After a discussion of sin in a children’s Bible class, a five-year-old looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, “But I’ve never murdered anyone.” Everyone does it. Everyone puts sin in categories. That does not make it right.
Some assume that telling a “little white lie” isn’t as serious as committing perjury or cheating on their income tax isn’t as serious as robbing a bank. Others think if they keep most of the ‘important’ laws, God will overlook the ‘little’ ones they don’t keep. The NT describes this assumption like this:
But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. (James 2:9–11)
It seems the early readers of this letter from James were thinking their sins of prejudice, partiality, and indifference to the poor weren’t as serious as sins like murder and adultery. Or they thought they could make up for their favoritism by keeping God’s law in other areas.
Bring that thinking into modern Christian life. What sins do I look down on? The ones that I’m not guilty of committing? I know that all sins aren’t equally atrocious or damaging, but this verse says that from God’s perspective every sin violates His standard. When you break one law, you break them all and are characterized as a sinner and transgressor. That puts all people in the same category. We all fall short and cannot justify ourselves by the sins we don’t commit or by trying to counterbalance our sin by doing good. Sin is sin.
There is one sin that I’m thinking of that gets a lot of press these days. Some Christians are falling for the lie that it isn’t a sin, or that God loves everyone so it’s okay to sin that way. Others are repulsed and think this is the worst ever, particularly since some who do it are so blatantly insistent that it be accepted as normal.
I need to remember that if I gossip, tell a lie, am partial to some and unkind to others, or do anything that is not of faith, I am sinning (Romans 14:23). Even if I “know the right thing to do and fail to do it, for me it is sin.” (James 4:17) Sin can be blatant or subtle, but if it violates the nature of God, it is sin.
PRAY: Oh Jesus, You have shown me many times to keep my judgment of sin focused on my sin, rather than the sin of others, no matter how little my sin may seem compared to the horrendous things that go on in this world. You want me to see sin as an affront to Your holiness. I’m not to hide it, make excuses for it, or measure it by other sins that I think are worse. Sin is sin and it separates me from fellowship with You. I am convinced that this verse is one of the most important principles in the Bible to remember and practice:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
There is nothing else that I can do to deal with my sin. I am not my own Savior. Nor can I confess the sins of others or accuse or point to them as being worse sinners than I am. We all fall short. Only You have offered forgiveness and cleansing to sinners because only You have the power to do that, a power based on what You did at Calvary. You shed Your blood for my forgiveness and freed me from condemnation.
PONDER: The law was given to show us our need of a Savior. We cannot keep that law. Read Galatians 3:10–29 regarding the purpose of God’s law and Titus 2:11-14 to be reminded again why Jesus died.
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