Admin note: The background color I'm going for here is "scarlet"

... is one thing that all humans have in common, and sin is what separates us from God. It disqualifies us for Heaven because God's Heaven is a perfect place. Only perfection can enter. The Good News (that's what the word "Gospel" means, btw) is that God made a way for us to avoid having to pay the price for our sins. He paid it Himself on the Cross, but that's another article (see "Salvation").

What I want to write about here is the nature of sin itself. There are a lot of Christians who would say that "all sin is equal in the eyes of God." I wrestled with that idea for a long time, wondering how that could be true. I mean, how could someone pocketing a candy bar from a convenience store be compared with Hitler and his crimes against humanity?

For a while, I wondered whether my thoughts on that stemmed from my human nature seeing things differently than God does. I thought that maybe God sees all sins as equally ugly things because He is perfect. But I still would not be persuaded that His Justice could lead Him to come down as hard on the candy bar thief as Hitler.

Then it hit me. I realized one day why people say that all sin is equal, but I think those people may have missed a key point:

Any and all sin does in fact make it necessary to be reconciled with God. Thus, all sin is equally capable of separating us from God, but this does not necessarily mean that every individual sin itself equal.   

I have never heard that said by any theologian, but it's what makes sense to me as best as I can understand the nature of God.

Mere Religion

The second thing that a lot of Christians misunderstand about sin is that they start to use "the sin list" as a moral code that becomes an end unto itself. When this happens, the Relationship with God that Christian Faith is supposed to produce becomes nothing more than religion, which God hates as much as He hates any evil. Religion happens when people look at all the things in the Bible that are named as sins and begin to define themselves as  Christians by how well they conform to that standard of morality. Of course, even the most ardent of this crowd would admit (reluctantly) that we cannot meet the Biblical standard...because if we could then we could be perfect. For those who think they come close, that's where we get prideful, self-righteous, "church-lady-type" Christians who look down on those who don't try as hard as they do to be Biblical. The obvious irony there, of course, is that being truly Biblical means focusing on forgiveness and understanding in our dealings with others, even - no, especially - when they sin.

The Letter-of-the-Law vs. The Spirit of the Law

A lot of (probably self-righteous) people in the Bible spent a lot of time asking Jesus about the letter-of-the-law when it came to various sins. In one such example, they asked him how many times they should forgive the same person. His answer was that we should forgive a person "seventy-seven times seventy times." A religious person hears that answer and starts "doing the math" on his annoying brother-in-law. To do that misses the (tongue-in-cheek) point that Jesus was trying to make...that our forgiveness should be unlimited because His is towards us (this idea goes back to that "freely you have received, so freely give" passage). Jesus obviously has a sense of humor, and when He was physically among us He often liked "messing with" religious people...who are apparently the only people He disliked. He reviled them openly and harshly even though He showed love and forgiveness to prostitutes and tax collectors.

So why are all those sins listed in the Bible if we can't live up to them?

Well, it's not because God likes to see us squirm, or chase His "cosmic laser pointer" like a puppy who "don't know any better." Sin is not a concept that God just invented so that we could show off to Him and to others how pious we can be. The idea of sin is meant for our protection. Parents on earth don't forbid their children from playing in the street because they like to say no. LIkewise, God has good reasons when He says no. It's hard to argue that the things we recognize as sins are hazardous to our well-being.

Plus, we try not to cheapen God's sacrifice for us on the Cross by willingly continuing to act in ways that caused His sacrifice to be necessary in the first place. Of course we will fall short at times, out of our own weakness, but God has no desire at those times to shower guilt upon us. That's just not how someone who loves you operates. A healthy spouse or parent doesn't even hold your actions against you when (s)he is wronged and you sincerely ask forgiveness, so why would God?

God does not want us to live in guilt

One of His names for satan is The Accuser of the Brethren, so His attitude about guilt trips is pretty negative. In fact, He goes further in His Word to point out that "when we repent, our sins are washed away so much that we will be 'white as snow'; and that He 'chooses to forget them.' The Greek word for "forget" in that passage goes beyond our English language, earthly concept of "forget." When humans say "forget," we mean "forgive" because we still remember the action we had to forgive. The Greek word the Bible uses, though, makes it clear that God uses His Power to actually "not remember" our infraction - in a very literal way. If we were to say to Him "I'm sorry I did that again" His response would be "what do you mean by 'again?'" Thus, God's attitude about our sin (if we are Christians) is actually VERY liberating...not restrictive, as many people think of it. Because only with God can we get a truly clean slate.

Something to Make You Say "Hmmmm:" The Bible also says that our sins, once we repent, are as far separated from us "as the east is from the west." Think about that one a little deeper...it didn't say "as far as the north is from the south." If you travel north for long enough, you will eventually be going south, and vice versa. But, if you travel east or west forever, you will always be going east or west. They never meet. As a side point, it's pretty cool that this was written way before mankind realized the world was round. Hmm...

The point of all this talk about God's "remembering our sins or not" is to illustrate that  It is not God, then, but satan the enemy who is the author guilt. Like a healthy parent, when we commit individual sins, all that God requires is a sincere repentance - not a guilt trip. God knows we are imperfect, after all, and He accepts us as such even when we disappoint Him - unconditionally - again, very much like a parent would. There are many parallels between our relationship with Him and with healthy parents.

Having said all that, there are (at least) two more main reasons that sins are spelled out in God's Word:

1. They are guidelines for living life to the fullest, in that they help us avoid pitfalls and destructive behavior; steering us instead to behavior that He can bless. Living under maximum blessing is a "beyond Salvation, next level" way to experience God. Again, very liberating.

2. This is a BIG point: The Bible talks about the sins of mankind - not to tell us how we are expected to be able to live - but in order to show us our need for God and His Salvation.

How do I know this? In part because when Christ was asked about sin, He replied that "you have heard it said that to cheat on your wife is a sin...but I tell you that if you just think about it that is a sin." (New International Marc version paraphrase). That tells me that He's trying to show us just how incapable we are of living sin-free, and that He doesn't expect us to be able to. What He does expect is for us to come to Him with our sins and lay them at His feet for forgiveness.

Confession Time

To this, the religious Christians will say, "well then, what about sins we don't individually repent of? What if we forget, or die, before we confess them?" To them I would say: if any action of our own could atone for sin, then we wouldn't have needed The Cross; and confessing individual sins is an act of our own, so it has precisely zero atonement power. Confession is pleasing to God, but doing this doesn't make us any more or less saved...we will be His children regardless if we accept Christ. It is Christ's Act on The Cross - and ONLY that - that covers us if we accept Him as Savior. Thus, one can only conclude that our acceptance of Christ's Sacrifice covers us for all our sins...past, present, and future. Our debt is paid for life, no matter how morally we live our lives after we accept Salvation. That is what is meant by Grace.

The Unforgivable Sin: (should that be capitalized? I'm not so sure): You have probably heard people talk about this. It's true, there actually is such a thing. Sometimes I have heard it misquoted, though. I have heard people say that the Unforgivable Sin is to use God's name in vain: in other words, some people think it means saying "G_ _ - dammit," for example. That's not accurate. What the Bible says is that...

The Unforgivable Sin is "to harden one's heart against God." In other words, to "not accept Salvation." 

Makes the world's supply of sense to me

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