The Most Repeated Error Taught Within Otherwise Solid Churches

Think through this thought with me. I believe there is an error that is being taught in most of our churches today. Sunday School teachers teach it. I guess some pastors preach it. People repeat it in theological discussions, post it on Facebook and build other teachings around it. You’ve heard it said a thousand times: ALL SIN IS THE SAME TO GOD.

The problem with that statement is that it is patently false and stands in contradiction to any honest reading of Scripture. There is absolutely no way a person can read through the Bible and come to the conclusion that God can’t tell the difference between one sin or another or that God is equally offended by every sin or that His response to every type of sin will be the same. Another untruth that derives from this false premise is that all sin should be treated the same by people or the church. The whole of Scripture contradicts these ideas, and so do many specific verses as I will demonstrate shortly.

But first, we must ask from whence this idea came?  As far as I can tell, this idea came mostly from a desire among church members not to be judgmental, which, of course, is a good desire in and of itself. In fact, these days we’d rather be wrong than judgmental. I’ll write a future blog on the common misinterpretation of what it means to be judgmental, as that is a related but different discussion. Back to the point, we simply don’t want to say one sin is worse than another. We want to equate all sins, because that ensures that we cannot deem someone else’s sin to be worse than ours. Again, this comes from a good heart. The problem is that the idea that no sin is worse than any other sin is simply not true.

But surely,  since we’re talking about Pastors and Sunday School teachers teaching this idea, it must have come from somewhere in the Bible, right?  Well, sort of. There are portions of “The Sermon on the Mount,” where Jesus indicates that the less obvious sin, such as lust, makes one just as guilty as the more obvious sin, such as adultery. He says the same of hatred and murder, etc. However His point is that both the obvious and less-than obvious are sinful and either will equally make one guilty.  His point is not that both sins are exactly the same to God. Similarly, James says “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (2:10.)  The point of these teachings is the same. We have all sinned. Sin of all types makes us guilty before God… guilty enough to face judgment and Hell. So, in the sense of making us guilty before a Holy God, yes, any and all sin does that. However, neither James nor Jesus came close to teaching that all sin is exactly the same or that all sin is the same according to God. Big difference.

And so someone asks: How does the Bible refute the statement, “All sin is the same to God?”  That’s a funny question. The Bible doesn’t need to refute it, because the Bible doesn’t say it in the first place. However, does anyone really believe Sodom and Gomorrah would have been burned to the ground because the people broke the speed limit or because most of them made copies of CD’s?  Does anyone really believe that a perfectly just God sees the sins of Hitler exactly the same as the sins of whatever godly spiritual leader you respect?  Is a lie or gossip really exactly the same as mass murder to God?  Come now.

So what does the Bible say?  Well, Jesus told Pilate (John 19:11) that the sins of the Jews were GREATER than his sin, because they should have known better. This alone refutes the idea that one sin is not greater than another. The Apostle Paul said there were certain sins that should lead to a person’s dismissal from a church body (1 Cor. 5, etc.) Christ indicated this as well in his letters to the churches (Revelation 2-3). Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is certainly singled out as “worse” than other sin in Matthew 12:31. In Luke 12, Jesus even seems to suggest that there may be differing degrees of punishment depending on the nature of the sin. In Matthew 23 and Luke 20, Jesus calls out the sins of certain religious leaders as “worthy of greater condemnation” than the sins of others. Also in Matthew 23, Jesus talked about “the weightier things of the Law,” perhaps indicating some laws (rules) may be more important than others, heaven forbid (See Leviticus.)  Matthew 6 and 18 call out “un-forgiveness” as a particularly heinous sin. And, in fact, certain sins are consistently spoken of as being exceptionally offensive to God throughout the Bible. There can be little doubt that sexual immorality and idolatry are portrayed as particularly offensive to God. In short, no honest reading of the Bible could possibly leave one thinking that all sin is the same to God. No way.

As Jesus said in Luke 7:47, “He who has been forgiven little, loves little.”  Let us not rob future believers of a powerful testimony by telling them there is nothing exceptional for which they need to be forgiven, when, in fact, their sin might be exceptional. Paul said, because of His previous murderous actions, “I am the chief of sinners.”  I guess he assumed that tracking down Christ-followers and having them killed was a particularly bad kind of sin before a Holy God. It sure felt like a worse kind of sin to Steven, don’t you think?  Yes, Paul was forgiven more than some. That’s why he also loved more than some.

Let’s get practical. What am I really doing when I say that committing homosexual acts (for instance) is no more offensive to God than a momentary prideful thought?  What I am doing is watering down the sin of same-sex intercourse, and forgetting all that the Bible says about it. Don’t misunderstand. Pride is certainly evil, sinful and worthy of damnation to God, but we don’t normally elevate our sin of pride to the level of sexual immorality in this argument. We simply can’t pull that off. Rather, we lower our view of sexual immorality until we can view a lifestyle God called “an abomination” as “not really that bad.”  This is exactly what is happening. Watering down sin is the end game of our wrong thinking here. When we say “All sin is the same to God,” what winds up happening is that we basically throw up our hands and say, “Oh well, I might as well do whatever I want, because I’m going to do something wrong, and anything I do that is wrong is just as bad as anything else, so I might as well just do what I want.”  We also stop acting as salt and light in a dark and tasteless world, because now we are all dark and tasteless. It’s all the same. There is no purity. There is now, no “straight and narrow.”  There are only shades of gray, and we are all gray. There is no ability to walk with God, because we all have a sinful thought or a slip of the tongue now and then, and now that is just as bad as shacking up with a golden retriever. Forgive my bluntness, because it is designed to drive home the point in a way that can’t be ignored. The idea that God sees all sin the same is simply not reasonable.

God killed Ananias and Sapphira for sin. He wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah for sin. He didn’t wipe out every city nor did He kill every church member, yet we know that every city and every member of the church had sin. Clearly, some sin is more dangerous before a Holy God.

So, am I saying we should go around telling people their sin is worse than ours or come up with lists of those sins that are particularly bad?  No. I’m not saying that at all. There is another discussion to be had about what the world SHOULD hear us saying and what they should NOT hear us saying. Our primary job is not to judge their sin. In the scope of this blog, all I am pointing out is that we need to stop saying “It’s all the same to God,” because that is a lie from Satan with pervasive consequences for our churches and our culture.

All sin is damning. That much is true. Only by the blood of Christ are any of us saved and no one is “too bad” for salvation in Christ. The issue at salvation is not “how bad is your sin,” but “how great was His sacrifice?”  We are saved by grace through faith, and not of works (Eph. 2:8). No one is good enough and no one is beyond hope (See all the “whosoever’s.”)  All of that is true. But be careful, brothers and sisters. When the world hears us saying “All sin is the same to God,” we may think they will appreciate our “tolerance.”  However, all they are really hearing is that we worship an unjust God who doesn’t make any moral sense. Worse, they are not hearing about the God of the Bible. Perhaps we need to choose our words more carefully, when we are talking about our God. And that’s a thought to think through.