March 22, 2023

Romans 1: 29-31 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (NIV)

We often take lightly as a ‘little sin’ that which God takes very seriously.*

If there is a sin that didn’t make this list, Paul covered it with “every kind of wickedness.” It’s interesting that he doesn’t specify some of the more heinous sins that we would surely include on our roster. What I also find of interest is what we might have omitted if we were cataloguing every kind of wickedness. Disobeying parents – really? We’re adults. Why would that appear in company with envy, murder, and strife? And gossip. That’s not such a bad thing – especially if we camouflage it as a prayer request, or follow it up with, “Bless her heart.”

In James 2: 10, we read that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” By this, we would assume that all sin is created equal.  And yet, in the Old Testament, we see God differentiating between sins. Some required more sacrifices and harsher penalties than others. In the New Testament, Jesus also seemed to be more vocal in his umbrage against some sins.

So, then, are we to conclude that all sins are not created equal?

I would have to answer, “Yes and no.” When it comes to degrees of sinfulness, no one would deny that murder trumps cheating on a math test, or that a child molester is more depraved than someone who lies about her age. But Jesus died for ALL our sins. The little sins nailed him to the cross as surely as those acts of depravity. Some sins may hurt only the ones who commit them; other sins wreak havoc. But we are on dangerous ground if we ourselves attempt to rank sins “from bad to worse.” As someone has observed, “In regard to both eternal consequences and salvation, all sins are the same.”*

We should be just as concerned about other sins as we are about the ones in the news.*