All men were created equal, but what about their sins?
The word sin, at least in English, comes from the concept of guilt. A sinner is someone who is guilty. Usually, people avoid using the word sin in any straightforward manner, reserving it for occasions of sarcasm, belittling, justification, or outright mockery. None of which excuses anyone from guilt. If sin leads to a penalty, then we do well to pay close attention to it. One question I get a lot is whether all sins are equal. The answer is both yes and no.
Everyone sins and everyone dies
God has much to say about sin. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, describes sinful acts before anyone says the word sin. The root of the first sin was mistrust. Although God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, and placed them in a wonderful garden with only one rule, a serpent questioned God’s motives. This serpent got the first humans to wonder if God was holding back from them by keeping them from becoming like God. The serpent questioned God and got the humans thinking that maybe the result of breaking the command would be something good not bad, so they broke the one rule God gave them and committed the first human sin. The serpent, though, was wrong. As a result of the sin, God pronounced penalties for humans, the serpent, and the whole earth. Instead of elevating Adam and Eve to godlike status, sin led to debasement, tension, pain, envy, toil, and death (Gen 3:14-19). Biblical authors use that last consequence, death, as a shorthand way of describing sin’s penalty. Our death in this life points to a second death in the afterlife that the Bible describes in great detail as an eternal separation from light, beauty, goodness, and truth.
Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, Cain, was the first human to hear the word sin in the Bible. God speaks of it when Cain gets angry with him. God tells him, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Gen 4:7). Instead of doing anything right, Cain murdered his innocent brother out of anger. Sin ruled over Cain, and before Adam and Eve died, one of their sons paid the first ultimate penalty for sin by being slaughtered.
Eventually Adam and Eve died too, and so has everyone else who has shared their human nature. When it comes to whether all sins are equal, the penalty of death is the same for us all. Everyone dies because everyone sins (Rom 5:12).
Not everyone commits the same sins, but when it comes to sin’s penalty of death that does not matter. All that matters is being a sinner, and it only takes one sin to do that. A woman cannot say she is kind of pregnant, a little pregnant, or sort of pregnant. She either is or she isn’t. Likewise, a human cannot say he is kind of a sinner, a little sinner, or sort of a sinner. He either is or he isn’t. If he is, then he will sooner or later face the same penalty due all sinners: death. God reveals that all kinds of people are sinners, no matter their race, gender, upbringing, wealth, or list of good and poor behavior. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).
Some sins hurt worse than others
While the English word sin stems from guilt, sin’s result, the biblical languages link their words for sin to error, like the error of missing a target or in Paul’s words “falling short” of that target. One could miss the target on purpose while another could be ignorant of the target altogether, but either way all attempts fall short. Just because all humans are sinners equally and face the same judgment of death, that does not mean all humans fall short of God’s glory to the same degree. Some sins miss the target worse than others do. Some sins hurt more people than others do. And some sins hurt people more deeply than others do. When I throw a pebble in a pond there will be a small ripple for a second or two, but when a boulder falls down a cliff and into that same pond there will be mighty waves and wake long after its impact.
Not all sins are equally destructive. Even in Jesus’ day the people of Sodom, who lived during the lifetime of Abraham had a longstanding bad reputation for detestable sins, but Jesus says that some of the people who lived in towns near his homeland in his day will end up having it worse on the day of judgment than anyone from Sodom will (Matt 11:20-24). Not only will sins be treated unequally on the future day of judgment, but also here and now some sins have worse ripple effects than others. Some sins kill people. Some leave small children without a parent. Some violate and break a victim. And so on.
Christ defeated sin and death
And in Christ there is forgiveness of sins. Christ is the one human who never sinned, but he still paid the penalty of our sins in his death, and through his death he broke “the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb 2:14b-15). The good news of Christ is that just as death came through the first human, Adam, eternal life comes through the “second Adam,” Christ (Rom 5:12-21). His death paid the penalty due any and every human. His forgiveness extends to the chief of sinners, declaring anyone who trusts in him as righteous. Just as sins are in one sense equal and in another sense unequal, so is our response to Jesus’ forgiveness of them. Jesus reminded the self-righteous of his day that “whoever has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47b). Make no mistake, people forgiven of great sins love their savior much, whether they killed Christians as Paul did, owned slaves as John Newton did, helped a president obstruct justice as Charles Colson did, and so on. Yet all of us, no matter how righteous we saw ourselves before trusting in Christ, owe much love to our savior, because we are all sinners in need of a savior. As Paul said, by God’s grace we are what we are, and thanks be to him that he has saved us from sin. For sin is no laughing matter.
Everyone sins and everyone dies
God has much to say about sin. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, describes sinful acts before anyone says the word sin. The root of the first sin was mistrust. Although God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, and placed them in a wonderful garden with only one rule, a serpent questioned God’s motives. This serpent got the first humans to wonder if God was holding back from them by keeping them from becoming like God. The serpent questioned God and got the humans thinking that maybe the result of breaking the command would be something good not bad, so they broke the one rule God gave them and committed the first human sin. The serpent, though, was wrong. As a result of the sin, God pronounced penalties for humans, the serpent, and the whole earth. Instead of elevating Adam and Eve to godlike status, sin led to debasement, tension, pain, envy, toil, and death (Gen 3:14-19). Biblical authors use that last consequence, death, as a shorthand way of describing sin’s penalty. Our death in this life points to a second death in the afterlife that the Bible describes in great detail as an eternal separation from light, beauty, goodness, and truth.
Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, Cain, was the first human to hear the word sin in the Bible. God speaks of it when Cain gets angry with him. God tells him, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Gen 4:7). Instead of doing anything right, Cain murdered his innocent brother out of anger. Sin ruled over Cain, and before Adam and Eve died, one of their sons paid the first ultimate penalty for sin by being slaughtered.
Eventually Adam and Eve died too, and so has everyone else who has shared their human nature. When it comes to whether all sins are equal, the penalty of death is the same for us all. Everyone dies because everyone sins (Rom 5:12).
Not everyone commits the same sins, but when it comes to sin’s penalty of death that does not matter. All that matters is being a sinner, and it only takes one sin to do that. A woman cannot say she is kind of pregnant, a little pregnant, or sort of pregnant. She either is or she isn’t. Likewise, a human cannot say he is kind of a sinner, a little sinner, or sort of a sinner. He either is or he isn’t. If he is, then he will sooner or later face the same penalty due all sinners: death. God reveals that all kinds of people are sinners, no matter their race, gender, upbringing, wealth, or list of good and poor behavior. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).
Some sins hurt worse than others
While the English word sin stems from guilt, sin’s result, the biblical languages link their words for sin to error, like the error of missing a target or in Paul’s words “falling short” of that target. One could miss the target on purpose while another could be ignorant of the target altogether, but either way all attempts fall short. Just because all humans are sinners equally and face the same judgment of death, that does not mean all humans fall short of God’s glory to the same degree. Some sins miss the target worse than others do. Some sins hurt more people than others do. And some sins hurt people more deeply than others do. When I throw a pebble in a pond there will be a small ripple for a second or two, but when a boulder falls down a cliff and into that same pond there will be mighty waves and wake long after its impact.
Not all sins are equally destructive. Even in Jesus’ day the people of Sodom, who lived during the lifetime of Abraham had a longstanding bad reputation for detestable sins, but Jesus says that some of the people who lived in towns near his homeland in his day will end up having it worse on the day of judgment than anyone from Sodom will (Matt 11:20-24). Not only will sins be treated unequally on the future day of judgment, but also here and now some sins have worse ripple effects than others. Some sins kill people. Some leave small children without a parent. Some violate and break a victim. And so on.
Christ defeated sin and death
And in Christ there is forgiveness of sins. Christ is the one human who never sinned, but he still paid the penalty of our sins in his death, and through his death he broke “the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb 2:14b-15). The good news of Christ is that just as death came through the first human, Adam, eternal life comes through the “second Adam,” Christ (Rom 5:12-21). His death paid the penalty due any and every human. His forgiveness extends to the chief of sinners, declaring anyone who trusts in him as righteous. Just as sins are in one sense equal and in another sense unequal, so is our response to Jesus’ forgiveness of them. Jesus reminded the self-righteous of his day that “whoever has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47b). Make no mistake, people forgiven of great sins love their savior much, whether they killed Christians as Paul did, owned slaves as John Newton did, helped a president obstruct justice as Charles Colson did, and so on. Yet all of us, no matter how righteous we saw ourselves before trusting in Christ, owe much love to our savior, because we are all sinners in need of a savior. As Paul said, by God’s grace we are what we are, and thanks be to him that he has saved us from sin. For sin is no laughing matter.
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