Are All Sins Equal?

Do Christians Sin Every Day?  

"I sin every day." This common statement is often attached to the prevailing claim that all sins are equal. Try to correct either one of these teachings and be confronted with the accusation that you are a hypocrite because you sin, too, only your sins are actually worse because you are trying to earn your salvation by keeping the law (i.e., being obedient), which is an insult to Christ. In short, all sins are actually not equal, for the worst sin is thinking you can live above sin. Thus has Satan sold the big lie of hyper-grace, calling evil good and good, evil. Does this sound fictitious? Visit the comments section of almost any "discernment" video or blog and see exactly this and worse.

The fact remains that the Scriptures everywhere call us to be holy, so where does this "sin every day" teaching come from? Clearly, it comes from the view that human depravity is stronger than the power of the Cross. Since God's grace apparently cannot break human depravity in either salvation or sanctification, the best it can do is to excuse it. But this makes the Cross no different than the Jewish sacrificial system that forgave at least unintentional sin without removing the nature to sin. This teaching of incurable depravity typically found in otherwise conservative Calvinist circles seems to have leaped across denominational lines to find strange fellowship with the teaching that all sins are equal, as found in progressive Christianity.

This "woke" teaching has seemed to level the playing field for the LGBTQ+ community who would otherwise be excluded from full participation in church membership and leadership roles. (Be reminded, however, that in these circles, you "love who you love," so nothing is a sin.) This teaching has not only served to gain admittance for sins traditionally rejected as soul-damning; it has served to silence all arguments against these sins by deconstructing the ethos of holiness teachers and preachers as being steeped in incurable sin. The result is a godless antinomianism compatible with hyper-grace.

Both of these teachings that have been allowed to sweep the Christian landscape like kudzu, covering all other Biblical doctrines in their invasive path, are, in fact, gross distortions of fundamental Biblical truth. It is time to reintroduce the natural predators of these invasive teachings that would serve to cancel out the Bible, certainly the Old Testament and the writings of the Apostles. In fact, we will see that the Bible itself, taken as a whole, is the natural habitat the truth of which will hold these invasive teachings in check. It is the failure of Biblical doctrine in our churches today that has allowed such false teachings to run rampant.

The Truth behind the Fallacies:

The first item of business is to dismantle the fallacies behind both of these teachings. If Christians must sin every day, then sin is unavoidable. And if all sins are equal, then all sins are either equally damning or equally trivial. Let's suppose that all sins are equally damning and also unavoidable. But this is absurd. Furthermore, if sin is unavoidable, how is it then sin? We have here not only a faulty view of sin, but also a faulty view of human nature and of grace. It cannot be true that the grace which calls us to be holy makes the reality of that holiness impossible or that it calls holy that which remains unholy. It must be that grace gives us a new nature stronger than our old nature. And it must also be that this new nature transforms our motivations that may remain pure even when our performance is lacking for the "frame of dust" that we are. For, if every attempt to avoid sin is sooner or later futile even under grace, then why did Christ suffer and die? And yet we continue to struggle with the sin that "so easily besets us."

Although we never reach a static state of grace where all capacity to sin has been removed, the truth that must prey upon the kudzu of "daily sin" is the power provided against sin within God's Word. Put it this way: God knows we would sin every day, apart from abiding in His Word. Not only does His Word cleanse us from sin, it provides our defense against sin, from which Satan himself must flee, as we see with Christ in the wilderness. The Christian who can so flippantly shrug that he sins every day is the one whose Bible gathers dust during the week. It's that simple. But most Christians--whether those of the holiness camp or those of the progressive camp--tragically lack the daily discipline of reading and heeding God's Word. The former would rather live on emotional ecstasies which appear to place one beyond the grip of sin, while the latter would rather live on cerebral theories of positional holiness that exempt one from personal sin.

We have a new nature in Christ, but it must be maintained. And the fact is that one of the most obvious proofs of our new nature is its utter abhorrence of our old nature and our utter dependence upon Christ Himself. This fundamental distrust of ourselves doesn't cloak careless misdeeds in a false humility that shrugs, "I sin every day." It drives us to our Savior at every moment of every day, so that we instantly cry out for help and unction when we feel ourselves going down. Who has not met with unforeseen failure in a moment of frustration and not cried out to the Lord for immediate help and cleansing? But the person who sees such failure as normal thinks it is no big deal. It's a given. And God has already forgiven him, so what's the worry? But no true Christian ever puts his stubborn will ahead of God. If he has a problem with lying, exaggerating, and giving false impressions, the Holy Spirit within him will drive him to repentance. The day will come when he shuts himself up in the prayer closet and gets things right with God before facing one more day. He will wrestle with God until he allows God to cripple him, such that his old nature now limps in full dependence upon Christ.

I cannot think of a single day of my Christian life that I have not asked the Lord to forgive me for something, and usually it's the same things I struggled with yesterday. These are not deliberate sins for which I grant myself an allowance. These are predispositions of my nature that make me easy prey to worry or to fear or to independent thinking apart from faith in Christ. God's Word through the power of the Holy Spirit helps me to form new habits that break old patterns of thinking and behavior. This is what the Apostle John means by walking in the light and confessing our sins and being cleansed from all unrighteousness. The question is not, then, whether we ever sin in any day's time. The question is whether we ever come clean. The more we come clean, the more quickly we will recognize the presence of sin, and the more vehemently we will shun this sin. Because it is quite likely that we will sin every day, we must arm ourselves against this sin by hiding God's Word in our heart (Psalm 119:11).    

Practical holiness is achievable by every Biblical standard thus proclaimed. At bottom of any defeated view of the Christian life--or any entitled view, for that matter--is a lack of love for Christ and a failure of faith in the mighty work He came to do--a work that is exceedingly more abundant than we could ever hope to think (Ephesians 3:20). But we see also that our confession must be kept up to date, for there is a condition to holiness: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9). Christ's cleansing is not a mere one-time crisis, creating an entitlement; it is a crisis and a process, moment by moment as we abide in Him. And we cannot afford to let any overgrowth of antinomianism smother this glorious fruit of holiness.

Are All Sins Equal?  

So what of the other abused teaching that all sins are equal? This deserves its own full treatment in another post, but here we will say that, the closer we live to Christ, the more conscientious we will be regarding any sin. We will see that the first weed that begins to grow in the garden of our thoughts must be plucked up by the roots. That tendency to compare ourselves with others and to indulge in self-pity--what of that? Have we ever wrestled that to the floor and allowed Christ to deliver us from evil? Or what about holding a grudge? The Lord's Prayer teaches us that we must ask the Lord to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Not only does this prayer teach that we must live in a state of continual confession; it teaches an equivalence of blame that precludes hypocrisy in prayer. This does not mean that all sin has the same result or that no sin is death-bearing in contrast to others that are redeemable.  It means that we are not capable in ourselves of judging the seriousness of any sin and, therefore, must avoid all of it.

In this sense if in no other, all sin is equal. We cannot justify any of it. One of the most powerful scenes in American literature occurs in Arthur Miller's historical tragedy, The Crucible, when Elizabeth Proctor, an otherwise God-fearing woman, bears false witness in court when denying that her husband is an adulterer. She is afraid that the truth--that he is an adulterer--will cause him to hang, when, in reality, the truth will set him free. Because, without her knowledge, he has just confessed to adultery, her testimony would confirm his as an honest confession, while contradicting Abigail's lie that the affair never occurred. If Abigail is proven to have lied about the affair, she can also be proven to have lied about the accusations fueling the Salem witch trials--accusations that landed Elizabeth Proctor, John's wife and her rival, in jail. Elizabeth's lie ends up ironically condemning not only her husband but also herself, while validating Abigail. John Proctor ultimately hangs for his sin. Not only does Elizabeth's one lie not set him free, it weighs as much on the scales of justice as does her husband's sin of adultery.

In this way, we read the sin of Adam and Eve in eating the forbidden fruit to be as serious as David's murder and adultery. We see Moses' striking of the rock to be as much an affront to God as Jonah's refusal to preach to Nineveh. We see the lying of Ananias and Sapphira to be as damning as the witchcraft of Simon the Sorcerer. Who are we to judge the consequences of even one sin? All sin is to be avoided. Sadly, however, the person most likely to shout that all sins are equal has an ulterior motive. He has invented a mind game where sin and not holiness wins every time. This game also requires constant cheating, for its logic is not sustainable. We hear people excuse a big sin because it is "the same" as a small one--for all sins are equal. They don't know a log from a speck. And then we see them turn around and accuse a small sin as if it is a big one--for all sins are equal. They don't know a speck from a log. But then, when no one's looking, they turn around again and excuse a small sin because it isn't a big one--because all sins are not equal! What a hopeless tangle of hypocrisy results from a faulty view of sin.

The root of the problem isn't the size of the sin but the seed of the sin. All seeds are fairly small. Some are super tiny. But even small seeds become big sins, and one weed spreads seeds of many more.

The answer isn't either to deny that the weeds are there or to let them grow to high heaven since they are all the same. The answer is to live that life of circumspection that uproots any thought before it becomes a deed so that a speck will not become a log. The worst problem with a faulty view of sin is the blindness it creates in our own thinking, causing us to reject both the conviction over sin that God's Word brings and the cure for sin that the Holy Spirit brings. Even if it were true that all sins are equal, a truth told with bad intent beats all the lies we can invent. But the belief that all sins are equal is at best a half truth. We cannot allow the kudzu of half truth to take over the landscape, covering with greenery a dead theology that trivializes sin.

Corrections and Conclusions:

The ultimate correction for false teachings that seem intended to water down a Biblical view of sin is found in Hebrews 12:1, "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."  First, we see here that this "cloud of witnesses" outlined so eloquently in Hebrews 11 includes all those heroes of faith who pleased God. They found the righteousness which is by faith, each through some specific action that made that saving faith visible. Therefore, it is indeed possible to live a life that pleases God. Second, we see that it is this precedent of witnesses that makes incumbent upon us the obligation to leave our own legacy--that we, too, will live by faith and lay aside every weight. It is indeed possible to lay aside not only every weight--those hindrances that are not in themselves "sin"--but also the sin that so easily ensnares or "besets" us. If we do not, we cannot run this race and we will never win the prize.