. Why? Because Samuel was obeying a divine command while Dahmer was disobeying. That’s it. Case closed.

What God declares to be sin is sin. Doesn’t matter if the person in rebellion to God seems like a really nice person or not. Doesn’t matter if they are loving to other people or not. Doesn’t matter if they have a great rationalization. That is all just man-centered gobbledygook. Listen–I am in no position to point a finger at anyone else or try to remove a speck from my neighbor’s eye when I have a beam in my own. I have a hard time pulling off a pharisee act because it is obvious that my own righteousness is crap. I can cut anyone slack who, like me, is struggling daily with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Just don’t try and justify God-defined sin on humanistic grounds. Don’t call black white and evil good.

God writes the rules. And His Word is forever settled in heaven, so there are no revisions.